 Thank you for being here, the purpose of this meeting is for information that we think is very vital and important and the numbers of our community to receive, there will be a question and answer for the guests. One thing that I need to emphasize, I can't allow any questions about any current cases that may be in litigation or current cases that are under investigation in a public meeting like this, but the purpose of our meeting tonight is to put out information to people about what can happen with her children, what has happened with her children. We have some guests here from different facets. The first guest is John Calver, he's the director of the Safe and Secure Schools for Hand Safe University. We initially had a member of the FBI that was going to come to speak, but he called me yesterday and he's been called out of state on a base, so he had to leave rather suddenly. Mr. Calver again is the director of the Safe and Secure Schools for Hand Safe University. He has information for you about the different websites and the different tactics that predators may use to entice children into the type of things that we're talking about tonight, sexual predators, sexting, sex trafficking that has happened in our county, where children have been lured by predators to go out and meet somebody out on the interstate, and luckily they were intercepted and it didn't happen. But with a further due, Mr. John Calver. Thank you guys so much. Thank you, Chair, for inviting me. Probably not as good looking as the FBI agent that was going to come here, but I'll try to be just as entertaining. As he said, my name is John Calver. I am the director of the Safe and Secure Schools unit at the Kansas State Department of Education, although my wife graduated from K-State with her bachelor's and her doctorate degree in education. And I may be wearing purple right now. I'm in J-Hulker. There's one team still playing basketball in the state of Kansas. I believe that we all should get behind them and cheer for them and pray for safety and no more COVID issues. Right. If it happened in 88 today and 88 today, it can happen now. I graduated in 2006 actually from Washburn University and majored in criminal justice. Went straight into law enforcement and was a law enforcement officer for 12 years. The last six was an ad for the school resource officer in Jackson County, Kansas. It was the SRO in Royal Valley, Hulton and Jackson Heights. I like to tell people that I was the best SRO in Jackson County. Before SRO there says anything. I was the only SRO in Jackson County, but I was the best one. And most importantly, especially for a presentation like this, this is my fame. I have, these kiddos right now are nine and six. My daughter's in fourth grade, my son's in first grade, and my wife is actually an elementary school principal. So when I come and talk about this kind of stuff, I talk from it because it's school safety and keeping our kids safe is a passion of mine. But it doesn't take much for me to put on the parent act. And so I understand where you guys are coming from. I understand the fears and the thoughts that go on. And so that's kind of, I would mix that into this presentation. You will hear about my nine-year-old daughter, an awful lot tonight. And probably as much to where you see her on the street, you can say, I know everything there is to know about you. Before we start to know we're streaming this or recording this for YouTube, this is for adults only. I don't give this presentation to children. I don't want to give them any ideas. And so it is for adults only. I use adult content. I use adult words because it's important. If there's one thing that I learned about being an SRO is that words matter and the words that we use matter. So I don't shy away from it, especially in the room full of adults who are comfortable using adult terminology. I also will not touch base on every single social media app out there. Okay, I asked the sheriff if we could turn this into a sleepover for the weekend and just go all the weeks on Sunday and he declined. So I'm going to try to keep it to about 45 minutes. Just know that these are what the most popular apps out there right now. But that doesn't mean that there's not something else out there that I'm not going to cover tonight. This is the sign that I have in my office. I live by it. I truly believe it. There are no bad kids. Zero. I don't care. There are no bad kids, right? Especially in 2021 with everything going on in the world of COVID with social media, they're just trying to figure stuff out just like we are. So there are no bad kids. That being said, hormones are the devil. Talk to anybody who's at one of my schools. If I was having a rough day, I'd go to the elementary school and I'd give them high fives and one-armed hugs. I'd feel real good about myself. If I was having a good day, I'd go to high school and joke around with kids and be sarcastic, but I'd stay far away from the middle school. One, because they don't know how to shout. Two, because they don't know how to use deodorant. And three, and probably most importantly, what made them laugh 30 seconds later will make them cry. And I don't understand it. But this is what our kids are dealing with, right? And they're dealing with it while they're on technology, while they're on social media, while they're trying to go through this together. And that's important to realize, especially since the time of the age for a lot of these creditors out there are 11 to about 15 when the kids are dealing with this. I like to put this up here because it's a scapegoat for me as a dad. Social media apps have age restrictions. Most of them, as in like 99% of them, are 13. So when my nine-year-old daughter comes and says, I want to download TikTok. I say, you're not 13. And they never move to the end of you. But my friends love TikTok. I'm not the parent, right? Says 13. So you're creating a fake profile. You're checking a box for their terms and conditions. Saying you're 13 so you're lying. Do we lie in this house, Abby? No. Good. And I'm done, right? But a lot of apps out there, like I said, 99% of the age restriction is about 13. All right? And that's because that has to cover the butts legally of those apps. But we start from the beginning. And I am in that debate with my wife right now on when do we get our nine-year-old a cell phone. What do you need a cell phone for? Well, I want to call you. No, you don't. Don't call me. I want to talk to you on the phone. What? If you want to call me, use your mom's phone. Where do you need to call me? I want to text you. No. No. What do you need a phone for? Right? My friends have phones. Right. And we are now getting into it. Every phone that connects to the internet, every phone that we buy is going to have the internet. The internet, depending on who you talk to, was invented in 1989 or 1990. Again, depending on who you talk to. But the number one thing searched on the internet since the invention of the internet in 89 or 90 is pornography. So that keeps back to the day in 2004 when I had to get onto the computer and type in www.thefacebook.com and it would take me to Facebook and millions of other people were doing this. And so every day we would type in www.facebook.com, www.facebook.com, that didn't even come close to the amount of pornography searches. So I say that all kids are good and there's no such thing as a bad kid and I truly believe it. I know that if I give my daughter the internet, she would be naffy. I have to search up pornography. She's an angel. She would never do it. But her friends, her friends we tell her to, right? So your kids are all angels. But they're friends. And if you're sitting next to your kids' friends' parents, it's their fault. It's the other kids, right? They're all angels. But it's silly for me to believe as a parent that if I give my child the internet, they're not going to search the number one most searched item since the invention of the internet. So I told my wife, when we are ready to talk to my daughter or our daughter and our son about what love is, what sex is, what pornography is and what sex is not, then we can give her a cell phone. And so that's all that issues right now is when I go because my wife doesn't want to have that discussion. But if you're giving your child the phone, be ready to have that discussion because they're going to search it. Their friends are going to tell them to type in something. They're going to feel it. And so it's better if they hear it from you guys and understand what's going on. The first real big app out there Facebook. Like I said, I got it in 2004. Yeah, I got a college email address and it was cool. And it wasn't until about 2006 when I got a friend request from my mom that I was not cool anymore. But here's the timeline. Invite them on. It doesn't matter who they are. And that's something that we need to know as adults is that our kids get a lot of their self-worth. They get a lot of who they are as people and their value from how many friends they have, how many likes they get, how many shares they get, so much so that they will literally create fake profiles to friend themselves so they can have more friends who will then like and share and follow. And that's not just for Facebook. That's