What Survivors Tell Us About the Spiritual Harm of Abuse

Teresa Huizar: 

Hi, I’m Teresa Huizar, your host of One in Ten. In today’s episode, What Survivors Tell Us About the Spiritual Harm of Abuse, I speak with Victor Vieth, renowned prosecutor, trainer, writer, and speaker on all things child abuse. Now, many of you know Victor from a training on trial strategy, or maybe you read a law journal article, or as an inspiring speaker. What you might not know is that his career has also held a constant and consistent intersection with faith communities as well. Yes, it’s true, as a prosecutor prosecuting those who use faith to identify and groom victims, but also in helping faith communities prevent abuse and be more responsible stewards and protectors of the children in their care. As you will hear, this is rooted in the concerns expressed by child sexual victims themselves, and the way that their abuse and trauma created not only physical and physiological and psychological harms, but also spiritual harms.

Now let’s be honest. Talking about spiritual harm and the spiritual well-being of survivors may not come naturally to all of us. But what can we do to address the needs of children as they give voice to their needs in forensic interviews, therapy, and quiet conversations? What can child abuse professionals do to support children who ask questions or have concerns about their spiritual well-being after abuse?

How can organizations constructively engage faith leaders around these important issues? And most importantly, how can we ensure that children not only survive their abuse, but go on to heal and thrive? I know you’ll find this conversation as thought-provoking as I did. Please take a listen.

Hi Victor, welcome back to One in Ten.

Victor Vieth: 

Thank you, Teresa. Good to be with you.

TH: 

For folks who may not be quite as aware of your more recent work, I want to start just by asking you, for those folks who knew you as a prosecutor, do you as a trainer of prosecutors for trial strategy and all these things, how did you first become interested in spiritual harm and spiritual support for kids who’d been sexually abused?

VV: 

I actually began to appreciate the intersection of religion and child abuse while I was a prosecutor. So I for better part of a decade was a prosecutor here in Minnesota and I was in a rural part of the state, more religious region of Minnesota, and it wasn’t unusual to see religion show up in the case. Offenders incorporate a religious theme or use religion to silence a child. I think the most poignant moment I had as a prosecutor though, I walked into court one day with a girl who was twelve years old and she alleged sexual abuse by her father, and when we walked into the courtroom, she right away noticed both of her Protestant ministers and half a dozen church elders in the courtroom, and she knew they did not come there to support her. They were there to support her father that she says sexually assaulted her. And so she tugged on my suit and whispered in my ear, Does this mean that God is against me too? And it was one of those moments that you never forget, and really draws home the importance of paying attention to this dynamic.

TH: 

You know, it’s interesting because you’ve been talking about this issue for quite some time. And I feel like it is really now bubbling up more into research, not only the work that we’re going to talk about that you’ve done with Ted Cross, but I’ve had Ernie Jouriles onto the podcast several times to talk about an ongoing research series he’s been doing with the Dallas Children’s Advocacy Center. What do you think made this kind of a slow burn? Because it’s not as though the US hasn’t had child sexual abuse scandals that have been tied to faith communities before. It’s not as though kids haven’t been talking about some of this before. So why do you think suddenly people are starting to pay attention to it?

VV: 

I think your phrase slow burn is the right terminology. I think there’s a misnomer that the research has suddenly cropped up in the journals. There are peer-reviewed high quality studies going back at least to 1998, published in prestigious journals such as Child Abuse and Neglect. What has changed, Teresa, is a greater recognition that this is not something we can ignore and if we’re gonna be trauma informed, we have to pay attention to it. I think the reason it’s been a slow burn is, you know, many of us are taught as children the two things to never discuss openly. If you want to avoid a conflict is one is politics, the other is religion. we all grew up understanding there’s a separation of church and religion. And as part of a CAC, we often get governmental funding. And so there’s just this sense that we shouldn’t be engaged with it. I think another factor is when CACs and MDTs have encountered religion in cases of child abuse, it’s always been in a really bad way, right? The offender is a clergy person, the offender’s using religion in a really harmful way. And so we’ve never really cleansed our palate that religion could be used in a good or helpful way and haven’t developed a relationship fully with faith leaders in our community. And if we never talk to folks who are doing good things, then we’re left with the mindset that this could only be done in a harmful way.

