At any point and time an adult who is the victim of a dark past may vent their pent up frustrations on society or loved ones. The general public is more misinformed about the real statistics. Uncommon circumstances attract the media's attention. Last June there was the story of a father in Big Tankook Island, Nova Scotia, Canada, who gunned down his sons Kyle, age 11 years, Curtis, age 10 years, and then turned the gun on himself, or the abused child who grew up into a man who went on a killing spree at a McDonald's restaurant gunning down helpless victims until the police took his life.

Most uncommon are the unknowns. Like the homeless boy sleeping in an arch alleyway and calls a cardboard box his home. Every year thousands of young men and women sell their bodies in order to survive. Alice Miller writes;

"The truth about our childhood is stored up in our body, and although we can repress it we can never alter it. Our intellect can be deceived, our feelings manipulated, our perceptions confused, and our body tricked with medication. But someday the body will present its bill, for it is as incorruptible as a child who, still whole in spirit, will accept no compromises or excuses, and it will not stop tormenting us until we stop evading the truth."

Estimates of how extensive child abuse is may vary, but studies show that over one hundred and twenty five children in Canada will be permanently injured or brain damaged resulting from abuse.

There are currently no national statistics available on child abuse in Canada. The Federal Government last year initiated a national survey, ready for release in about four years.

The time to act can wait no longer while children in our world suffer from the cruelties of a circumstance not of their making nor choosing.

The failure of government and societal systems to act, has cast a dark shadow over our humanity. And in the wake of this hierarchical, institutional and structural violence, we are all poorer. Such inhumanity, only serves to injure the poor, and demoralize relations between people of all races, genders and age. This is the slow breaking of the human will, which again only serves to strip away those afflicted, of their inherent right to live in dignity according to the dictates of conscience.

In a world lacking authenticity and understanding we must look again at what we think we know. Choosing to linger on the meaning of pain, rather than playing through it.

We are still in the middle of our journey as long as we do not respond to our responsibility to our children, for the children are the only future the human race has, and how we treat them will be how they will treat the next generation and us when we are one day old and frail. It was once said that the journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.

For freedom means not only the opportunity to know, but also the will to know. We are only mid way to our goal, only mid way to the quality of life, a life in which we can all experience a sense of pride, a community and a world which the promises of human rights are at last fulfilled for all. Change will not come from the good we possess, but the good we can do together.

Robert Kennedy once wrote;

We learn at last, to look at each other as aliens, men and women with whom we share a city, but not a community; men and women bound to us in common dwelling, but not in common effort. We learn to share only a common fear, only a common desire to retreat from each other, only a common impulse to meet disagreement with force. We must admit the vanity of our false distinctions among men and women and learn to find our own advancement in the search for the advancement of others. We must admit in ourselves that our own children's future cannot be built on the misfortunes of others. We must recognize that this short life can be neither ennobled or enriched by hatred or revenge. Our lives on this planet are too short and the work to be done too great to let this spirit flourish in our land.

Of course we cannot vanquish it with a program, nor with a solution. But we can perhaps remember, if only for a time, that those who live with us are our brothers and sisters that they seek, as we do, nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and in happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can...."

In closing, a poem from David Pelzer's book, " A Child Called It" his case which was recorded as the third worst abuse case in the history in the state of California, U.S.A.

I never knew how bad it was;
I heard it did exist.
I was appalled at this crime.
That robbed youth
Of their "special" time.
I never knew how bad it hurt;
The bruises and scars aren't seen.
And why somewhere along life's way,
The brutality of abuse has made you pay.

I never knew how you felt;
Your self esteem so low.
I only knew you crept away,
And never knew what I could do;
That I could help somehow.
That all you needed was a friend;
Just someone to be your pal.
But now I know that I can help;
I can make a difference too.
I'll stand with you; I'll shout with you.
And the rest can't say, " I never knew."

As a former child of abuse I ask those of you here today who now know, to get involved by learning the issues and supporting the various organizations in their struggle to reduce this violence in our communities across the world.

Let us also remember those children who have lost their lives to the overwhelming darkness and shed a light of a newer, better world for all human existence. Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago; "To tame the savages of man and make gentle the life of this world."