The following are some late night thoughts on the context within which child sexual abuse exists and reproduces in the United States.

The "issue" of childhood sexual has been worn threadbare over the last twenty years or so by extensive media coverage of civil and criminal trials of fathers, priests, ministers, coaches, mayors, daycare workers, bus drivers, scout troop leaders, police and FBI agents, camp counselors, teachers, sex traffickers, kidnappers, and sometimes even mothers who have sexually abused children. Surveys and statistics about child sexual abuse here in the U.S. and abroad are released and the results are conflicting and disturbing. We, as a society, are awash in images and consequences of the vast cruelty humankind is capable of wrecking on its children, its future.

We have some questions to ask of ourselves. Why, after three decades of community-based intervention and prevention programs, significant legal and legislative reform, grassroots efforts of adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse, governmental investment in many good programs; congressional proclamations and a media storm of coverage, are we still lowering our voices when we speak of child sexual abuse? Why are we still whispering in boardrooms and coffee shops in disgust and shock when we learn of this kind of abuse of children and the lifelong effects it engenders on self, relationships, the workplace, society? Who or what are we protecting?

How do I know we are whispering? Because, I have caught myself on numerous occasions doing it! Even recently in the midst of spearheading this national and emerging international Campaign and Race to Stop the Silence I have surprised myself. Recently, I was sitting in my favorite local coffee café telling a friend about this amazing Race and I lowered my voice, I think, so no one around me would be offended by the words "child sexual abuse." I caught myself doing it. That's when I knew that I was responding to a voice cautioning me to "be quiet", don't talk about private things in public places. This is not the "be quiet" people who abuse kids threaten us with. No, it's another kind of "be quiet" and it is rampant, even in me, a survivor who sued her father, won a national precedent-setting case, had a TV movie made of her life (Ultimate Betrayal), and who has talked up pretty non-stop for the past 14 years about the way violence passes on to the next generation-to our kids, our grandkids and on down until we deal with it. But, who is the "we?"

Not one of our institutions has escaped the humiliation that comes with exposure of sexual transgressions of its members against its children. We whisper over the mess in the Catholic Church that has its bishops and even the Pope issuing and reissuing fine-tuned and pale statements about the Church's culpability and responsibility (or not) for the staggering damage done to children over the past fifty years or more. Many individual and institutional closets doors have been opened and floods of secrets about sexual transgressions against children have been let out into the light of day over the past 20 years or more since the women's movement really gained momentum.

So, why do we flinch? Why did I, when I spoke the words "child sexual abuse" in the café last week? We, as a society, need to answer this question. I need to answer this question. I don't flinch anymore when I say "breast cancer" or "AIDS" though. Most of you don't either. Why not?

It seems telling our secrets to therapists, families, friends and sometimes to the courts and media have liberated many of us from shame and isolation, but, the "telling" has not yet permeated what has proven to be, a resistant and complex, membrane of beliefs, attitudes and reflexive reactions when it comes to child sexual abuse. If I were to give this membrane a name, it would be "silence." A silence like Simon and Garfunkel sang about: "Fools", said I, "You do not know, silence like a cancer grows." Wise words for us today, a society reluctant to penetrate and disable the membrane that allows child sexual abuse to reproduce like a cancer.

It is this membrane of beliefs, attitudes and reflexive reactions-the silence-that is most critical to address at this juncture in time if we are to make any lasting impact on the extent of child sexual abuse. We won't eradicate child sexual abuse because human nature is flawed. What we can and must change, across all sectors of society, is our response to it. It is our collective response, a response well described by Dr. Judith Lewis Herman in her path-breaking book, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of violence-from domestic abuse to political terror (1992) that allows violence, such as child sexual abuse, to reproduce logarithmically. Here's what she has to say:

"Advances in the field occur only when they are supported by a political movement powerful enough to legitimate an alliance between investigators and patients and to counteract the ordinary social processes of silencing and denial. In the absence of strong political movements for human rights, the active process of bearing witness inevitably gives way to the active process of forgetting. Repression, dissociation, and denial are phenomena of social as well as individual consciousness." (Trauma and Recovery, p.9)

It is the social level of consciousness-and this membrane of silence (repression, dissociation, denial) that the Campaign and Race to Stop the Silence: Stop Child Sexual Abuse is addressing. Dr. Herman says a political movement is necessary to sustain public awakeness to the truth. We hope the Race and Campaign will be one of the sparks that ignites or re-ignites this "movement." There is a very strong global commitment on behalf of the world's children to make a "World Fit For Children." There is also a very strong human rights and peace movement afoot globally. We can tap into both of these as we move forward with this Campaign and Race.

We are taking the truth of epidemic child sexual abuse to the streets of Washington, DC on April 17, 2004. People will run a 10 k, walk or run a 5k through Freedom Plaza, a band will play; people will say the phrase "child sexual abuse" out loud. People will wear T-shirts that say "Stop the Silence: Stop Child Sexual Abuse." No one will whisper. Performers will sing and tell their stories. Seventy-five teens from an area high school will be out in force to volunteer; they will write essays about what the Race means to them and be recognized for their contribution to Stopping the Silence. Teams will walk under the banners of their agencies. Many important congressional leaders have endorsed the Race and will be on hand for the event. Some of their staffers will walk and run. It won't be a quiet day! We hope to see you there!