- See more at: http://blogtimenow.com/blogging/automatically-redirect-blogger-blog-another-blog-website/#sthash.fBBcEurs.dpuf Casa de Sion: November 2012

Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Karla Lucia

We have another little one who needs help.  Her name is Karla Lucia.  She 9 years old and has two little brothers.  She lives in one of the poorer communities that we help--Maria del Carmen.  


 This is her home where Karla lives with her mom, dad and two little brothers.



Her parents said that she walked until she was two and a half, it was then that they realized that one leg was shorter then the other.   Sadly her parents didn't (and don't) have the means to get her the medical help that she needs.  We would love to get Karla to the doctor and get her the care and tools she needs to help her walk without pain.

The medical care is free, Karla needs help with bus fare, room and board while they are in the city and any meds they give her .

If you would like to help Karla please donate or email me at erin.casadesion@gmail.com.

Monday, November 26, 2012

Anna Maria


With the Christmas season coming up we thought we would give you some opportunities to give!

Meet Anna Maria, she is 9 months old.


She is the youngest of 9 kids and the family is very poor.


We are not quite sure what is wrong with her legs, but we feel confident it is something that medical care can remedy. 



All 11 of the family members live in the house below.




We want Anna Maria to be able to run around with her bothers and sisters.  We want her to be able to walk to school and become whomever she wants to be.  We need your help so that we can send Anna Maria to the city and help her receive the medical help she needs. 

If you would like to help Anna Maria please donate (leave me a note with her name) or email me at erin.casadesion@gmail.com

Friday, November 09, 2012

Panimaché Quinto


We had a new community come to us asking for help.  They are a community of 290 people; 88 are kids under 14 and 67 of those are elementary age.  They were displaced a little over a year ago when a mud slide covered their village and all of their homes.  They lost everything.  They were able to scrap enough together to purchase a piece of land.  









The land they live on is less than desirable; it is cold, wet, and muddy most of time.  There is a strong wind that is almost always blowing.  It is usually about 40 degrees but will drop below freezing in the winter.  Their houses are made of scrap wood and metal.  There is no water nor electricity.  Everyone has dirt (or mud) floors.

The bright spot of the community is the 3 room school house.  A group came in a while back and built it for them.  Education is very important to this community.  Most of the children are at grade level which is VERY rare for the communities we are working with. 
 
It reads; "I believe in my future."






We send Mario up with some clothes to hand out, they were so very grateful, but sadly he ran out of shoes before he was able to give a pair to everyone who needed one.









We have high hopes for this community and would like to start our programs there.  We would like to start the tutorial and after school feeding program when school starts again in Jan.  We also need more cold weather items for this group before winter sets in.


Panimache Qunito needs list
-money for programs
-formula for infants
-coats, hats mittens, etc
-study shoes of all sizes




Saturday, November 03, 2012

From Sex trafficked Child To Child Advocate: Another Therapist

I am in Guatemala now and part of what I am doing it assessing and researching the incidence of trafficked children. I have learned 2 things. 1. You put your life on the line by housing sex trafficked children in a safe house. It might be blown up. 2. Teachers in the remote Mayan areas are scared to even do "good touch/bad touch" talks because if a kid comes forward and discloses abuse, the teacher puts his life on the line getting that child help. So basically not much is being done about it "because no one wants to die".
I have many pictures and have learned many other things about the communities and children and mamas we are helping. As soon as I get home and can put my pictures on my computer, I will post blogs about them.

Here is the next blog in my abuse series. Want to get them finished up so we can start on our book.




Another Therapist


 I am going to change the name of this blog from "From Child Prostitute To Child Advocate" to "From Sex-Trafficked Child To Child Advocate".   The first title seems to indicate some complicity on my part.  Many people ignorantly believe that prostitution is something that women do of their own volition.  That is rare and never the case with children.  And I know some of you are wondering when we will actually get to the part where I was trafficked.   I believe we have already gotten there.  At the time I was retrieving these memories neither one of us understood this, but now it seems most plausible that the men and women who came to the secret pineapple meetings in Hawaii were paying participants. They received drugs and sex and in exchange paid cash.  My dad sold his daughter and got sex and drugs for free.  This first cult experience in Hawaii did not have much ritual and little Satanism.  But this memory was mixed with others where the ritual of Satanism was more dominant.  I believe that some of the multi-perpetrator groups my father had me in used the word “Satanism” as a cloak.  It was easier to do all the evil things they did in the name of religion than to just admit they were dirty old men and women horribly abusing children.  History is littered with cruelties done in the name of religion.  At the time Jody and I did not have any other way of giving it a name and we were inclined to think there was some continuity between the various memories even when the geography changed.  And there was some ritual--like the act of killing yourself if you told and the brainwashing that went along with that.   "Child-Sex Trafficking" are words that started in the 21st century and more accurately describe my experience.

