For our first fieldwork and attempt to learn more about taking action in our topic, we scheduled an interview with Nicole Epps and Tessa Chermiset of the World Childhood foundation. We took the D train to West 31st street and walked to the building #715 on 183 Madison Ave. We took the beautiful glass elevator up to their floor, and we had arrived at their NYC headquarters. We first began the interview in a simplistic room with a glass window. We sat down on a pleasant couch and were given beautiful bracelets as a gift. They were filled with beads of many different colors, each representing an article against child abuse. I felt and still feel honored to be wearing mine. Once we started to talk to them, one of the first pieces they revealed was that child abuse has no gender, age, race, or class. It can happen to anyone, and though it is hidden from society, it is terribly common. We learned some people who have undergone child sex abuse have not wanted to confess it because their body enjoyed the feeling even though their mind knew it was wrong. I thought this was very interesting because though I had considered this idea before, I didn’t know that it actually happened. This topic is also very hard to speak out about because even though it is common, people avoid talking about it due to how off-putting and unpleasant to think about. Talking about it with our interviewees felt very confusing at first, the concept of child sex abuse is an umbrella topic that has many parts and aspects of it. A big question that we talked about throughout the interview was how to get young people to be more aware of this issue. When our conversation ended, I had a feeling of clarity and a more clear understanding of child sex abuse. I want people to leave our teach-in with that same feeling. I wanted them to feel as though they have a good understanding of abuse and can identify it. My ideal situation is to have conversations with our students more frequently to get them to a point where they are comfortable speaking about our topic on their own. Even though our group is focusing on sexual and physical domestic abuse, we should also make a point to emphasize how common an occurrence of all kinds abuse are, (sexual, neglect, physical, etc) and work to familiarize our students with that concept.
These are the bracelets they gave us!
