Bill Murray, survivor, public safety advocate, founder of National Association of Adult Survivors of Child Abuse (NAASCA.org), host of the Internet talk radio show "Stop Child Abuse Now" (BlogTalkRadio.com/Bill-Murray), and founder of ASCAA, a 12 Step recovery program for adult survivors of child abuse (ASCA12step.org), shared his story with RAACE.
He was sexually abused for several years, starting when he was 11. he didn't tell anyone, and internalized his fear, anger and shame. An introvert with a temper, he started doing badly in school and getting into trouble. He hated himself, and began drinking heavily as soon as he could get his hands on alcohol.
Bill is convinced that children need and deserve the help of a community.
Julie Mayerson Brown lives on the Palos Verdes Peninsula, a rural suburb of Los Angeles, with her husband, two sons (who return from school periodically for laundry service and home-made chicken soup), four (yes FOUR) boxer dogs, and hundreds of wild peacocks. Her work has appeared in the Daily Breeze, Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Jewish Journal, and Parenting Magazine.
An “at-home” mom and community volunteer for over twenty years, she is a founding member of Mothers Advocating Prevention, a non-profit organization dedicated to protecting children and teens.
Her first novel, The Long Dance Home, was published in 2013 by Mischievous Muse Press, a subsidiary of World Nouveau Publishing.
Currently working on her next novel, Julie usually can be found in one of the quiet corners of her local library.
Mattias Thambert, the creator of Refurn, rescues furniture from recycling stations in Stockholm to give them a second life. Mattias, his company and countless volunteers collect the discarded furniture, make repairs and sometimes redesigns before selling them again to a new home. His vision is to make the reuse of furniture the default for our culture and in that way halting the vicious cycle of short lived furniture made at a massive scale from virgin materials.
Musician Barbara Ochoa aka Petra Luna was an abuse victim her whole young life; sexually, emotionally, physically and by school bullying. Later, she like many others took the normal course of ending up in abusive relationships with her male partners. Fortunately, through extensive therapy, artistic expression and advocacy she overcame the crippling effects of her past and began her journey to help others who had been abused. After a few years of working with other nonprofits, Petra founded her own organization in 2008 she named the P. Luna Foundation. She has gained over 100,000 followers worldwide through social networking and her music and charity websites receive over one million hits per year. “In 2006 when I was working for Domestic Violence in Los Angeles, I met Ken Austin, a retired basketball player for the Detroit Pistons who was also working in the cause. He told me in a meeting once that if I really wanted to help abuse victims, I had to deal with the male perpetrators of Domestic Violence. This made me very angry and I never forgot it. As I matured in the cause and found my voice in the fight against child abuse, I came to the revelation that Ken was right all along. If I really wanted to help victims of sexual abuse and domestic violence in addition to other issues like suicide prevention, drug & sex addiction, etc., I had to help young men who were abused as children to lower their risks of going down destructive paths which hurt themselves and others. With time and after witnessing the effects of abuse on my brothers, cousins and my male friends, all that Ken said started to make sense. Today the main focus of our organization is to help the plight of abused boys and men through our Male Abuse Awareness Program.”