So I think a lot of those factors come into play. I also think there’s some evidence that those of us who are on MDTs, we may be more spiritual than religious or not particularly religious at all. One of the studies we did as part of this grant or Dr. Cross did on the Chaplaincy program in Greenville, South Carolina, the Julie Valentine Center. A lot of the folks who are part of that MDT were really hesitant, some were outright opposed to the idea of a chaplain because of their own negative experiences growing up with religion, that they had walked away from any sort of formalized faith and really didn’t want a reconnection. So their own personal experiences were influencing them them to be hesitant, if not right outright opposed to the idea. So I think all those factors and probably more are coming into play. But it clearly is a growing body of research. And I think we’re at the point where the research is so voluminous that we really have to pay attention to it.

TH: 

It’s interesting. I hadn’t really thought about, but it’s so true that in so many cases, the only way that spiritual spirituality or religion enters into it is, as you say, as a negative force, because either it’s an offender or the faith community didn’t respond well to a disclosure, or maybe there are safety concerns that are ongoing, or there’s been a recent settlement of some kind of old abuse case. And so it’s a fair point that there’s a certain bias that can creep in just because we’re not exposed to the joys of these communities typically they come to our attention in a negative kind of way. I was also thinking as you were talking that one of the things that just I have no proof of this. This is just Teresa. This is just my thought. But one of the reasons I think we’re paying more attention to this now is I think overall in the child abuse intervention space more, we’re paying more attention to what children themselves say.

You know, as opposed to just what do professionals think should happen next? And what do professionals think about XYZ? There seems to be, and I view it as a very positive sign, that there’s more of a focus on what are the kids themselves saying they need to recover from abuse.

VV: 

Yeah, you’re absolutely right. You know, I mentioned the inquiry from the child when I was a prosecutor when I began to work at the national level. We consulted on a lot of cases. There was a case from California where in a forensic interview in a CAC, the child boldly asked the forensic interviewer, Am I still a virgin in God’s eyes? And then Tishwin Fantes did a 2017 study, qualitative study, interviewed a number of forensic interviewers who said, Yeah, that’s not unusual that they’ve had those sort of inquiries come up at some point in the process. So you’re right, children are raising these questions. And I think we’re at a point where we just recognize that we need to pay attention to them, that there’s something really important behind the veil.

TH: 

Let’s define terms a little for folks who might be, you know, unfamiliar with these studies. For example, when we talk about something causing spiritual harm, something about child sexual abuse causing spiritual harm to kids who have a faith community or are religious or spiritual themselves. Can you what are we describing when we use the term spiritual harm?

VV: 

Yeah, I think perhaps we need to define spirituality and religiosity. So spirituality is a really broad term. It generally has to do with a sense of connectedness to something bigger than you. Even an atheist can be spiritual. You walk through a forest, you come across a redwood tree, you’re struck at the majesty of the creation, and you know you’re connected to the universe in a powerful, intimate, very real way that you can’t quantify. So you have a sense of spirituality.

Religiosity is more narrowly defined as operating within the confines of your religious tradition. So I’m a Christian, I believe in a God and Lutheran adhere to the doctrines contained in the Book of Concord. That’s my specific religiosity. When we talk about spiritual harm, we’re talking about something that has happened to the child that has impacted either their spirituality or their religiosity or both. And it may be because the offender is consciously used a religious theme in the abuse of a child is said to the child, you’re the offspring of the devil, that’s why I’m justified in beating you, or look at your body reacted to the sexual touching. So you’re equally to blame, equally sinful. I’ll pray for you, you pray for me, things of that kind. Or the child just has questions. They feel ashamed, they feel guilty, they feel sinful if that’s a word in their faith tradition. Or they have a burden that they’ve placed upon themselves, hey, if I talk about it, am I not hurting the church in some way? So it varies from child to child, but something has happened that has harmed them and their view of God or a higher power or creator, and they’re really struggling with that conundrum.

TH: 

Well, we know from adult survivors that sometimes what has happened because of the reaction of either the folks around them or faith communities or those things is that people for whom faith may be important to them, they may feel though that they’re separated from their faith community or even their ability to feel supported spiritually. And I think in some research completely separate from what we’re talking about today, it was really interesting how impactful that was to people. I mean, it was a core wound, really, that they felt this distance from something that otherwise could have been supported.

VV: 

Yeah, that’s a really important point. So when we speak of a spiritual harm, it’s not just what may have been caused by the offender, but also the reaction of the faith community. There was, for example, study out of Hong Kong on adult women who were abused as children. And everybody in that qualitative study said the reaction of their church when they finally came forward was worse. It was more of a spiritual wounding. And as you point out, they now feel distant. I can’t turn to my faith for comfort or a source of resilience anymore. So I’ve been damaged by the offender, damaged by my faith community. I’m completely alone in my spiritual struggle going forward.

