By Anastasia L. **Content Notice: discussion of sexual assault and violence** When I was twelve, I was first sexually assaulted by a relative while we...
There aren’t any words that will articulate the depth of my deep gratitude and love for each of the twenty-nine individual #LoveWITHAccountability forum contributors who...
As a Civil Rights, Women’s Rights, and Human Rights Activist, I am shocked and ashamed of myself. I am ashamed that I let my...
Let us envision a society that does not empower the carceral state to intervene in the affairs of our families and communities, but instead builds...
Content Notice: This article is part of the #LoveWITHAccountability forum on The Feminist Wire. The purpose of this forum and the #LoveWITHAccountability project is to prioritize child sexual abuse,...
Removing the threat of prison is also likely to bolster odds that victims and their families come forward and challenge abusers. The prospect of losing...
I don’t need an “apology” from the harm doers in my life to actually heal. I don’t need a pitiful recognition to liberate myself. Amends...
To espouse a system of avoidance and silence is to espouse the alienation, physically, and spiritually of those who have been relegated to the margins...
That imagining, visioning and building is speculative fiction. What would our world look like without child sexual abuse/violence? What are the ways we are learning...
For more than two decades, I have worked in various ways to heal the wounds inflicted upon me so many years ago—from working and organizing...
I am a CEO of a national nonprofit working to end violence against ALL women by centralizing the voices and leadership of women of color,...
The Speak7 African American Child Sexual Abuse Prevention Program utilizes the 5 Sexual Safety-Affirmative Values, which serve as a guiding framework in this intervention. These...
Networks of care for our children, and for the adults who have survived means creating community-based responses to violence. Responses which do not engage in...
Please, give us our reparations if you knew that someone was hurting us and we couldn’t cry out for ourselves. Please check on us, make...
If we advocate for the truth, we have to let go of the ideas that our religion, respectability, morality, and discipline will keep us safe....
What we know is that child sexual abuse is an epidemic. It is traumatic. Surviving it increases the chances that you will be sexually assaulted...
It’s not about people’s inability to make the leap between accountability and love. It’s about whose well-being is valued in our society and whose is...
We lift our voices to sing; we speak because we must, and we speak without shame, trepidation, or doubt that we have a right to...