We began reading everything we could find on Ritual Abuse and Satanic Cults.  Always before I had thought of this as science fiction or the occult and not quite real, but there was something very real happening.  The palpable fear that Vicki was experiencing and radiating throughout the house was not part of her normal character.  Neither Vicki nor I understood it and there were few books on the subject; it was something very new. 

After networking for several weeks Vicki managed to find another therapist with experience in this area.  Joe was two and half hours away in another direction.  Before he would even meet with Vicki he peppered her with questions:  “Do you find that you sometimes lose time and don’t know what happened over a period of several hours or days?  Do you meet people who seem to know you but call you by a different name? . . . ”  Vicki answered no  to each question.   “Basically I’m trying to figure out whether you’re a multiple or not.  I’ve already got one such client and I can’t handle another.” 

In addition to Ritual Abuse we added several new words to our lexicon:  Multiple Perpetrator Abuse; Dissociation; Multiple Personality Disorder; and PTSD—Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome.   There was another whole vocabulary that went with Ritual Abuse because it was of a much more severe order than sexual abuse or incest.  The word “ritual” came for the ceremony that went along with much of the abuse.

Joe belonged to a group of therapists and could only barter one-half of his fee, which was almost exactly how much her father was sending her each month.  But Joe was more than willing to do that.  Like Isaac he seemed to have a heart for the work that he did.

The nature of Vicki’s memories did not bother Joe.  He had heard it before and that offered a form of validation to Vicki—apparently other people had been through these kinds of experiences before.  It was real.  In one sense that was comforting; Vicki wasn’t crazy.  But it did underscore the potential of some of her fears. 

Joe did have a strict rule about not calling him after hours.  “This memory work is going to be very difficult,” he told Vicki in a form of understatement that we didn’t appreciate at the time, “and you need to get together a support team.  People you can call day or night to listen to you and help you work through this.”  My name was not to be on the list.  These were people she could call when I felt overwhelmed and needed time out.  I was especially grateful for this dictum because I could not handle much of Vicki’s reaction to her memories.  She would get angry and then nasty as if I had been the perpetrator and she blamed me for everything she was feeling.  This altered state of personality was called dissociation.  Joe said Vicki’s reaction to me was partially due to the fact that I did much of the actual memory work with her—what a therapist might normally do if she were close enough to do multiple sessions a week.  This conveyance of feelings was called transference and was supposed to happen with a therapist but it was too late to change since she could only do appointments every other week, and it was one of the things that we did well together.  Joe wanted her to make a list of five or six people who would volunteer for this role as telephone counselor and bring it to him.

After several sessions Vicki brought up the subject that worried us most:  Was Vicki’s father still involved with these groups?  Was there reason to fear?  At that time Joe was uncertain.  Vicki had not had any memories beyond simple incest while she was in her teenage years.   Her father had left the military and moved to their present home when she was fourteen years old.   It appeared from her memories that the ritual abuse had only occurred while he was in the military and traveling from one assignment to another. 

“To be safe I think you need to assume that he is still involved.  Based on my experience that’s what I would guess.  Not seeing him is a good idea--let’s continue that.”  Because of Vicki’s high level of fear Joe also though that Vicki should write him another letter saying that she had finished therapy and no longer needed him to continue sending money.   This ruse would throw him off and he would assume that she had not remembered anything beyond incest.

This part of my life was not happening in a vacuum.  Less than a month before Hannah was born I made a trip to Florida with Jody to see his mother who was dying of cancer.  She died a week later on Memorial Day.  A few weeks after Hannah was born word came that his father was in the terminal stages of melanoma.  He would die unexpectedly early in the beginning of September.   Life at this time was extremely hard.  Jody remembered a dream that he had had earlier of twin tornados that might best describe the devastation those two events caused in his life.  Our life during that season was a wreck and we were just surviving.  Hannah was my saving grace.  I wouldn't dare stab myself when I was pregnant--there was a baby inside!  And afterward she was totally dependent on me; it was imperative that I stay alive.  The sweet spirit of that tiny baby was Heaven sent.