SUDDEN DROP IN SCHOOL PERFORMANCE OR BEHAVIOR

ARRIVES AT SCHOOL EARLY AND DOESN’T WANT TO GO HOME

LACK OF HELP FOR MEDICAL OR PHYSICAL PROBLEMS PARENTS HAVE BEEN NOTIFIED OF

ALWAYS WATCHFUL, AS IF WAITING FOR SOMETHING BAD TO OCCUR

WITHDRAWN

Before

After

You Should Know No one has the right to abuse you. You don't deserve to be abused. If you are being abused, you are a victim. It's not your fault that you are being treated this way. It is wrong that you are suffering this pain, fear or sadness.

You are not alone. Other kids suffer abuse, too. Sometimes abusers scare or threaten kids so they won't tell. There are people who care about you and want to help you. If you are being abused, please tell a safe person - that's someone you

can trust like a teacher, counselor, school nurse, neighbor or parent. You can also talk to a Childhelp USA hotline counselor.

CALL 1-800-4-A-CHILD (1-800-422-4453) then push 1 to talk to a hotline counselor. The Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The hotline counselors work with translators who speak 140 languages to help people who call and speak something other than English. All calls are anonymous. (The hotline counselors don't know who you are and you don't have to tell them.)

Do not be alone with anyone who hurts

you.

Listen to the little voice inside when it

says that what is being done to you isn't

right.

Find an adult you trust and tell them

what is happening. If they don't believe

you, keep telling until someone does

believe you.

The Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline 1-800-4-A-CHILD is dedicated to the prevention of child abuse. Serving the United States, its territories, and Canada, the Hotline is staffed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week with professional crisis counselors who, through interpreters, can provide assistance in 170 languages. The Hotline offers crisis intervention, information, literature, and referrals to thousands of emergency, social service, and support resources. All calls are anonymous and confidential.

I was about six years old when my oldest brother got mad because I told on him for playing rough with one of his friends and me. I didn’t know he had a bad side to him, I just thought that he was a normal kid that picked on his sister. But from that point on he sexually abused me day in and day out. I finally got through to someone when I was 13 and moved in with a friend at 14. I have been on my own ever since and am now attending college and doing well.

The abuse would begin the minute my father left the house. We would still be in bed and our stepmother would whip us with a belt to get us up and ready for school. She would make us get dressed and have breakfast. I would be crying and she would grab me and hold me against the wall with a spoon in one hand and a knife in the other and force and threaten me to eat or she would kill me. Once, as she forced the cereal in my mouth it caused me to gag and I started to throw up and cry. With the knife in her hand, she wielded it at me and I got so scared she stabbed me in the arm. As I cried and begged for her to stop, she grabbed a soiled pamper that belonged to my infant sister and proceeded to make a sandwich with feces and told me if I did not eat my cereal I would have to eat the sandwich. The abuse continued throughout the years until I was 15 and she left. By rose