Governor Maura Healy signed executive order No. 611: Establishing the Governor’s Council to Address Sexual Assault (SA), Domestic Violence (DV), and Human Trafficking (HT) to better support survivors and bring accountability to offenders. MACA and the Children’s Trust were honored to present a joint presentation during the first convening of the Governor’s Council in April of 2023, which marks Child Abuse Prevention as well as Sexual Assault Awareness Month.
This is the first time MACA has joined forces with an agency whose primary mission is prevention. The collaboration demonstrates our commitment and support of the preventative work of the Children’s Trust as well as our steadfast commitment to being an active ambassador of the Massachusetts Legislative Child Sexual Abuse Prevention Task Force.
The presentation addressed the importance of both prevention and intervention which highlighted two signature projects of the Task Force. Our colleagues at the Children’s Trust offered an overview of the widely successful Safe Kids Thrive web-based prevention toolkit geared toward youth-serving organizations. MACA’s portion of the presentation incorporated new information and data surrounding youth with Problematic Sexual Behaviors (PSB). This work expanded upon several crucial aspects of this demographic; that these are typically children who have been exposed to sexual content and violence at home; and that these children should not be treated as offenders, but rather victims in need of services.