Welcome to our Australian
Christmas edition of the

Carnival Against Child Abuse

December 14, 2007

Merry Christmas to all of our brothers and sisters out there: the fat and the skinny ones, the black and the white ones, the ones with freckles or porcelain skin, the ones with warts and the ones with disease and addiction or hair that is always perfect. To all those brothers and sisters that fall between the categories and to each and every person in the world who is either an advocate against, or a survivor of, child abuse,
Merry Christmas to you.

Imaginif’s Christmas wish is that no child will be harmed this Christmas and that to those who have already been harmed, that this Christmas, 2007, will be your Christmas of choice. It can now be your choice to stop participating in the oppressive nature of child abuse and to reclaim your life, how YOU want it to be. It can be your choice to take back the power from the perpetrators and to use your experience to help others.

You are all the brightest baubles on the tree. May your colours shine loudly and proudly for the whole world to see and bow to your innate beauty and love of child protection. It can be your choice to shine, to hide, to sink or to swim. Whatever your choice, the strength and best wishes of the Imaginif team is with you. And - WE’VE GOT PRESENTS FOR YOU. Read through to find out how to claim books for Christmas reading.

It is my practice to always begin a Carnival with a post from the previous host.
In this case, I am proud, delighted and tickled pink, to bring you
And now back to miserable…or not, taking centre stage at The Cerebral Mum of Australia
(ohhhh, we Aussies are coming up trumps in the fight against child abuse).

Advocacy & Awareness

Kate Baggott presents The Generous December Group Writing Project posted at Babylune, saying, “Do you have a favorite charity that acts against child abuse? Write about it on your own blog between December 1 and 19th and submit your link to win a donation for Christmas.” Oh dear, hurry up everyone, time is running out. I am still to write my post and enter the competition. I will do it Kate, I promise.

TherapyDoc presents Guys & Dolls and Couples Therapy posted at Everyone Needs Therapy, saying, “I slip it in there, that L.A. has one of the best social service advocacy programs in the country. See if it fits.

Duane Lester presents The Shadow Sexual Revolution - The Push to Legalize Pedophilia posted at All American Blogger, saying, “I thought [this] might fit in this carnival as an eye-opener to the current movement. Let me know what you think.” What do you all think of this - politics aside, will it ever be okay for pedophilia to be legalized or decriminalized? My vote is for NO!

Ellen Janssens presents Positive Communication: Food for Thought - Communication at its Best posted at Positive Communication and also Which Cause Really Touches YOUR Heart?

Nancy over at Child Person for the South gives us a thought provoking So just what is child discipline? What is abuse? Good question Nancy and bound to create some discourse.

Faith presents The Pedophile’s Secret Code by Bonnie Goldstein posted at Feminist Nation. Thanks for that Faith. I did not know about the triangle signs. Will go back and read the full article that you’ve linked to.
 

Healing & Therapy

Matthew Spears presents Emotions as beauty itself posted at Loving Awareness, saying, “This deals with a different way of looking at intense emotions, especially those related to past sexual abuse. By seeing them as beauty itself, it can bypass self-contempt, condemnation, and destructive attempts to “fix” ourselves that are really more subtle attempts of the same thing.”

changeyourtree (LOVE the name) presents Is Your Family Tree Being Poisoned? posted at Change Your Tree, saying, “I have put together a top ten list of things that can poison your family tree. Even if you are from what you consider to be a normal family, I bet you will find the presence of at least a few of these things.” Great article!

Mike McBride (one of our regulars who is offering a book present, so be sure to visit him and leave a comment saying, “here via the Carnival Against Child Abuse” - see more below) presents Somewhat Painful Reminder posted at Child Abuse Survivor.

Our own Marj aka Thriver presents The Tragedy of the Abused, Dissociated Child: The Soul Has Retreated; The Light Has Gone Out. posted at Survivors Can Thrive! Marj says that she initially ”put this entry under the Aftermath category, but it could also go under Healing & Therapy, because this process really involves some productive grieving for me. Grieving is painful. I don’t think anyone enjoys it. But, I remind myself that, when I’m dissociating, I am not grieving and I am not mourning; I am cut off from all feelings. Getting in touch with my feelings is a fairly new development for me. It leads to healing.” Because I am a therapist, I so got the strength of Marj’s healing words - hence, I put in in the Healing and Therapy section. 

 kcawley presents Baby Grace posted at Life, the Universe, and Everything, saying, “A child’s body is found washed up in Texas in a plastic container. She was beat to death by her parents as punishment for being “ill-mannered.” Thanks for posting that Kevin. It is a story that even though horrific, we all need to care. We had a recent Australian case where the child was stuffed into a suitcase and dropped into a pond. Together, we can encourage and act toward child safety because child protection is a community responsibility.

