WELCOME TO THE
Lauren’s Kids Guide to
Hope & Healing
This Guide to Hope & Healing is designed to provide
essential information and answer questions that often
arise after a child’s disclosure of sexual abuse
WELCOME TO THE
Lauren’s Kids Guide to
Hope & Healing
This Guide to Hope & Healing is designed to provide
essential information and answer questions that often
arise after a child’s disclosure of sexual abuse
THE DIGITAL GUIDE
Select a Section Based on Your Family’s Needs
Learn to recognize, report, respond to, and help your child recover from
child sexual abuse. With videos, printable worksheets and more.
Recognize
Healthy sexual behaviors for children, statistics, and signs of child sexual abuse
Report
Whom to contact, information to collect and the process for reporting child sexual abuse.
Respond
How to comfort and protect your child after a disclosure of sexual abuse.
Recover
How to help your child and family cope and heal from the trauma of child sexual abuse.
Order a
Printed Guide
FREE for Florida families, the printed Guide to Hope & Healing contains a manual with resources, references, tips, and forms, as well as activities for child and teen survivors to help facilitate healing and communication, and safety planning and communication activities for families.
BY THE NUMBERS
The Issue
Child sexual abuse is a silent epidemic. It occurs at every socioeconomic level, across ethnic and cultural lines, within all religions and at all levels of education. When sexual abuse does occur, 75% of child victims do not disclose within a year – 45% keep their abuse a secret for at least 5 years, many stay silent for decades, and some never tell.
But 95% of this abuse is preventable through education and awareness – and with guidance and support, victims can heal into thriving survivors. Together, we can shine light into dark places.
WATCH
A Video from Lauren
A Message from Lauren
The days, months and years that followed were often rocky, challenging and complex. As I began my healing journey with the support of family, therapists and friends, I faced many roadblocks in the form of insensitive peers, PTSD, communication with my abuser… my road from victim to survivor was often one step forward and three steps back. But after doing the work and committing to healing, I now consider myself to be a thriving survivor of child sexual abuse. More than that, I am a woman, wife, daughter, sister, aunt, educator, advocate, founder and CEO… I am happy and whole, and your child will be, too.
Over the years at the helm of Lauren’s Kids, I have often likened the journey we go through, from victim to survivor, to that of a butterfly. Maya Angelou said, “We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve such beauty.”
As with every victim of sexual abuse, a piece of myself, my heart, my childhood is missing — stolen from me by my abuser. This is a painful truth. But, while I will never be able to recover that piece, I now see that it has undergone a transformation of healing to become something new. It has become something beautiful and full of life and love.
Whether you read the Guide to Hope & Healing from cover to cover, or jump to sections of your choosing, it is my hope that this guide will help your family on the path to survivorship and thrivership, and serve as a road map on your healing journey.
Sincerely,
Lauren Book, M.S.Ed.
Founder/CEO, Lauren’s Kids
In Crisis?
FLORIDA : Florida Council Against Sexual Violence
Crisis Hotline : 1.888.956.RAPE (7273)
UNITED STATES : RAINN (Rape Abuse Incest National Network)
Crisis Hotline : 1.800.656.HOPE (4673)
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