all of social media. Tons of fake accounts. I, as law enforcement, when I would investigate crimes, especially on social media, it was really fun to watch who's liking what post and then saying, well, that fake account is actually this person's. I go, hey, I know about your four accounts. And I'm sure you have more. You know about my account? Yeah, because you don't follow anybody else. You don't friend anybody else. You only want to share and be liking this stuff. It's really easy. But they get their value. They get their self-worth from their friends. Talk to kids all the time. Hey, how many of you guys have 500 friends on Facebook? Everybody's hand goes up. How many of you guys have 1,000? I had a kid one time tell me they had over 3,000 friends on Facebook. He was a middle school student. I said, how many of those do you actually talk to on a monthly basis? Face to face. Like 20. How many of those friends do you actually know in real life? Not a lot. Then why are you friends with them? There's no answer because they know the answer is because I got to have more friends. Again, their self-value, their self-worth comes from that and that's what they've been told. Invite them all. You're not cool unless you have 2,000 friends. We get into Instagram. And Instagram is dangerous because there's no content filter. You can scroll through and see whatever anybody is posting. Also, it's dangerous because it's a popular app. And so if I as a child sex trafficker, or if I as a predator get to you, I'm going to go to where you are. It's the reason that's four years ago I got Twitter. Because a kid said, I wanted to contact you but you didn't have Twitter. So I got on Twitter. And four years later, I have no idea what I'm doing on Twitter, but that's where the kids were at the time. That's how they wanted to reach out to me as the SRO, so I made a profile. If I know that the kids are on Instagram, I'm going to go to Instagram. There's no content filter. There's explicit images and videos. You get into the sexual content and chats. And again, you don't really know who you're talking to. As far as dating apps are concerned, I'm going to talk about a couple of them. I just know that 95% of them have geolocation. So I can pull up a map and I can figure out where you are. And so when I'm talking to you on the chat feature and it says, and you say, oh, I'm at home. I now know where your home is. Or you say, oh, I'm working. You don't have to tell me where you work. The map shows me where you work. The other thing is this. Kids don't date like we used to date. They talk. That was the weirdest thing. Well, I talked to high school kids. Oh, I see you and Johnny are dating. Oh, we're not dating. We're just talking. What does that mean? Right? So these dating apps are not for dating. They're to go out and hook up and have sex. That's what they're useful. It's generally known that if you talk to somebody and you plan to meet up with them, it's not for dinner and a movie. It's to have sex. And whatever niche that you decide is 100%, they've made an app for it. Meet me. It's based on location. So they're going to not hook me up with somebody in California. These apps are going to give me a 30, 50, 100 mile radius and that's how they're going to start matching people. Grinder. It's based for the LGBTQ community. So if I'm LGBTQ and I want to find somebody else like that, that's where I'm going to go. You've got to scout. And this is so much fun to get to people under the age of 17 from sharing any photos. Just like we talked about earlier, if I'm 16, it takes one click of the mouse to make myself 19. Right? I love seeing on some of my social media sites, some of the kids that were in high school when I was in SRO, they were 14, 15, 16, are now 34 years old because when they created the profile, they were in the age of 13 and so this is good. I go, wow, you're almost as old as I am and they're like 18, 19, 20. Oh, they just haven't changed. They're going to change their age. They're going to change a lot of stuff about them just so they can get on. Again, but I do, like you share photos, you get to chat, it's based on location. The geolocation is what is going to get a lot of us in trouble. Tinder is probably something that but again, lots of fake accounts because if I'm going to try to lure somebody, I'm going to go to where you are. So if you're on Tinder, I'm going to create my fake profile and I'm going to lure you away and I'm going to use this to get you out into the open where I can get you. Bumble, it's beautiful. If you're ever females, females in the audience, I apologize. Men are stupid. You're idiots. We don't know how to talk to you. So I apologize because if you've ever imposed as a female on a dating app or on an application at all, my wife shows me all of these messages that she gets from guys and I'm like what in the world? This works? So Bumble, fix that. Women. Women have to make the first contact. But just like I can make myself 19, I can make myself a figure. Right? I can change my gender. If I'm going to create the fake profiles to do what I need to do, it's as simple as a mouse click. And there's no social media police that are come knocking at our door to make sure we are who we say we are. This is a big one over in California on the west coast that is moving over here as well. I talked to a ton of kids and some of them have it. Some of them don't. The instant messaging and virtual universe. The scary part with this is that there's a private feature in a private room where you can you create an avatar. And you walk around in this fake world and you talk to people. And then you can go off into a secret room and have sex with them. Why is that even a thing? Why can't we scrub this off the face of the planet? But it's huge. Right? This is one of the most popular apps out on the west coast again. It's making its way this way. So look out for it. You don't... The chat's not filtered. You can get into some explicit content. And again, it's about meeting random people and having sex with them. You can also then set up to meet in real life which is scary as well. Ask your family to take a talk. Anything that you... And I told kids this. Anything that you do on the internet that is anonymous is wrong. Because if you don't have the guts to say it to the person, to the person's face, but alone say it to the person behind the keyboard, talking and not listening. Right? And so I get on this website and it's funny because they have this video and it's I was just having the worst day. Got some 15, 16 year old high school student. I was having the worst day ever. And I got on this and people said oh my goodness, did you see how she is dressed? She is so beautiful. Oh my goodness. I just love her new perfume. She smells so good. God, she's such a great friend and a great person. And that just made me feel great. Really? That's what our kids are going to say? Anonymously? Lies. They're going to bully people. They're going to cyber bully. They're going to pose questions like oh my gosh, did you see John's bald head? Can you believe that he didn't powder before he came and spoke and the lights are glaring off his bald head? I'm such an idiot. That's what they're going to say. This is political and I know this got political a couple of years ago but I've been talking about TikTok for a long time. It is the number one most dangerous app out there. And it's not my opinion. It's factually. Again, why? Because this is where our kids are. It's the number one most downloaded app since January of 2020. Kids think it's funny. You get to make these little videos. You get to do all this fun stuff. But it has very limited privacy controls. You're exposed to cyber bullying. You're exposed to inappropriate content. There is no filter. So whatever people post, you see. I can't make it to where my 13 year old doesn't see something that a 13 year old shouldn't see. It just is what it is. And again, because it's the number one most popular app, these are where our child sex traffickers are going. It's the number one most used app for child sex trafficking out there today. That is why it is the number one most dangerous app. So when I talked to my friend, my daughters, friends, parents, and they said, oh yeah, we let them use Tik Tok. I lose my mind. Tai Pa challenge. Sorry, Tai Pa challenge. Y'all remember that one? Where it was, eat a Tai Pa. That was Tik Tok. And our kids did it because it was a challenge. One of the ones out there about six months ago was punch an old person to challenge. And they would film themselves running up behind some random old person and punching in the head and then running off. Because there's a challenge. We have to do it. It's a challenge. It's a challenge for me to do it. And it gets liked and it gets followed and it gets all this attention. I just want to put out something that's like hey, delete all social media challenge. But you can't post about it because you don't have social media. Number one most dangerous out there. Kick. There are apps out there that go around and try and get around what we as good parents or we as parents are trying to do and that's monitor our kids. Kick is text messaging. But it's text messaging done through Wi-Fi. So when you as an adult go through your kids' phone