TH: 

Well, and I mean, I can’t even imagine how isolating that would feel, especially if you don’t have strong family support and strong support from your peers. And then on top of it, you feel that you really can’t rely anymore on this sort of central support. And I think for some kids and for some survivors, it’s not just the faith community. They feel abandoned by God or that there’s this space between them that has been created by the shame and stigma of the abuse that has separated them essentially. And so in other instances I’ve heard survivors talking about feeling that they couldn’t pray anymore or that they couldn’t rely on God anymore. And I think these are big questions and big concerns that get at the heart of who we are.

VV: 

Yeah, absolutely. You mentioned Ernie Jouriles and his research. He’s identified that. And if you’re in high levels of spiritual distress, if you get to the point where you feel God has abandoned you, or in one study on on children abused in Islamic communities, the children said God was actively working against them. God had now become my enemy. And if you’re in this high level of s distress, these studies say you’re much more likely to have signs of trauma, up to and including thoughts of taking your life. And so again, if we’re gonna be trauma informed, we have to pay attention to research like this and grow our ability to respond to it in a trauma informed way.

TH: 

You say to the child abuse professional who says, I believe everything that you’ve just been talking about. And I also believe that I know nothing about this. And I’m not an expert in theology. And I’m not an expert in any, even in my own faith community, much less somebody else’s. I feel uncomfortable. I don’t feel it’s my role. How do you respond to that?

VV: 

Well, think the first step in being able to respond to the spiritual impact impact of trauma is to realize that many members of our MDT are not fluent in the research, much less how to how to apply it. That’s the first step. In fact, the study we did with Ted Cross documented that. Eighty-two percent of mental health providers said they were not fluent in this research, were not sure how to provide it. And for other members of the MDT, it even went downhill from there. So clearly we have a lot of work to do.

That’s the bad news. The good news is there are many professionals who can provide us education in this arena. So we for 20 years have been providing MDTs education. We’ve got a really robust program called Keeping Faith. It’s two days, it’s online, so it’s easy to access. We try to bring faith and child protection professionals into the same circle, teach them this research, put them into small groups, teach them how to work together, how do you coordinate medical, mental health, spiritual care. The second thing I would say is you don’t have to be an expert on everything. This is why we have CACs. This is why we have MDTs. I’m not an expert in medical care. That’s why we bring the medical professional to the table. I’m not an expert in providing mental health. That’s why we bring mental health providers to the table. I’m an expert in criminal justice. That’s why we bring people like me as prosecutors to the table. That’s why we have friends of interviews and so on and so forth. So if we think along those terms, we think, okay.

Do I have anybody on my MDT who is fluent in the research or has some skills in figuring out how to respond? If not, how do I acquire this? So it may be as simple as getting some training from mental health providers. There’s two APA treatises saying use EMDR and cognitive behavioral therapy and other evidence based approaches. But within that framework, for the child it’s important to within that framework, there are things that you can do. Maybe it is educating our faith leaders as to what trauma informed spiritual care would look like so that we could make a good referral. You know, just as we might have to make a good medical or mental health referral outside the CAC, we just don’t send the child to anybody. We often have a list of who is really qualified in this area. You know, maybe it is getting to know our faith leaders and providing them some education and knowing that if I have a child of a particular faith tradition, this individual might be a good referral and they would be willing to coordinate their work with the members of our of our MDT. So there’s lots of options and that’s in part what we’re doing under this federal grant. We’re building a spiritual care toolkit. I know you and others have reviewed it where we’re going to try to give CACs a lot of options and they can decide from that list what what might work best in their community.

TH: 

Well, let’s talk about the toolkit for a minute, because I think that there are folks who will be relieved that such a thing exists. and will look forward to utilizing it. So talk a little bit about sort of the range, because one of the things when I reviewed it that I really appreciated within it is it didn’t assume that there was one right answer for everyone. And it really did provide a range of resources and a range of approaches, I would say, as well.

