Barbara Feaster and Rosa McFarland are two child-abuse survivors who want to see legislation passed that would "invigorate" the Utah Children's Trust Account to help prevent abuse from happening to other children.
"We can prevent this from happening before it even starts," said Feaster, 32, who is still in therapy for sexual abuse that began when she was less than 2 years old.
"You can't just be a victim . . . You have to empower yourself," said McFarland, 21, who said she was adopted at 17 after being abused.
Assistant U.S. Surgeon General Woodie Kessel and Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff joined the women Friday at a press conference in Salt Lake City to talk about child-abuse prevention.
Utahns want to help stop abuse, Shurtleff said, but most don't know how to get involved.
"Make this everybody's problem, everybody's concern," he said. "There are kids out there crying for help."
In Kessel's brief comments about prevention, he raised the question of what impact merely exposing a child to violence might have.
"This is a topic that just shouldn't be," Kessel said.
It's a topic in Utah because in 2003 there were 10,932 child abuse or neglect victims in Utah, according to information handed out Friday by the Utah Child Abuse Prevention Interim Action Committee, which held a meeting after the press conference.
Committee co-chair Lillian Miller talked before the meeting about how two of her children were abused by a teen while in day care. She didn't find out until her own son started victimizing someone else.
"He didn't get the help he needed right away," Miller said. She added how it would have made a "huge" difference if she had been educated on the signs and symptoms of child abuse earlier in her son's life.
Feaster, co-chair of the Utah Child Abuse Prevention Task Force, is hopeful state lawmakers will pass a bill, HB22, that would create the Utah Child Abuse Prevention Board, change the trust account's name to the Children's Trust Fund and allow more funds to flow into prevention efforts here. "This will enable all interested parties . . . to go out and do the best they can to raise money outside the government," said bill co-sponsor Sen. Dan Eastman, R-Bountiful.
The bill would allow the state to put public and private funds into a reserve account for currently underfunded prevention programs and it would limit the amount the Prevention Board could spend on administrative services to 10 percent.
While holding one of his four children, the bill's chief sponsor, Rep. Paul Ray, R-Clearfield, added: "It's great to deal with a bill that promotes prevention."
E-mail: sspeckman@desnews.com