and scroll through and say, alright, I looked at your social media. I looked at your text messages. Thank you for being a good kick. Kick is hidden away and as long as they can get Wi-Fi they can start texting people. And again, it works like text messaging, but it's private because the adults don't know what it is. So the adults aren't checking it. Chatspin is actually a fourth generation app. So you get these generational apps where we know that they're bad or that they're wrong so we shut them down and then it pops up again with a different name. What this does is you sit down from your webcam, from your cell phone whatever you have and it connects you in an instant to someone, anyone around the world. You can't search for gender. You can't search for age. You can't search for anything like that. It's just random. Go. So I'll talk about this a little later and I download these apps and I create profiles and I go out and I see what there is to do. I have my wife next to me. This one was not good to have my wife next to me. I click go. You don't even create a profile, by the way. There's no profiles. You just hit go and it connections and I did it ten times because you can say leave and go somewhere else, leave and go somewhere else. And it just, it's just a room to room I did it ten times. Nine times out of ten it was a man masturbating and it didn't show his face. It showed the other region. So if I the 37-year-old man and clicking through this what if a 16-year-old girl who's at a stronger party right who's out with her friends and they've decided to get on this what are they saying? I can guarantee you they're saying the same thing I am. So it started with chat and we left they shut it down. It went to Omegle they shut it down. They went to Ola, they shut it down. Omegle, by the way, has now popped back up. Go figure that one. They shut down the app but it's working again. But they're all the same. They just pop up with different names. Whisper, again. What you do and obviously online is wrong. This is one of those where you get to go and tell strangers your secrets in effect. Well what these child sex traffickers will do is they will go and they'll talk to our kids and they're really good at playing this long game of it doesn't have to be today it doesn't have to be tomorrow it could be a month whatever it may be and they'll coerce all this information out of them on your friendship, on your friend. I'm so glad you can trust me. What's your name? Where are you from? What school do you go to? What's all this? Hey, I want to friend you on Facebook. I want to friend you on Instagram. What's your Instagram name? What's your Twitter name? Let me friend you so that we can connect that way and you can get another follower. And then all of a sudden a month later, hey, if you don't do this, if you don't send me a nude, if you don't send me money, if you don't come meet me here, I have all your friends and I have all the messages and all of our chat conversations saved and I'm going to post it and I'm going to tag all of your friends in it so that they see every bad thing you've said about it. They're going to see everything that you wanted to keep secret and our kids freeze, right? And so they give in and they give in until they reach a point and they don't know what else to do. These guys and these girls are really, really good at playing long game because they know they're going to reap the benefits and our kids don't know who they're talking to. These are some really weird apps. Calculator? It doesn't actually look like this on your app screen, it looks like your calculator. Okay? But what this does is if I pull this app up and I type in math and if I wanted to add, it does everything a normal calculator would do but if I punch in my passcode it takes me to a secret folder and that secret folder contains all the videos all the pictures, all the text messages everything that I don't want you as my mom or dad to see. It's in there. So you can't tell me that this wasn't created to get a go-around from parents checking up on kids phones and the only way you know as this is if they have two calculator apps because one calculator app comes with the phone and you can't delete it. So if they have two it's not a glitch with the phone they have the secret one. Vault, I'm sorry Vaultie is the same thing the difference is if I pull up Vaultie and I type in my passcode it's not the passcode, it will take a picture of whoever's trying to get in it will send it to my email, it will send me a message says hey, this person is trying to get into your account so if I log in to Vaultie and my dad's picture is there and it says this person is trying to get into your account I immediately delete all of my videos and text messages where I move them to a calculator app and move them away so that when you go and say hey what is this Vaultie getting? Oh dad downloaded it like a month ago I don't really know what it does when you're in you're like yes, alright my kid's doing good it's a workaround the devil I've talked to kids across the state of Kansas and I asked them what picture do you want to delete itself after 10 seconds and they just looked at me well this, you can actually get that same filter over here but why do you want the picture to delete? is it because you can send messages? yeah, that's the reason this app was invented and it was going away our kids stopped using it about 5 years ago and it was kind of down-taking I was like finally this app has been to die and they brought on streaks if I snapchat you and you snapchat me that's a streak of one the next day we do it again it's a streak of two and so on and so on and so I said guys, what do you get if you have a streak of 100? you get nothing what if I have a streak of 365 we snapchat each other back and forth every day for a year what do we get? what if we snapchat and we have a streak of 10,000 what do we get? nothing but this has driven our kids to get back on snapchat because they have to get a high streak and you hear kids talk about by streak by streak by streak it is so popular that our kids there are sites built that when we as parents ground our kids from their phone or we take away snapchat they can go into these sites and type in their username and password and people, random people keep up their streaks or even more popular is I give my username and password to my bestie who keeps up my streaks well then a month later we're not besties anymore and she uses it or he uses it against me I worked a case when I was in SRO and again this goes back to I believe every kid every kid is a good kid this girl was a good kid it's brought to me that she's sending news on snapchat I bring in mom I bring in the daughter and I go what is going on and her eyes get huge it's not me, officer John, I didn't do it I would never do that, no way, no way, no way no, no, no, it's not me, it's not me I swear I wouldn't then you gotta give me something it's your snapchat like look, it's your snapchat and mom goes this is why we grounded you from snapchat two months ago we knew this was going to happen and she goes well when she grounded me I sent this stuff out there and I gave people my username and password so they could keep up my streaks and sure enough we were able to go through our IT they found out that where these pictures were being sent was not here it was actually over in India and we went but when you get sent a torso shot there's no head kids aren't going to wait for that right? kids aren't going to care this is what they get but it's to keep up the streaks that get you nothing nothing it's also snapchat safety this is one of those geo locations I was talking about I know it's a little fuzzy up there but this is a map and everybody who's on snapchat shows where they're at there were a bunch of jokes like three years ago when they all wanted to storm area 51 I don't remember if you guys remember that I love that they pulled up the map of area 51 and it was just one big blob of just snapchat people because as soon as your snapchat is on it shows where your geo location is now you can go into settings and you can turn it off but every time the app updates it turns it back on and in today's world it doesn't tell you that an app updated it could update every other day so unless you're going into the settings every time you get on snapchat you're running the risk of having your geo location out there to anybody on your snapchat friends list they can see exactly where you are this is where I get to tell you guys that I am father of the year I told you I was the best SRO in Jackson County I'm also father of the year my nine year old daughter is in a dance and she dances competitively we get to go to Kansas City tomorrow morning I get to wake up at 4am yes but she dances and my six year old son goes with us and he is a saint because he likes to dance with us but there are times where when you're sitting there for two hours in between dances that he gets bored so we downloaded this game this is an actual screenshot of him playing it's called block breaker and you fire off the balls and the blocks and they break that's it, that's the game but it keeps him entertained so we were in St. Louis about a year and a half ago and he wants to play block breaker sure