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Sexual Exploitation Archives – Concerned Women for America

Kansas City – Workshop on Child Exploitation – February 28

By | Missouri | No Comments

Jackson County Prayer/Action Chapter
Protecting Children From Exploitation Workshop

 

Concerned Women for America (CWA) of Missouri’s Jackson County Prayer/Action Chapter invites you to their February meeting.

 

Heidi Olson, MSN, RN, CPN, SANE-R will conduct a workshop on exploited children, followed by a time of prayer on this important issue.  

 

Heidi Olson is a Certified Pediatric Nurse and Certified Pediatric Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE), she is also the Founder and President of Paradigm Shift Training and Consulting, which equips healthcare workers with skills to be able to identify and treat victims of trafficking and exploitation.

 

Event Details:
Date: Tuesday, February 28
Time: 6:30 – 9:00 p.m.
Location: Convergence Apostolic Hub, 4216 S. Hocker Drive, Independence, MO
Contact: For additional information, contact CWA of Missouri Jackson County Prayer/Action Chapter Leader Shelley Lowery at 417-861-9646.

 

We hope you can attend!

 

About Heidi Olson

Heidi previously managed the SANE Program at a large Children’s Hospital where she performed/reviewed more than 1,500 pediatric sexual assault exams, many of them trafficking cases, communicated with a large multidisciplinary team, and educated hundreds of staff members on relevant topics regarding sexual violence. Heidi also serves as an expert witness in civil and criminal trials related to sexual assault.

 

In 2019, Heidi implemented an evidence-based screening process in an Emergency Department, which has resulted in hundreds of vulnerable children being identified as victims of exploitation. Heidi has testified in favor of bills that have been passed into law and most recently, Heidi testified at a briefing in Washington, D.C. about protecting children online.

 

Over the last few years, Heidi has presented more than 200 times internationally about recognizing human trafficking, child-on-child sexual assault, pornography, and exploitation. Heidi has also been featured in several documentaries, including Vulnerable Innocence, which has won twenty-four awards. And most recently, she won the Cry Purple award for her outstanding anti-trafficking work in the healthcare setting.

Nance: American Academy of Pediatrics are failing America’s families

By | News and Events, Press Releases, Sexual Exploitation, Vulnerable Children | No Comments

For Immediate Release: October 7, 2022
Contact:  [email protected] | (703)282-7320

 

American Academy of Pediatrics are failing America’s families

 Pushing “Gender-affirming Care” Risks Health of Children

 

Washington, D.C. – As the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) meets this weekend in Anaheim, California for its annual convention, Concerned Women for America (CWA), the nation’s largest women’s public policy organization representing women and families of all ages across every state in America, blasts AAP leadership for pushing radical experimental “gender-affirming” practices.

 

In a letter sent to the AAP’s President and President-elect, Concerned Women for America CEO and President Penny Nance questions its practices amid controversy over a resolution from member pediatricians demanding the AAP review research standards of treating children questioning their identity.  

 

“Under your leadership, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) is failing children, adolescents, parents, and families,” reads the letter. “Your disregard for the mental, emotional, and physical harm of gender ideology being forced on children is evidenced by the alarming trend in so-called ‘gender affirming care.’ Pediatricians are trusted physicians for parents of a newborn child. Like any mother and father, they should know that babies are fully formed male or female humans, not ‘born in the wrong body.’ Any case of an intersex condition or disorder of sexual development is exceedingly rare.

 

“As doctors sworn to do no harm, it is tragic that you are on the side of defending harm to children. Your organization promotes the use of unapproved puberty-blocking drugs to slow the normal healthy development of a children’s body, bones, and brain for “gender exploration. These drugs have not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration who has warned of serious side effects, including swelling of the brain, vision loss, and suicide ideation.

 

“Pediatricians should know that natural maturation is a critical part of a child’s health and well-being.  Doctors who understand normal childhood development should know it is better allow children to grow up with a healthy body intact, not mutilate a child’s body to conform to his or her developing mind – which is not fully developed until after the pediatric years,” the letter reads. 

