"Children enter the doors of our Children's Advocacy Center each day who do not believe they are children of the universe. We see children who are broken, who believe they are worthless, who are full of shame. Most children we see are harmed by those who should adore them, not by strangers. We see children who have been traumatized in ways that often shake us to the core. Our average client is a 9- to 10-year-old little girl sexually abused by someone she knows and trusts, and there are more of them than I ever imagined....
"Our world is chock full of suffering adults with unprocessed trauma, doing the best they can. In addition to the loss of human potential, there is a practical aspect to this insidious issue, a tremendous economic burden in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Child maltreatment is now considered a public health epidemic....
"Those who are unable to process their pain, to grieve their losses, can become entangled in destructive patterns that are all too familiar outcomes in our society: teenage pregnancy, drug and alcohol abuse, depression, further victimization, homelessness, incarceration or suicide. Large health plan population studies now point to linkages between adverse childhood experiences and future risk for leading causes of illness and death...."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ellen-magnis/life-lessons_b_4258121.html
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