At SungateKids, we never have, and we never will, turn away a child in need of services. And we don’t charge for our services. Ever. That’s our promise to our community. But we need your help to keep that promise. Learn more about all the ways you can support SungateKids.
Why do we need SungateKids?
We know that many people shy away from thinking about – or talking about – child abuse because they consider it a dark and depressing topic. But where they see darkness, we see hope. We see a future for a child who’s been a victim of abuse in which healing is possible and childhood can be reclaimed.
We need your help to make our vision a reality, for all the children who need us:
One in ten children will be a victim of child sexual abuse before reaching the age of 18. Those numbers are startling, but even more so when they come in 3’4” slight frame with doleful brown eyes and a voice barely above a whisper. As a third grader, she and her class had watched the SungateKids SafeKids Prevention Education Program. Like some of the other kids, she stayed back after the presentation to speak to SungateKids’ Prevention Specialists. “What happened to the girl puppet – that’s happening to me. And it’s not ok…”
Investigative Interview Program
Absolutely everything about her showed how closed off and angry Lilly was. Her arms tightly crossed against her body, her baseball cap pulled down low over her face, her eyes flashing defiantly from under the brim. “I didn’t ask to be here,” she informed SungateKids’ Family Support Coordinator as she sat in the farthest corner of the couch in the waiting room. “That’s ok, we’re still glad you came.” She asked Lilly a few questions – but not about the allegations, which caught the 14 year-old off-guard. Here was this grown-up, asking her about normal stuff. It felt almost weird…
To continue reading Lilly’s story, click the button below.
Therapeutic Support Program
Some of the hardest wounds to heal are the ones we can’t see. The damage, like the crime of sexual abuse itself, is often shrouded in secrecy and buried in silence, shame and fear. She is fourteen years old. She looks much younger than that. She barely eats, like she is trying to disappear altogether.
She was a victim of sexual abuse by her uncle, for four long years. When she finally told, the abuse ended but the pain did not. It stayed, making her fold in on herself, withdrawing more and more each day.
Desperate to find help, and terrified she would lose her daughter altogether, her mother reached out to SungateKids and found out about our individual therapy options and our Therapeutic Support Groups…
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Prevention Program
He has soft brown curls and dark brown eyes, and a dimple in his left cheek. He files into the library along with the rest of his third-grade class, unaware that his teacher is watching him carefully today. She’s been worried about him lately. Something about him seems different – anxious, maybe, but she just can’t figure it out. When she’s asked him if everything is ok, he always says yes, but something he said recently about Little League made the hair on the back of her neck stand up. He told her that “Coach” gave him an iPad, even though it wasn’t his birthday or Christmas, or any other occasion, and told him it was because he was “special.” She hasn’t been able to shake that uneasy feeling since he told her…
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