For Gloria Vick, the turning point came when she could no longer ignore a pattern she kept seeing among the women in her Celebrate Recovery class at the Putnam County Jail.
“What finally hit home with me was the amount of child sexual abuse among the incarcerated,” said Vick, who has led the women’s group for more than 15 years. “It’s not the drugs and alcohol — it’s the trauma from childhood that we didn’t address very well for many years.”
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The statistics bear her out. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 13 boys experience child sexual abuse at some point in childhood.
The SBC Sexual Abuse and Response Department puts the number even higher — 1 in 3 females by age 18. More than 80% of cases never come to the attention of child protective services or law enforcement, often because children are afraid they won’t be believed.
Hard truth
And the abuse rarely comes from a stranger. Most children are victimized by someone they know and trust, frequently within their own home — a reality Vick confronts directly in the Celebrate Recovery classes.
It used to take weeks for participants to open up. Now, by addressing the trauma head-on from the start, Vick said she’s seeing faster breakthroughs and better results. “They cry and cry and cry,” she said, “but it gets them into the core of all of this so much faster.”
“It sickens me to the core,” she said. “I watch the ladies weep as we begin to deal with this. The statistics are beyond my comprehension, even after hearing hundreds of stories.”
Taking it to the classroom
Vick, a retired schoolteacher, believes prevention has to start long before anyone ends up behind bars.
She is actively working to change state legislation so that every child receives age-appropriate instruction on body safety.
Tennessee has been implementing Erin’s Law since 2014, which encourages schools to provide personal body safety education for grades K-12. The law is named after Erin Merryn, an Illinois native who was sexually abused as a child.
Closing the loophole
But Vick wants to see the parental opt-out loophole closed.
The classroom, she argued, may be the only safe place where an abused child can find their voice.
“Education is prevention,” she said.
“Teaching children about their bodies arms them with self-defense.”
For the women in Vick’s CR class, that education came too late. Her hope is that for the next generation, it won’t.
EDITOR’S NOTE — This story was written and originally published by the Baptist and Reflector.