buddy here you go and I'm there driving every ounce of being there but I'm there for my daughter and my son goes dad I got him and I said yeah buddy wait and go you beat the game, good job you beat the level wait a minute you got him what do you mean by that there's dad I got him see and that's the because I do it I do so this is actually what he was doing this is a game called 3D sniper I did not download this game I don't know where this I don't know why this popped up but it was an ad that came up after he beat the level and he was able to play and try out this game in the ad and the premise of this is that they show you somebody that they want you to kill and then you get a sniper rifle and you're laying down somewhere and then shoot them and kill them and you earn extra money if you get a headshot which my son at the age of like four at the time did not do the headshot so I got to have a really cool conversation not only with my son about hey look we don't play ads anymore or else you don't get the phone you're just gonna play block breaker then I got to have a really cool conversation with my wife about hey I'm an idiot because it's not just the ads anymore it's not just the games our kids are bombarded with this stuff in ads right? so this isn't something I learned this is something that you can't just set your kids on and let them play through even if it's something as simple as block breaker it's gonna pop up with ads like 3D sniper like I said our kids are bombarded with it these are screenshots taken from my facebook news feed 322 and 323 so I'm scrolling through my facebook as an SRO coward and if you have an old school phone and you type that in it says send news and I know that because when you had to type in and press that seven four times for the s I left that s off a lot there were a lot of plural words and I just made very singular because I was not gonna try hard enough because I said that seven many times but it says send news then hey send the news when you get home so I know you're safe and we laugh at that one that's the dumbest thing I've ever seen in my entire life oh my gosh but that grooms our children into believing that that is normal behavior it grooms our children that's gotta be okay to talk about and when a boy asks me for a nude well that's okay it's all over social media and everybody's doing it it's so common that this shows up on the SRO's facebook feed this is a message that got sent to my SRO facebook account mmm you so hot do you want hard sex with me hey wife wife I don't know this person see I'm not friends with them click on this link I know we're not gonna click on the link I get this message our kids are getting this message and our kids will probably click on the link which goes back to pornography is the number one most common search thing it's that easy this is a case that's going on right now in Shawnee County we're an adult allegedly contacted a bunch of children using instagram snapchat kick and grinder I hope that those apps sound vaguely familiar over the last 30 minutes that I've been talking to it is happening and people are praying on our children and it is back and as you can tell this person allegedly had 5 accounts on instagram 5 accounts on snapchat and a one on kick and grinder using multiple accounts to get multiple kids to draw them in because they play the long game because if I can get one it's gonna get me roughly $400,000 over the next 5 years one our suicide rates are skyrocketing our kids are suffering one in 13 of our youth will attempt suicide one in 13 Topeka just put out something that said that at this point this year from last year we are up 140% of completed suicides I don't play political games I don't do that because nobody wins but we're gonna be seeing the mental health breakdown from this pandemic for years we have got to start talking to our kids we have got to start talking to their friends I talk to kids all the time about if you want to see change in your schools you want to see change in your communities it's up to you guys because the fat, bald, ugly 37 year old will come and talk to you for 45 minutes and jump around and make it laugh and give you a good message but it's not gonna change anything but if your best friend tells you hey I'm worried about you you're going down the wrong path you're gonna listen to that person and sometimes we as parents don't see the changes in our kids we don't understand the changes what their friends do and so it's up to us it's up to the kids to bring their friends into the counselor into a trusted adult to where we can get them help we've got to teach them coping mechanisms a lot of this says that at first failure the first big break up the first big job loss the first time they get in trouble with the law they don't have the coping mechanisms to handle it they don't know what else to do so they take the permanent solution to the temporary problem I have an article in my office from 1988 that says that suicide is the sixth leading cause of death of our youth and in 2021 I'm sad to say that suicide is the second leading cause of death in our kids so whatever we did from 88 to 2021 didn't work in this notion that if we don't talk about it they won't do it it doesn't work the number one leading cause by the way is distracted driving so it's amazing to me to think that if we have thoughtful meaningful conversations and engage our kids we can realistically lower the number one and number two cause of death of our kids and more of our children will live hit on in a bunch, child sex trafficking it is the second largest and fastest growing criminal industry in the world and we are here in Kansas with major thoroughfares north and south and east and west in a matter of hours they can pick up our kids and be in a different state and our children are 100% reliant on their predator a lot of them believe the predator loves them so if I have to go get tricked out and prostitute myself to make money for my mother then that's exactly what I got to do because I got to provide for him because he loves me or I'm scared to death and they said they were going to kill me so if I don't go prostitute myself I'm going to die and I'm 100% reliant on them so I got to do it this is from the Kansas Attorney General's office these are reported facts these are the kids they said I'll admit this 2 in 5 say the parents know very little about what they do 40% of our kids say my parents don't know anything about what I'm doing 20% have received sexual solicitation online I would bet that number is a lot higher than 20% 82% of online sex crimes the offender used social media 80% 82% 39% of teams have admitted to sending sexually suggestive messages so again 40% of our kids are admitting that they're sending these hypo messages so my 9 year old daughter is very emotional very very emotional I don't really know how to handle it but she's emotional we're going to lock down and I see that she needs action with other like aged children me and mom and 6 year old brother ain't cutting so I did weeks of research Messenger Kids is a great app for our younger kids it's an app that says if you have a child who wants to be my child's friend on Messenger Kids we have to be friends on Facebook and I have to connect with you to say hey is this real and you say yeah that's my kid I'm like alright and they can connect it then shows me every message that is being sent back and forth now I say that but I don't allow my daughter to talk on this app unhaunted I still check up and I get weekly updates to say who should talk to the most what was the most viewed picture what was the most done this so again even if I miss something I'm getting updates from Facebook my biggest concern was I don't want her to fall into fake profiles but because we have to be friends on Facebook and we have to connect as adults I'm not too terribly worried about that but it doesn't mean that I just throw this at her and say there you go do whatever you need to do we still monitor but when they mess up tell them they messed up punish them it's okay right they made a mistake but I'd rather than make mistakes when they're younger than when they're 18, 19 and have to deal with the sheriff because they're young kids and they really don't know what they're doing phone usage in front of adults they don't need to take the phone to the bedroom they don't need to take the phone to the bathroom they don't need to take it to the bathroom that people want to see they pooped me to J nobody wants to see that nobody wants to see it it's gross don't take it to the bathroom charge the phone in your room don't charge it in a living room don't charge it in the kitchen don't charge it in a neutral space because our kids will wake up at one o'clock in the morning go out there and get on the phone charge it in your room monitor the usage have an open dialogue hey what's going on how's everything going what is this app I don't understand what is this app used for why can't you do X, Y, Z I don't give I wouldn't give my daughter the password to anything if you want to download an app you have to come talk to me first right so she has an iPad that has Mr. Kids and Roblox but before she got to do any of that I was able to download the app I googled it what is this app used