Australian Judge, Sarah Bradley, has rocked the global child abuse boat with a non custodial sentence for nine teenagers and men who pleaded guilty to gang rape of a ten year-old Indigenous girl. Two Aussie forums take up the heat from a wider public who are against Judge Sarah Bradley’s sentence: QLD allows rape of 10-year-olds if they say yes at my own Imaginif Safety Talk forum and Girl, 10, ‘probably agreed’ to sex over at Imaginif’s Sistership site All for Women forum.

Marcella, coordinator of the Carnival Against Sexual Violence and mother of Abyss2hope, blogs on Sea Scout Leader Arrested For Sexually Abusing Boys In His Troop. Gay or atheist indeed, if the allegations are correct then the man is naught but a neanderthal criminal who projects his own inadequacies onto emotive social issues to smoke screen his bad behaviour. Sounds like a bit of a sexual predators game to me. Just because Marcella works so super hard for us all with her Carnival against Sexual Violence, I am including a second post from Marcella: Teacher Accused Of Kidnapping Student To Mexico Makes Contradictory Claims posted at abyss2hope: A rape survivor’s zigzag journey into the open. Marcella lets us know about the article by saying, “Teacher Kelsey Peterson claims to be a victim of her alleged victim who she claims is a dangerous gang member but also claims she and the boy left town in hopes that the rumors about them would die down”.

Survivor Stories

From my blogging mates over at Jumping in Puddles’, Life Spacings, Happy Dead Anniversary you [Mum].    Anniversaries can be a triggering time for survivors of child abuse - the brain may forget dates, but the body NEVER forgets. JIP, I hope you have some solace this Christmas. My thoughts are with you.

Patricia Singleton, another fellow Aussie and sexual assault prevention advocate, Patricia privileges us with her personal story, Breaking The Silence—Incest May Be A Part Of My Life Series—Part 4 posted at Spiritual Journey of a Lightworker, saying, “Breaking the silence is the most frightening, courageous, freeing thing that a survivor can do for themselves. This is where recovery can begin.”  You made a choice to survive and recover Patricia. Thank you for helping to fight against child abuse and for child protection.

The wonderful Keepers presents Jennifer writes a letter to little alters posted at KeepersKorner, saying, “One of our 9 year old alters writes an open letter to other littles…”

Vivacious and articulate Lin presents a moving story with a twist: Look Into The Eyes Of A Child posted at Telling It Like It Is.  I found some of the comments interesting here Lin….interesting that people still cannot accept that this sort of thing really happens to children. Thank you for your story Lin.

That concludes this Christmas edition. Thanks so much for joining us and here’s a wee Christmas gift from Imaginif for you:
Parent Sense, a protective play tutorial.
Check out how to use Gingerbread people to keep kids safe this Christmas.

You’ve each been given the Stumble Upon green thumbs up - please be kind to each other and extend the green thumbs up (or other social bookmarking kudos) to those other posts that you read and appreciate (including this Carnival edition so that we can get it circulating widely and attracting more participants). The more than our anti child abuse posts permeate the blogosphere, the quicker the world will take note of our year round Christmas wish for no more child abuse.

And back to the Christmas presents: the wonderful Mike over at Child Abuse Survivor was given a free copy of Ten Points by Bill Strickland, compliments of the fine folk at Hyperion Books. Hyperion asked Mike to review Ten Points on Mike’s blog. See Mike’s Book Review of Ten Points here.  The deal Mike made with Hyperion was that once the review was done, Mike would give the book to another person to read. Always thinking of others, particularly survivors of child abuse, Mike has offered up the book as a Carnival prize. Go visit Mike’s review of the book and leave a comment to go into the draw for the book (US residents only sorry because of the cost of postage). The winner of the draw will have to be prepared to provide Mike with postage details. If you feel uncomfortable doing this, please do not enter the draw. Mike will draw the winner at the end of the weekend so winner will hear directly from Mike (make sure your email link is correct) sometime soon.

Here’s a final book gift to you all. To each person that leaves a comment here AND a link back to this carnival edition, as long as you are prepared to give me your mail address when I contact your privately, I will forward you a special protective behavior children’s chapter book. Keep it for yourself, gift it to a friend, or donate it to a local library. Bibliotherapy can help to keep kids safe from abuse.

Enjoy your festive and holiday season but please do not forget to submit your blog article to the next edition of Carnival Against Child Abuse using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page. The next carnival will be at Blessed Fearscapes on January 11th, 2008. Start the new year off with a commitment to submit monthly to our Carnival Against Child Abuse and to perhaps even host the Carnival, just once, in 2008.

Technorati tags: carnival against child abuse, blog carnival.

Many thanks to Christmas MySpace Dividers for the neat Christmas separators.