VV: 

Yeah. And as I said earlier, the one option that is no longer on the table is to ignore this. If we’re ignoring it, then I think we’re deciding I’m not going to be trauma informed in this area and that that is counter to the entire CAC movement. So we have to address it. But how we address it may be different from one community to another. So for example, in Greenville they went full in and they got a full time chaplain who’s a regular part of the MDT and case review and does education for the community and she had a background as a hospital chaplain and she provides a lot of resources. There’s another CAC that is a contract with a pediatric chaplain, right? So they already have some skills in trauma informed spiritual care for children who may be in a hospital or another medical setting and then they come on board to assist the CAC. It may be a contract chaplain. It may be a volunteer chaplain. First witness in Duluth as a volunteer chaplain. There’s a another CAC in Georgia that has a chaplain who only provides spiritual services to the MDT who may be struggling with vicarious trauma. That’s their first step as they dip their toe in the water. I gave earlier the example. It may be let’s grow the knowledge of our mental health providers so that they can be better equipped to respond to this. It may be the other suggestion.

I articulated of well, let’s get out and about. Let’s make sure our faith community is trained. Maybe we connect them to Zero Abuse and the Keeping Faith Project. And then we participate in some of that training and we begin to develop a list of who might be a potentially good referral if we need to make that. So there’s many, many, many options that are out there. And the stress of doing something new is that it’s kind of new and you know.

What do we do and where do we turn? And although we’ve got a lot of research that we need to address this, we don’t have a lot of research yet on what good spiritual care might look like, right? That’s the challenging part. The good part is we can be creative, right? And I encourage creative. Let’s try different models, but also encourage folks to connect with their local colleges and universities and dialogue with some professors. Could you research what it is that we’re doing here so that we can grow our body of knowledge on what actually makes a difference for the children entrusted to us.

TH: 

Let’s talk about chaplaincy because I think this is the area that people have the least knowledge about often, unless they happen to have encountered one as a part of a hospital stay, or they’re in the military and maybe they’re aware of military chaplains. But can you just define that role a little bit? Because I think it can help dispel some myths about what we’re talking about.

VV: 

Yeah, and you’re absolutely right. A chaplain is very different from a pastor, priest, Rabbi, Iman, somebody who’s part of a particular faith tradition. A chaplain is specifically trained to be ecumenical and they’re not proselytizing. They are not to encourage anybody to go down a particular spiritual road. Instead they’re reflecting the spirituality and or religiosity of the child or adult in in front of them. That is specifically how they are trained.

For a few years was employed by Gunderson Health System. I worked with the chaplains. The chaplain I worked with the most often was a Buddhist, but she could talk to me about Christianity. She was trained to work with diverse faith traditions. And chaplains are also taught if I’m working with somebody who has specific religious questions and it’s just outside my bailiwick, I’m not the best person. They are getting in and engaged with the faith leaders in their community so they know, here’s a very specific question within Judaism and I know Rabbi so and so in my community would be a really good conversation partner to assist you with that. So that’s what we’re talking about. And even the name chaplain is controversial, part of the history of chaplaincy. It was very much aligned with Christianity and then it evolved into this ecumenical concept. And so that’s why some hospitals and the like don’t use the term chaplain anymore. They use spiritual care worker or something along those lines. But the military and others still use the word chaplain. So even that is a decision a CAC would make. what will I call this a spiritual care professional if we choose to have one? But whatever we call the person, we need to educate the MDT and the community that this is very different than your individual pastor or priest or rabbi or other faith leader.

TH: 

I think the other thing that you mentioned that is critical to this is it’s consent-based. This isn’t about inflicting a person and their beliefs on someone else. This is really about meeting a need that has been expressed by the family or child and making sure that there’s someone who can help support them in the way that we want to meet any other need that they might have.

VV: 

Yeah, absolutely. The Children’s Advocacy Center in Greenville, they will introduce this as one initiative. So they have a support group for supportive parents. And at one point, Carrie will come in and do a brief presentation of her work and her availability to either the children or the adults. And it’s completely voluntary. You may not want to see the chaplain. Maybe you do want to see the chaplain. But it’s completely up to you. And maybe you just need the chaplain’s help and you know, who could I connect to in my Catholic community or Jewish community or other community that that might have some knowledge of trauma and might be a good referral. So there’s a lot of different things the chaplain can do. It’s very much like how it may work at a hospital. I’ve had several surgeries in my life, and so far, as part of the intake, I’ve been asked, Would you like a spiritual care worker? And then the next question is, is there somebody from your faith tradition that you would like our spiritual care team to reach out to and make sure they visit you in the hospital.