for then I created my own profile right I would take it a step further when she turns 13 and I start using these other apps I would create a profile as a 13 year old girl because people are going to interact differently with the 37 year old bald fat guy than they are with the 13 year old girl if I can get access into things as a 13 year old girl then I know that my 13 year old daughter is going to be able to have access to it and I don't have to play this while at 37 maybe it's not as bad as the 13 year old I don't interact with other youth I don't interact with other profiles I just want to see what I can get into and what it's all about I'm not here telling you go create fake profiles and purple on kids please don't do that but see what our kids are doing if you have a 16 year old boy going to an app as a 16 year old boy what is he able to see is this an app that I really want my kid on Google it what's the information on this what are they using it for what is it really dear to us and then share the information with others we're not listen just like there's no bad kids we're not bad parents we're going to make mistakes but we're not going to learn from anything we as a village are not going to be able to raise our children as a village if we don't help each other out because we have to be quiet because we don't want everybody to know that you messed up our lives no, scream from the mountaintop John was an idiot and John downloaded this and he got onto this and was doing all this and talking to people and sent them pictures and boy oh boy is he stupid he's in trouble I smashed his door and threw it up on the roof all of a sudden that next parent goes over and says oh man my kid has the same app we might save somebody we just got to be open and honest and stop trying to feel like we have to be the best we're all going through this together folks I'll leave this up here for a second if you want to take pictures I'll also come back to it in a minute but these are some really good apps if you want to talk about media and how to talk to your kids about being online and digital digital citizenship some great websites out there if you don't have a phone you don't have to get a picture you want it later if you email the sheriff or if you email the superintendent they can get with me I can get them this slide so that you guys can have access to it don't be discouraged I know it's tough it sucks being an adult I tell kids all the time don't grow up it is a trap but I researched this and they legitimately have lifeguards at the Olympics and I feel like I would be a really good position for that because they have lifeguards at the Olympics so some days I feel like I'm making a big change and a big difference and other days I feel like I probably lose lifeguards due to the Olympics this is my contact information please feel free to contact me at any time I did leave some business cards and yes that is my twin Chris P. Bacon that was my last yearbook photo and you know sometimes you just got to brace all the stereotypes that are out there but that's my Facebook that's my Twitter like I said I have no idea what I'm doing on Twitter but that's my email and my phone number feel free to contact me email me with any questions any concerns anything that you feel like I could do for you, your kids, your schools the cool thing about me working for the State Department of Ed is that just about anything that I do is 100% free I asked maybe for a cup of coffee but I'll come out and talk because I love to talk so I appreciate you guys I appreciate you guys being a great audience any questions now or at the end? let's take it at the end ok so if you have questions I'll be here at the end and I'll throw this back up there for anybody who wants to get a quick picture but thank you guys so much I appreciate you we've become the local police however it's important we locally rely on an organization called Life House Children's Act at the Center of the People Life House supporters they help us with the brain in forensic interviews they help us with the youth to elicit information where the youth is a victim a witness and our next guest is Lynette she is from Life House and also the executive director Kelly is here I can't say enough I've been going on 17 years 18 years now they have helped us on over 100 cases I've got the time to count and we roughly take about 20 to 30 cases a year over to Older Life House where they help us with children help them find their words help them describe what has happened to them I can't say enough about this organization but I'll let you leave it to her to tell you what techniques to use the most important thing that we can emphasize is communicating with your children knowing that your children need to know that you love them no matter what they come to you to tell you it's not as bad as prostitution yourself online children get scared and they complain and these people get on these websites and they solicit secrets from your child and then they're using those secrets against them to make them do things that are just terrible and I'll leave it to her now and talk about it and so my name is Lynette I'm a forensic interviewer and family advocate at Life House Child Advocacy Center so and so at Life House what we do is we bring together the professionals needed to investigate allegations of child sexual abuse severe physical abuse and if they were to be a witness of crime or violence and so I specifically do both forensic interviewing and family advocacy and so as a forensic interviewer I'm with the kids and interview them one day as an advocate I get to work with non-offending caregivers to provide resources really just listen and then guide them because no parent prepares for this when they come to Life House and so our goal is to make it as comfortable and neutral for them as possible and so today a lot of the information provided is from our protecting your children advice from child molesters presentation that Kelly and my program director Jill was in it's really cool because it was from professionals who went out and interviewed convicted sex offenders and they volunteered to provide information on how they do what they do and to help professionals then know so as we're working these cases and we're getting training we know kind of what their tricks are how they do all the things that they're doing and so another part of my role at Life House is that I get to talk with community members and I get to raise awareness and education on what seems to me when this happens or when it's something that's directly affected you and so if your child comes to you and they say I have to tell you something I've been sexually abused the best thing to do research shows that when a child is believed the very first time that they disclose it just increases their ability to heal from the trauma it's just a better chance for them to heal and so but also as a parent I know that you want to know when your child comes to you and says this is happening you want to know what happened where it happened so a lot of those questions but I would not ask those questions because if your child's coming to you the best thing you can do is just listen and let them know I believe how can I help you and once your child has made this disclosure then the best thing as a parent is to report it either to DCF, law enforcement or both and so kids will also start to disclose in little pieces so they say Uncle Jenny you need something weird and you're like Uncle Jenny do you want to do something weird and that tells the child that if they were to give more than just Uncle Jenny's doing something weird oh I can't go to my parent they just got mad at me for this they're going to get mad at Uncle Jimmy and so it makes it harder for them to continue disclosing reviews if our initial reaction is not what makes the child feel most comfortable you know and then also as the process goes then it makes it that much harder as a forensic interview to make that child comfortable enough to talk about the abuse and so the steps of so when kids come to life house it's typically because they've already made a disclosure to someone and that disclosure has been made aware to law enforcement, DCF or both they have a point that we're aware of what's going on and then they come here and they're much wider here because they've said something to someone and so if your child does come to you and says, you know, I'm being abused do not allow contact between the offender and the child do what you can do to best protect your child and to get them away from the alleged perpetrator if you have no idea how to do that or you have questions on how to go about that then I would recommend just letting law enforcement know as soon as your child comes to you and I would not confront the offender if it's someone who's known to you and most likely if your child has come to you it is someone that you know I would not confront the offender one, because law enforcement loves the surprise of getting to talk to offenders they want them to not be as prepared knowing that law enforcement is going to come talk to them at some point because they prepare for their someone to come to them they prepare what their defense is going to be whatever they say they're going to