 On Friday, March 22nd, a proclamation was signed at the Pike County Fiscal Courthouse naming April 2024 Child Abuse Prevention Month. The proclamation helped shed light on the severity of child abuse and is a call to action for anyone who wants to help. Mountaintop News spoke with Pike County Judge Executive Ray Jones to hear more. When you have one in seven children in the United States who are victims of some form of child abuse, you have nearly 2,000 children die every year from child abuse in the United States. And there are countless children who are victims of some form of child abuse, whether it's physical abuse, mental abuse, sexual abuse, who in those cases are never reported. So we hope that by doing the proclamation, doing the various events across the county that we bring attention to this basically scourge where so many children become victims of abuse. And hopefully it will bring enough attention to it that if someone sees something, if they have information about a child who's being neglected or abused, that that information's passed to the to the proper authorities. Hillbilly Hammock Weekend of Destruction demolition derbies are coming to Pikeville Friday, Saturday, March 29th and 30th, 7 each night. Appalachian Wireless Arena, Pikeville. It's going to be a crashing good time. Be there. Unfortunately, child abuse occurs everywhere, including Pike County. Despite this, many people in the area dedicate themselves to protecting children in the community. And it's very unfortunate that we even have to have this type of proclamation. You know, children should be safe in their homes. They should be safe at school. They should be safe, you know, in every aspect of their life. Unfortunately, we know that's not the case. When you see, you know, our Commonwealth Attorney, when you see our, you know, members of law enforcement, when you see judges, when you see social workers, it tells you that this is a real problem that impacts a lot of kids here in Pike County. And we should all work to make sure that every child is safe and protected from abuse. It could happen to any child. We've, you know, we know that happens. And it's really important for members of the public, if they have information about a child that's in danger, being abused or neglected, that that's brought to the authority's attention as soon as possible. Reporting from Mountain Top News, I'm Nick Collum.