TH: 

It does sort of normalize it some when you start thinking about these other settings in which this exists. And there’s settings in which there’s a reason that someone might be afraid, right? There’s a comfort piece of this that I think reflects the fact that a lot of people have a lot of anxiety about surgery or going into the hospital for any reason. People in the military have reason to have times of anxiety if they’re being deployed or other kinds of things. And so having this as a resource makes sense when you think about, I think for many parents, a child abuse investigation, especially one in which they’re concerned that their child has been sexually abused, is incredibly stressful. I mean, for anyone, because it’s worrisome if there’s a disclosure, this is going to turn into one of the most stressful and difficult days of any parent’s life. And so when it’s framed that way, it doesn’t seem so foreign, the idea that there would be the need for extra support.

VV: 

Yeah. My dad died five years ago this July and a couple of years before he left this world he had to have heart surgery and the doctors explained, you know, you have to make a decision here. If you don’t have the surgery, you probably got weeks to live. But because of your age and the condition of your heart, you might die on the table, right? But if we’re successful, if we hit it out of the park, you may have a few more years of life. My dad chose the surgery.

But I’ll remember waiting for him in the preop room, he was cracking jokes. And because I I knew my dad, I just I knew he had some anxiety. I might die today. And that’s how some of us will relieve our stress by by making jokes. And I remember the chaplain came in and said, Don, that’s my dad’s name. Would you like to pray? And my father said yes. And then the chaplain said, Can I put my hand on your shoulder? And my dad said yes. And he even asked him, you know, are there anything in particular you’d like to pray for? He also asked him, What name should I use for the person we’re praying to? And he gave a beautiful prayer. And when the chaplain left, my dad turned to my mother, whose name is Lillian, and he said, Lily, I’m ready. And I knew what he meant. I don’t have this burden anymore. I might live today a little bit longer, I might die today, but it’s not my decision. It’s not my burden anymore. I’ve cast my burden on God and God knows what’s best for me in my family and I know God’s gonna take care of my family if I depart today. So that burden was relieved and you could just see my dad relax. And many people have those moments. Seventy percent of Americans, according to Pew, if I remember the data right, say they pray when they’re stressed out. And so many of us turn to prayer or meditation or spiritual concepts. And if this is true of us as adults, why would we think a child would not potentially benefit from this?

TH: 

It’s interesting. In our own youth surveys, we recently worked with some researchers and published it, but our outcome measurement system youth survey, there were some open-ended questions at the end. And while most of them did not mention religion or spirituality, because it wasn’t asking about that, right? It was just letting them comment on their recovery, their healing, how those kinds of things. For the ones who did, it was very important.

And I think that’s the thing to keep in mind. It’s not that for every kid this will be super important, but for the ones that it is important, it could be critical.

VV: 

Yeah. We at Zero Abuse, one of our programs is one in six and one of the researchers cut and pasted to me a number of clips where male survivors without being asked the question will raise a spiritual concept that helped them cope. And some will even say, you know, I was ready to take my life, I was on the verge and I just felt this power come over me saying, Don’t do it. Things are gonna get better, I am with you, you’re not abandoned and they couldn’t really be quantified that moment, but it was real. Something pulled them back from the abyss. Those are real experiences that some survivors will report to having. And again, we don’t want to take that away from them if it’s bringing them relief.

TH: 

You know, one of the things I want to ask you about, and I’m gonna tell you about the recent experience I had first, but I want to ask you to think about this like an example of a program related to this that you think it’s just excellent. You don’t have to say where it is if you don’t want to or any of that, but just like an example that was just you’re just like they really get it. They’re doing a beautiful job in terms of providing care and support to address spiritual harm.

I’ll tell about my recent experience. I was at a CAC, not here in the US, in Canada, and they have an elder that comes in. They have a large indigenous population, and they have an elder that comes in a couple of days a week. And families are asked if they’d like to meet with the elder. And it’s not on the same floor as the forensic services. It’s on a different floor, but they do not have to be indigenous. All the kids and families are offered this. I walked in that space.

And I met the elder, a beautiful, beautiful, calm, calm space. And I have to say, when I met the elder, it was like your most calm and supportive grandmother. I don’t know how else to describe this to you, but her whole countenance just was like peaceful and just took the temperature down. You know, you could almost feel it, just what she was exuding. And so was it religious? No, she would be the first to say.

Was it spiritual? She would even say no to that, that it was about your spirit, but not spiritual. But I have to say, I could see why it was such a comfort to the families for whom that was important. And I thought this is done really well. It’s consent based. Everybody has access if they want it, but no one is pressured to it. There’s nothing conflating it with forensic services or what’s going on investigatively. But what a beautiful thing to have for kids and families who benefit from that.