come up with a whole lot of lies and also if you were to go and confront the offender before calling the police they may try to talk you out of calling the police they may say you know I did do something weird that's not exactly what happened and then they're going to rationalize or minimize what they did and then why would Uncle Jimmy do something you know I love her, I'm going to do something to her and so they're going to do what they can to avoid the police getting involved if you confront them first if you find that someone is maybe acting inappropriate but it's not quite or you feel like it's against the law then by all means as a parent have a conversation with that person to say your behavior is something I don't mind okay with my child don't be afraid to protect your children and to have those conversations and really having those conversations with kids if someone is making you feel comfortable identifying who they can go to when things like that are happening this is a pretty scary statistic there's had 120 incidents before the first kids house so that could be a gender perpetrating on 120 different children or one child 120 times before being caught and one out of every 20 million know is a sex offender because there is no what race there's no gender association economic status they can pick whoever it happens everywhere and it happens to anybody and so when you're talking to kids about you know body safety and internet safety blended into other safety talks you know like when they're talking about fire safety wearing a helmet, wearing a seatbelt things like that as you talk about and having those sex off with your children the sooner you start it and the more you make it more the more comfortable they become with the topic and it's not quite as weird to them when you start talking to them when they're teenagers because everything's weird when they're teenagers and so I tell families all the time as an advocate this is the first step and just continue to have these conversations with your kids because and the more comfortable you are talking to your kids about this the more comfortable they are going to feel with it because kids can't pick up on the energy if parents are like oh this is weird I don't want to talk about this so then they're going to pick up like oh mom's being weird about this why is this weird and so things that you might say to your kids and if anyone tries to touch or to look at private parts or tries to show them pictures of anybody without clothes on or tries to keep it a secret tell someone as soon as possible whether it's you or someone that you've identified with them that is a safe person like school people maybe someone in the church maybe an older sibling and they have adult older siblings because identifying those safe people before they're in a situation where they need to save people helps kids to lay this on the kids to wait for them to get perpetrated on and then think what do I do now I don't know what to do I'm 10 years old I have no idea what to do with people and so when you're talking about the whole safety concept you don't have to just focus on sex you don't forget about the sex part either and so and some of the advice from Kyle and Melissa that doesn't work is thinking that no one you know is an offender depending on children to protect themselves expecting that children would be able to tell someone a lot of times as the interviewer I have kids that they come in and they talk about all the things that happen and they're like wow I've never told anyone that before and you can just see the relief that they have from holding this secret in so many reasons why kids are able to tell someone they can feel ashamed they can feel fearful they can also most of the time love the perpetrator because it's someone that they know ignoring children's sexual acting out there are appropriate and healthy behaviors that kids have there are also not so healthy and appropriate behaviors and when they say that these not so appropriate behaviors it's important to to address them to address them as soon as you notice them the sooner you notice it and you're able to address it the better off the kiddo is you want to deter them from the negative behaviors they're exhibiting as soon as you can and also a strange danger no go tell good touch bad touch the fingers here are all about that too but they have so many tricks and so a strange danger it's not the creepy man in the van that's going to take your kid and do whatever it's their grandpa it's their stepdad it's their aunt a lot of it is family or close family or people that they interact with in the community like coaches, teachers, things like that and so as far as a strange danger goes and officer John did it really well it's the internet that is the huge strange danger right now they could get on facebook and it looks like someone might like another 14 year old girl i can friend and pester back but it's really a 6 year old man who's just sitting behind his computer and he's going to solicitate me for news later and so kids part of internet safety is knowing what you're putting on the internet really who you're talking to on the internet and what you're getting yourself into with the internet because everything stays it can never go away and with good touch and bad touch it's a great concept but with perpetrators we may obviously the acts that they're doing they're bad but our bodies are meant to feel certain ways within sexual abuse and so when a child is confused with what he did it didn't feel bad so it must not have been a bad touch and so that talk is confusing in a way that perpetrators want to continue to do what they're doing so they're not going to make it where it's hurtful to them or maybe it feels bad to them because they want to be able to keep perpetrating and so having conversations of there are places on our bodies that we're not okay for people to touch or to try to touch or for us to see or to ever show us without clothes on is a really important identifying these body parts and calling them with the anatomical correct means because we call it on and on so why would we not call all the rest of our body parts what they're called and it lessens the likelihood that children would be perpetrated on because they have a better idea of their bodies and are more empowered with their bodies and so what does work is taking responsibility and educating yourself just like you guys are all doing here today and so this is a great first step in knowing how to help your kids and how to talk about this if this would ever happen because like I've said we can't just rely on our kids to figure it out for themselves we have to kind of take that initiative to help them but also as parents trust your instincts and we don't be too confident about it and if you feel like something's going on you don't trust that feeling and being alert being aware of what your kids are doing and also something I find is teaching and maintaining healthy rules and boundaries I'm a really good one I like is not forcing kids to hug you know if my kids didn't want to hug their grandma that's their right it's their choice who they want to hug and who they don't at that time because if I'm telling them we gotta hug hug grandma then they're gonna think well mommy too do things that I don't want to do so if cousin Sam wants me to do something with him that I don't want to do then it's okay because mom wants me to do it too so really just maintaining healthy values and respecting what kids want to do with their bodies and starting that at a really young age and also as a parent we don't want it to happen we have to always be prepared that our child could be a potential victim of child sexual abuse and so knowing what we need to do how to prevent it and being aware of it when it does happen and so another great thing of talking with kids about abuse it's like stealing in line people make bad choices and there are consequences to those choices just like people choose to touch people's bodies that they're not supposed to they chose to do that and they have consequences for their actions just like if they were to lie or to steal and so we recommend not calling it like a sickness like if cousin Sam can just really stick right now with what he chose to do like as a adult we can do for achieving a sick minded thing and then to do at a physical illness but kids do not have the abstract ability to differentiate between so they may hear because then Sam has this illness and think the grandpa died because he was sick so cousin Sam is in the same way and so really it might be fearful or sad we're not going to get them in trouble because they think they're sick and so just no option as parents you know going to things like this and being aware that it's on the internet and what's popular for kids to do because as the world evolves a finger tricks evolved you know they like you were saying the first thing that ever was born on the internet so obviously from the get go the internet was filled with horrible things and so perpetrators they keep up to date with these things parents and caregivers and you don't have to keep up with it too to be the best protectors for you can be and so when you're talking with kids you know it's not a once time you talk about