The wonderful Hartford HeadStart event in April: Lena Rodriguez, President and CEO of Community Renewal Team, Susan Hamilton, Commissioner of DCF, and me. Lena and Susan were among many guests invited to read "Kisses From Dolce" to over 1300 children in 71 classrooms.

I wrote to the New York Times this week in response to John Banville's heartbreaking, and sobering, op-ed piece on child abuse in Ireland. The abuse, documented in a recently released 2600-page report, went on for years and was supported by a community system of secrets and denial. Those secrets resulted in, among other things, tremendous shame, both for the abused and for many in the surviving complicit community. Mine is letter # 2.

If you already have "Kisses From Dolce" in your home, please consider purchasing one or two copies to donate to a children's advocacy center, school, library or other youth-serving organization. There are so many deserving orgs., across this country and around the globe and, especially given the tight economy, I am sure they would be most grateful for the gift, another tool to use in giving children a voice.
If you are unsure where to gift your purchase, let me know and we can work together to find a place. I'm at KissesFromDolce@gmail.com.

Judith Caplan and me after last night's event at Temple Beth Am in Randolph, MA. The audience was multi generational and even the youngest attendees, middle schoolers, had something to say about keeping kids safe. It was an excellent program!

This story is a tough one; so much pain and suffering for so many children, our most vulnerable population. No one should have to endure these things.

"Kisses From Dolce: A Book for Children About Trusting and Telling" is # 1 on Amazon's Juvenile Fiction/Social Issues/Sexual Abuse book list! Awesome! Thank you!!

You can read reviews of "Kisses From Dolce" on Amazon; order the book from Amazon, Trafford Publishing or directly from me at KissesFromDolce@gmail.com.
A percentage of the sale of each new book is donated to the ATC Sisterhood D2L Workshop fund, allowing us to offer the award-winning "Stewards Of Children" prevention workshop for adults to as many folks as possible.
Preventing, recognizing and responding to child sexual abuse is what the workshop and the book are all about.

Today I had the pleasure of addressing the Norfolk/Sharon Chapter of the Brandeis National Committee at their lovely spring luncheon. What a lively, thoughtful, intelligent group of women! Here I am with event organizers Rochelle Hurvitz, Joyce Kaufman and Hilda Egel.
Louis Brandeis once said, "Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman." He wrote those words about the banking industry, upon the creation of the Federal Trade Commission, but they couldn't be more apropos of child sexual abuse. It is up to us adults to shine the light on the insidious problem of CSA by learning what it is, how it happens, how we can prevent, mitigate and respond to it. We can't be afraid of talking about it, we must...both with other adults and with our children.

"Kisses From Dolce" is now on Twitter!!
http://twitter.com/KissesFromDolce

Barring any surprises at Tuesday night's town selectman meeting, ATC Sisterhood will be sponsoring our "Take 7 Steps" 7K on the longest day of the year, Sunday, June 21st. We will begin just prior to sunrise and, like we did on the Freedom Trail two years ago, we will walk from Darkness To Light in support of D2L's "7 Steps To Protecting Our Children" and its Stewards Of Children CSA prevention workshop.
I know it's Father's Day, but what better way to demonstrate your devotion to keeping your kids safe than walking in the name of prevention?
If you live in the Boston area and would like to schedule/attend an upcoming D2L Stewards workshop, please contact me. You can learn more about Darkness To Light's mission and the Stewards program at www.Darkness2Light.org.