Okay, so that’s my example. and now I’m gonna ask you for yours.

VV:

Yeah, and the spiritual care too. We’ll actually have case studies of several CACs that we think are doing creative things, hitting it out of the park. I already mentioned Greenville, so let me brag on Minnesota for a minute. First Witness in Duluth has a volunteer chaplain, but they also have a spiritual care room where you can go in, you can find a prayer rug, you can find sacred texts of diverse faith traditions, you can meditate, you could smudge, you could do a lot of things. There’s crystals in there. So whatever you use to connect with your religiosity, spirituality, you would find that in the room very similar to what you might see in hospital see rooms or in airports. I encourage everybody if you’ve never been to airport spiritual care room, walk into one and you get a sense here. I think that’s very creative. And you know, first witness Minnesota has a significant indigenous population and smudging is important and they’ve reflected their their local community in that regard. So I think that’s one example. And and as you point out, everything is, you know, voluntary. It’s you know, we speak of the importance of cultural humility in other contexts. And so it’s just understanding the world views and the cultures and the traditions of the children and families who come to our community and what can we do to make them feel welcome and to give them resources that may help them draw upon their traditions and faith traditions as well to cope with trauma.

TH: 

I think the common thread in so many of these practices is it’s acting on your central nervous system. You know, it’s just like taking down that anxiety level a little bit. So whether it’s meditation or as you’re saying, prayer or something, smudging, whatever, it’s like in some ways it’s acting physically on the body, basically, is what people are experiencing.

VV: 

Yeah, how many of us go to a conference and there’s fidget toys? So even those of us who are seasoned professionals, we have fidget toys and like ’cause, you know, if you’re sitting in a workshop on child torture, it’s gonna impact you no matter how experienced you are. Well, think of somebody who maybe is a devout Catholic and beads might be really helpful to them or another religious artifact that they’re holding on to. I know people who wear you know, have a wooden cross in their pocket and every once in a while they put their hand in their pocket to to ground them, right? So it’s just reflecting that for many people, objects and spiritual practices can lower that stress level and bring them comfort and help them get through that traumatic moment or a really hard day.

TH: 

Well, Victor, we could spend a lot more time on this, but I’m wondering what have I not asked you that I should have or anything else that you wanted to make sure that we talked about today, especially as you know, you’re getting ready to or may have already launched the this toolkit.

VV: 

Yeah. We mentioned the research that Ted Cross took the lead on and grateful to you, Teresa, and others at NCA really helped us get the word out to CACs. So we published that. It’s an open access article. You can find it on our website, my LinkedIn page, a lot of places it’s open access. But encourage folks to take a look at that. It really gives a good current lay of the land and it documents that most CACs have seen these spiritual injuries arise in forensic interview or in another setting, most often in therapy, but they are arising at some point in the MDT process. Many have seen offenders incorporate religion into the selection, grooming, silencing of children. So we are seeing these dynamics and also documents the need for growing art knowledge. And then from there, watch in the months to to come. Ted has completed his case study on the work at Greenville. And from that case study he thinks three or four additional studies maybe published. Ted and I are gonna present on this topic at APSAC in New Orleans and then I’m gonna present on this subject at the NCA Leadership Conference. So come there and learn more about it. And then the toolkits, it’s gonna be maybe about a hundred pages, but it’s gonna be interactive online. So you can just go to what you’re really interested in. And then we’re gonna have accompanied PowerPoints and the like that you could use if you want to explain this concept to your board or to donors or to others. So we think it’ll be valuable for the field to have something that you can grow your knowledge on and cut and paste what might be helpful to you in in explaining this potential work. So preview of all of that and look for that in in the months to come.

TH: 

I was going to say, and more to come, because this is an area of continuing work, both for researchers and those who are helping CACs do this work every day. Well, Victor, I just really appreciate the fact that this is something that you have been such a voice for and on a consistent basis and trying to bring more resources to, because I think that as people hear more about this, they feel more of a comfort level with exploring this and looking at the opportunities to help kids. So thank you so much for all you’re doing and come back to One in Ten anytime.

VV: 

I will. Thank you, Teresa, for all you’re doing. You’re a true hero for all of us in the field. So thank you for your good work.

TH: 

And we’ll see you at leadership conference.

VV: 

All right, take care.

TH: 

Thank you for joining us on One in Ten. If you like this episode, please like and rate it wherever you listen. This truly helps us expand our listenership. And to learn more about this or any of our other podcast episodes, please visit our podcast website at oneintenpodcast.org.