BishopAccountability.org
	My Turn: We Have a Way to Keep Kids Safe By Kenneth Wooden Burlington Free Press August 7, 2008 http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080807/OPINION/808070304/1006 In October 2002, I was asked to speak at a White House conference on missing and exploited children. During my address, I raised a question to President Bush and six White House Cabinet officials and their deputies. Let me raise the same question to my fellow Vermont parents, grandparents, educators and state officials: "If sexual predators are using lures, shouldn't we be teaching our kids those lures?" Many powerful federal agencies like the Secret Service, State Department, Customs, National Security Agency and U.S. Armed Forces have answered that question with a resounding "Yes!" We have been honored to help protect their families with Child Lures Prevention's Community Plan, www.childluresprevention.com, which includes the Think First & Stay Safe school program, parent guide, student workbook, student TV news series, in-service training seminars and network TV news series. This Vermont-based entity has an extremely comprehensive program that provides teachers, students and parents with relevant safety information to prevent sexual abuse and abduction from happening to our children. It also uses the power of television, reaching over 100 million viewers and counting. Yet this international program of prevention, which has won numerous awards and consistently high professional evaluations, has been all but ignored by our governor and the state Legislature. Who has not ignored Child Lures Prevention? An institution that was burned by scandal only to emerge as the gold standard for child sex abuse prevention efforts here and throughout the United States. That institution is the Roman Catholic Church. The gold standard is their highly regulated independent auditing procedures: traveling professionals who have the power to request any document, see any program and provide oversight to ensure the mandates for safe environment of the Catholic bishops are being carried out. It is a model for every public school district, colleges, universities and military bases, too. Last year, the archbishop of Hartford, Conn., said, "The safest place for a child in America today is inside a Catholic church or school." Because of the yearly auditing and independent oversight, I, too, believe it is. Back in 1983, we filmed our first Child Lures Prevention School Program training video at Christ the King School in Burlington. When we completed the filming, a young boy came up to me and said, "I wish my sister knew these lures." He was the younger brother of Melissa Walbridge, who was raped and murdered in Essex Junction in 1981. Let's not wait for another Vermont sibling to have the same wish. The Diocese of Burlington implemented Child Lures Prevention's Think First & Stay Safety program in all its elementary and middle schools in September 2005. The program was so successful, it expanded it into its high schools the following year. I applaud Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie for his unwavering support of prevention education for Vermont's children. Now I await something other than silence from our other public officials. To quote the great Irish playwright Shawn O'Casey, "The only banner that flies over the graves of the dead is silence." Kenneth Wooden of Shelburne is creator and founder of Child Lures Prevention.
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