their bodies and think yeah they got it, they heard me it's something that you should continue to do several times throughout the year mix it in with other safety topics and as they get older add more and more because they need to know more and more as they get older just listen I would not interrupt them use their words and that's something that I do as an interviewer I'm using what the child's words are because that's what they know I'm not introducing anything new I'm not trying to guess what they're saying I'm listening to them and I'm hearing the words they're saying and when they come to you notice their body language or fear or fear or hesitation because I can all go into play but they come to you what has actually not been to you and so when they come to you something you could do is take notes afterwards of what they said because that might be helpful for investigators afterward I would not do so while they're right there with you so that you're not taking away the focus when they're there with you and so when they come to you the best thing is you can say I believe you this is not your fault that is not okay I'm listening I'm sorry this happened how can I help you what are you most worried about right now asking these questions to figure out where they are in their head or safety-wise but you're not probing them for details or to make them think about their traumatic event or events that may have happened things you don't want to say whether that couldn't have happened are you sure that's what happened that must be a mistake I don't know you would never do that why didn't you tell me sooner why didn't you tell me if you weren't the one that your child came to and you found out from your spouse or your sister or your parent don't ask the child did you say no you searched all those kids who are believed from the very first time really do are really better able to recover from the abuse and even with the best intentions parents may ask oh my gosh why didn't you tell me this now this happened a year ago we could have been helping you like why didn't you tell me sooner or why didn't you tell me at all or things like that and I did you're just being a parent and so if you're not just listening is the best response that you could have to your child the questions you have you may figure out later as the investigation goes on but the child really shouldn't have to be asked about the abuse over and over and over again because as a parent the forensic interview is very detailed and the purpose of a forensic interview is that it's not repetitive, it's purposeful and it's background the questions that we ask are non-suggestive non-leaning neutral and comfortable for the child and so just trust the process that the information that you want to know or need to know to keep your child safe will come out either during an interview or when you meet with investigators later on and so Officer John he went through a time of social media reporting internet crime there are a couple options and we brought slips so that way you guys have those resources available for you to write your own review and if you have questions or concerns you can make that report you can call your local law enforcement you can ask social workers that want them to be accounting I have these concerns but I'm not really sure what the next step is and I'm sure they would be happy to reject you also life house would be happy to help guide you and if you happen to really need to know this or if your child has come to you and you're like oh I remember this lady came to talk to me I feel like I remember what she said to do next or what to do first I have a million thoughts running through my mind and I cannot think clearly we are happy to help you with that and so I've also found that with COVID there has been a significant increase in child sexual abuse facilitated through technology kids had to be quarantined they've had to use their internet their technology a lot more than they've had to use their technology a lot more than they ever have and so there is a lot more child sexual abuse facilitated through technology those do include sexually explicit images and we're trying to get away from the terminology of child pornography to reshape it and take it away from the stereotypes of pornography itself so it's starting to be the terminology for it is child sexual abuse material or CSAN and so not only students who send these are only doing so because someone asked them to and this is where conversations of internet safety, audio safety empowerment really come into play I mean you can tell everyone what you want to send something you're never going to get it back once it's on the internet it's never going to go away but really being honest with them and knowing what the actual consequences are you know if you do this think about your grandma seeing it if you want grandma to see this picture of you no, well mom or dad do you want your coach to find this later and then you can't play the sport you want or go to the squat so be that you want and these images are not just in high school they are starting an elementary school now it's crazy young and so this is why we have to have these conversations with kids as young as they can start speaking because the more knowledge they have the better prepared we are to make decisions like this if they're put in a position like this because if we're not the ones having this conversation with kids then it's the perpetrator's fault they're going to be the first ones in and say oh no it's okay I love you so this is just the way we say I love you to each other and then a lot of times those built relationships are what keep kids from wanting to disclose too because they know it's a care about the person our offenders have a lot of tricks on how they pick kids, how they pick families whether it's through online or it's a physical act on child there are a lot of ways in which they go about gaining trust with the family, gaining trust with the child without just the threat of harm and so and so that's something to consider and kids also don't tell you because they may not understand what's happening and that's again where having these conversations with kids is important because if they don't know that it's wrong or they're like I really don't even know what's going on with my body okay this is something that started as soon as they were young they're going to have no idea okay and so a lot of times I also know when I talk to kids a lot of them are fearful because they don't want their loved ones to go to jail or to get in the trouble especially when it's a parent in a home or a sibling in a home who's been perpetrating online they're like yeah I don't understand because I love them and I don't want them to go to jail I don't want mom to be mad at me I've also heard yeah I couldn't tell about my stepdad my mom's just been so stressed she can't work so he's the one that brings him all the food and I'm tired of being on this so it's worth it and so there's so much pressure on kids when they're going through this and there aren't a lot of symptoms of child sexual abuse if you notice anything or you are concerned about if people by all means call someone and talk about it but just because your child may show a symptom does not automatically mean that they are a victim of child sexual abuse but maybe starting that conversation with them if you have that concern and if you're waiting for your child to show a symptom of abuse it is too late because then that's to the point that their body is so overwhelmed by the stress that they are now showing symptoms somehow maybe headaches sleep disturbances, wetting the bed unexplained fears I don't want to go to grandpa's anymore I just don't want to he may throw a fit over there I mean we're like you were just, they're not sweet we're just so bad but to them if they don't they don't want to go kids if they're little they may start masturbating in public well I did it at an innards house so why can't I do it in public I think it's okay there because it's not a conversation that's been had older kids may use a speech behavior like drugs, alcohol, burn away or they're having a more high risk behavior because they just want to escape the life of their currently living a lot of younger kids understanding of sex they use terminology that's a way to above their age like where are they getting this from it could be possible that kids at school are talking about it but it also could be possible that someone is teaching them about this they may be fearful of a touch by a certain person or they may start to coerce or manipulate other children because of how they feel and so just being worried about that as far as the trauma more trauma occurs when children are abused by someone they depend on or what the amount of trauma is not necessarily correlated by the sexual act done I had kiddos who were bundled over the clothes and that was the worst thing I've also had kids who were sonomized and they said yeah I've had worse and so we can't judge trauma based off of the act that's happening we can't judge trauma based off of it well it was just over technology I'm sure they're fine, they weren't touched they never met we can't base their trauma off of it they are the ones to base the trauma