 

Most alarming, the American Academy of Pediatrics is failing to allow any rigorous challenge to today’s destructive prevailing orthodoxy about so-called “gender affirming care.”

 

Nance’s letter cites the hypocrisy of AAP President Dr. Moira Szilagyi’s claim in The Wall Street Journal that “It doesn’t push medical treatments or surgery; for the vast majority of children, it recommends the opposite.” A Reuters special report has revealed a skyrocketing rise in use of puberty blockers and hormones, as well as mutilating surgeries.  From 2019-21, 776 double mastectomies were performed on 13–17-year-old girls under the banner of “gender affirming care.” 

 

For a full text of Nance’s letter can be found HERE. To schedule an interview with Penny Nance, please contact [email protected].                            

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Concerned Women for America is the Nation’s largest public policy organization for women; we are dedicated to promoting Biblical values and Constitutional principles. More information is available at ConcernedWomen.org

Act Today to Protect Victims of Sexual Exploitation

By | Pennsylvania | No Comments

The crime of sexual exploitation is one that plagues our state; of all the cases of human trafficking in Pennsylvania reported in 2019, 85% were instances of sex trafficking. Therefore, I am writing to you today to share several good pieces of legislation related to sexual exploitation that is moving through the Pennsylvania legislature. Each of the following bills has passed the House and has been referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee for consideration.

  • HB 753 reclassifies the crime of trafficking infants as a first-degree felony rather than its current standing as a first-degree misdemeanor.
  • HB 1096 allows victims of human trafficking the ability to bring lawsuits against their offenders either in the county where the victim lives or in the county where the trafficking occurred.
  • HB 1130 requires traffickers convicted of subjecting their victims to sexual servitude to be registered as sex offenders under Pennsylvania’s Sexual Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA).
  • HB 1147 would expand the list of sexual offenses that obligate participation in a therapy program while incarcerated to decrease recidivism among sex traffickers.

We ask that you partner with us in advocating for these bills through contacting your state senators to vocalize your support and through seeking the Lord in prayer.

 Take Action!

  1. Call or e-mail your state senator and ask him or her to support HB 753, HB 1096, HB 1130, and HB 1147. Use this link to find out who represents you in the state legislature. If you are a member of Concerned Women for America of Pennsylvania, be sure to let them know.
  2. Forward this e-mail to like-minded friends and family. Encourage them to pray and take action on this important legislation.

 Please pray: Dear Heavenly Father, we ask that you work in the hearts of our state senators to secure justice for victims of sexual exploitation. Lord, impress on them Your words from Proverbs 21:3, “To do what is right and just is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice.” In Jesus’ Name. Amen.

From knees to feet,
Dilonna M. Coran
State Director

Tech Companies Should Not Side with Exploiters in the Name of Privacy

By | Blog, CEO, News and Events, Sex Trafficking / Pornography, Social / Cultural Issues | No Comments

Amid the circus that is the impeachment, a very important hearing took place in the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, “Encryption and Lawful Access: Evaluating Benefits and Risks to Public Safety and Privacy.”

Most Americans would agree that child sexual predators should not be free to engage in their criminal activity online or on social media apps. The hundreds of thousands of women I represent at Concerned Women for America (CWA) want law enforcement to use every technological tool available to apprehend child pornographers and child sexual predators. Criminal enterprises, such as human trafficking, should never be allowed to operate with impunity cloaked by tech companies’ privacy efforts.

But this is precisely what is happening today on many platforms that use encryption to protect user privacy while ignoring the concerns with abuse, exploitation, terrorism, and other criminal activity.

Privacy concerns are legitimate, but so is public safety. The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution strikes a delicate balance between privacy and safety concerns.  It states:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Notice it protects us from unreasonable searches, making it clear that there are, in fact, instances when it is entirely reasonable to enter a person’s home to search for evidence. It tells us that a warrant, upon showing of probable cause, is such an instance— as when, for example, law enforcement suspects child sexual abuse or human trafficking is taking place. With a properly issued warrant, they would be able to gain access to the private residence where they believe the criminal activity is happening and apprehend the perpetrators. That’s how it should be.