off of it it's their experiences their feelings on what happened but most children can recover from abuse prior education about abuse you guys had conversations with them support and treatment really makes a difference for kiddos so when kids come to life we have an awesome grant program that we're able to refer kids to therapy who are trauma informed and know about how to go about talking with kids in circumstances like this because I found that the faster kids can start receiving help the better of them they are after disclosing it's down to that a lot of kids will start showing symptoms or acting out more after they disclose abuse I have no idea why but that is just how it's going on and so the fact that most children don't show any signs or symptoms that they're being abused is an important reason why we have these conversations with kids because we have no idea when it's happening or who it's happening with until they or family have the courage to say something themselves and so at LifeHouse we are in Topeka, Kansas but we serve LaBuncie County Shawnee County and a lot of outlining counties and so in 2020 we actually saw 30% of our cases were from outlining counties so LaBuncie County included 85% of our cases were allegations of child sexual abuse and so we had 293 friends to get our views last year and that was when COVID was quarantined and going through social distancing and all of that good stuff it doesn't stop because the whole world shuts down it's going to find a new way of growing and spreading and that's where offenders are going to continue to evolve they evolve once they're with it they're with friends all use psychology and so and 90% of the kids that we interviewed at LifeHouse knew they were a fender I will say that there was a jump with strangers because of online cases but most of the time kids know who their fender is not going to just sit down much harder to talk about very much appreciate that you guys came here and you guys are doing your part to keep kids safe LifeHouse is always happy to go out into the community and to share what we do and why we do what we do I love talking about how to keep kids safe and part of advocacy is helping parents and talking to parents because they're like I've noticed this and I've noticed a lot of those parts of their life when they're happy to go through this and it's chaos and so for them to just come to LifeHouse and get a moment to just sit and get their questions answered and knowing that law enforcement and DCI are there to answer and say this is what our plan is moving forward and you know after the interview as an advocate I get to follow through the kids in court program and watching them go through the court system and being that continued support for them and so thank you for helping us by letting us come here and talking to you guys today Please all forgive parents we have to forgive our children for their mistakes we have to help our children learn to forgive themselves for the mistakes they made and then most importantly parents we have to forgive ourselves for you know in our minds we think how did we allow this to happen how could this happen these are the most precious people in my world how could this, something like this happen but forgiveness is the first step to healing and I can't think of anybody better to speak on that than Pastor Graham I've asked him to come to us and also have a few words to say there we go I wanted to make sure that it was going to work and I do want to talk a little bit about technology so what I did is I pulled out a phone when I first learned how to text I don't know if any of you remember this is about 12 years old from model phone and my 90 year old father in law laughed at me and said what are you going to come into the modern age and get a smartphone in fact the day before he died last summer he said to my wife why don't you google it because he really enjoyed technology now I couldn't get this phone to come on and I didn't for a couple of hours I haven't used it in a long time because the reason I have a smartphone now is I had this in my pocket and I happened to leave it in my pocket and it went through the washing machine that's about as much as I know about technology what I did was wrong pure and simple and there was a price to pay because of that it meant me getting a new phone my kid said it made me the 21st century the truth is people make mistakes and how we deal with those mistakes really determines how we will view not only ourselves but others in the future the sheriffs right I want to talk about forgiveness tonight I want to talk about the things that can happen that we do that we end up making a mess of things I believe and I heard that state a couple of times already tonight I believe you it's important to show faith I believe that it's important that we not condone not conform to standards that the world might hold to because the world pushes towards things that aren't always right and good there are some things that are worth condemning sexual abuse in any form is one of those things it's become much easier than it used to be because we can hide behind false names and the internet your children can hide false names on the internet and so there are a couple of things I wrote down on my notepad here it's easy to do cyberbullying bullying it's not any harder now that it was years past to do some lying it's probably okay to learn as a child how to do some sexting but these aren't good behaviors they're bad behaviors and then we can write a whole long list of different things that there may be that we don't want to see our children doing what we do want to do is make sure we are listening and teaching so that it doesn't continue we're trying to make sure that what we are able to have is a place where it's safe to be to live and to grow and so I brought with me a marker that will help me to make an illustration this evening I believe that forgiveness is essential and I can't talk about forgiveness unless I talk about the cross and the cross covers up a lot of these things and in fact forgiveness means that you make some of those things away it's probably okay that I broke the pencil then because I need the eraser as I erase these things they're not really there anymore the bullying, the lying the sexting the other things but there are some remains that keep falling off and I guess you could say there's still some ghosts of the things that are there not because the cross isn't sufficient but because we are who we are and we remember things that we don't that's why it's important that we keep offering breaks as parents nothing makes you feel worse nothing makes me feel worse than when I see my children get victimized and yet I understand if there's no breaks I hurt myself my family and I hurt others and so I turn people to the cross to say God is big enough to take I didn't intend to go here tonight but I'm going to because when I was just not even a pastor but I was on my victory in another place in another time I was simply a friend to a 14 year old who 10 years later came down and looked me up and said you helped me get through some very tough times and she said I have a story to tell me the story was that that 14 year old while she was in the grade school where I was doing my work had been raped by her father at least 6 times during that year and she said you were the only thing that kept me from killing myself I had no knowledge of any of that until 10 years later but it's grace that we offer to people that can make a difference that's what I'm going to encourage you to look to to share and to live out it isn't always easy there were choices that we make and parents make choices just as much as children do and parents make wrong choices as children do but hopefully they aren't as impactful the choices we make consider what happens I believe in grace and ultimately I do believe in accountability therefore this is a challenge for us and I hurt for us because this is not what we want to see happening what we know that it is as long as there's opportunities people will make choices as parents help them to make good choices so the cross does cover sin the Savior blesses the name Jesus saves don't be afraid to use it and entrust him thank you for your attention I really believe this is a vital thing because I posted this in my congregation it's not one more part two I see the opportunity for suicide to be increased by this I hate suicide maybe as much as the sheriff does because we faced some of it together I hate the things that it leaves I hate the trouble that is left behind but I understand there's hope and hope comes because God can cover the things we cannot thank you for your attention sheriff back to you a few moments for Q&A if anybody has any questions that they'd like from these people or any want to know about any resources I'm sure that they can help us out good bunch how about if I just stand up here I can do it without the microphone I think for the gymnasium the Lord bless you and keep you the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious the Lord look upon you with favor and give you peace amen thank you very much for coming this evening I'm overwhelmed every time we have one of these it's a number of people to come and support me thank you