This delicate balance is seriously being threatened when the evidence is in electronic form (like on a cell phone), as is so often the case in this day and age. Some tech companies are deploying strict encryptions on their products that prevent law enforcement from gaining access to the device even after a properly issued warrant showing probable cause that a crime has been committed.  Apple, WhatsApp and Signal are just three companies that have made it difficult, if not impossible, for law enforcement to do their job.  Remember the San Bernardino terrorist whose phone was finally hacked by an outside “company,” but Apple did not assist in helping with the investigation?  This isn’t an isolated incident of their noncompliance.

One company that has worked hard to protect children is the world’s largest social media site, with 2.45 billion monthly active users, Facebook.  Unfortunately, they are mulling a change of policy and joining the strict encryption bandwagon and abandoning legitimate public safety concerns.

In 2018, Facebook filed, as required by law, 16.8 million reports to the U.S. National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC). These included more than 8,000 attempts of abusers trying to lure children into a meeting or sharing images of themselves. This is how much potentially criminal activity it has identified in a single year.

This is not theory. Many abusers have been stopped thanks to the heroic help of Facebook’s reporting. In a recent open letter to Facebook, top law enforcement officers from the U.S., the United Kingdom, and Australia gave the example of an 11-year-old who had been abused for four years. The sexual abuser was stopped after Facebook sent a report to NCMEC. “Without the information from Facebook, abuse of this girl might be continuing to this day,” they wrote.

The letter was written after reports surfaced that Facebook is considering abandoning its public safety efforts to join the strict encryption pattern other tech companies have employed, preventing them from identifying criminal activity, like the abuse of this young girl.

That is the opposite of what we need. When The New York Times reports, “Tech companies reported over 45 million online photos and videos of children being sexually abused – more than double what they found the previous year,” why would tech companies choose to ignore this massive problem in the name of “privacy”?

The predators and sexual exploiters will continue to be there. In fact, emboldened by new privacy protections, they will surely expand their criminal activities. But tech companies would, in some cases, simply turn a blind eye towards it, depriving law enforcement of the vital information they need to apprehend criminals and save vulnerable victims. This is unacceptable!

This is not progress. It’s preposterous. Most Americans would be appalled to find out both about the magnitude of the problem and the tech companies’ efforts to ignore it. We must demand more from these corporations that have become such an integral part of our daily lives.

Lawmakers should surely make this a top priority, but frankly, tech companies would be wise to listen to the victims and their families, to listen to moms concerned about their children and online predators, and to listen to law enforcement officers. Tech companies, like Facebook, should work on their own to enhance their cooperation with law enforcement and their corporate responsibility to the public, not abandon it completely under the guise of “privacy.” It’s unreasonable to claim that big tech cannot both protect

Penny Nance: Fight Against Sex Trafficking and Child Porn Could be Hurt by Change to Internet

By | Blog, Culture, News and Events, Sex Trafficking / Pornography | No Comments

CEO and President Penny Young Nance wrote an opinion piece recently for Foxnews.com explaining how a new standard could have implications in protecting children on the Internet:

Google and Mozilla recently announced plans to begin testing a new standard that would encrypt the Domain Name System, often referred to as “the address book of the Internet.”

Depending on how DNS encryption is implemented, it could have serious implications for the protection of children.

While encryption in the name of additional security is a laudable goal, it needs to be done in a way that does not have the unintended consequence of impeding law enforcement and efforts to filter inappropriate and, in the case of child pornography, illegal content.

As a leading organization dedicated to protecting children and ending sexual exploitation, Concerned Women for America is deeply concerned about any potential changes to the functioning of the Internet that could inadvertently open the floodgates of harmful content and hurt efforts to identify and stop sex trafficking and child pornography.

Read Penny Nance’s Entire Article on Foxnews.com Here: