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    Child Abuse Advocacy Groups Caught up in Facebook QAnon Purge?

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 3 minutes

    Am I sad that there are fewer child abuse advocacy groups on Facebook overall? Sure. But, what makes me sadder is how many legitimate advocacy groups fell massively short of their duty to tell the truth to their followers. How many continued to share these theories well after they were disproved in some bizarre effort to show how much more they cared about children, while diverting attention and resources from real victims and organizations trying to help them.

    So no. I don’t feel sorry for you if your page was taken down by Facebook for violating their terms of service around spreading disinformation. You owed real survivors, and the people who followed you to learn more about true child abuse stories, more than that. You are right about one thing, child abuse and child trafficking is an incredibly important issue. Spreading lies doesn’t help that message, it provides the rest of the world an excuse to ignore it. If you truly want to advocate for children, stick to the truth, or suffer the consequences.

  • Still Here, 2020 Edition

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 2 minutes

    Recently, a friend on Facebook decided to ask us all to share one thing that happened this year that was a positive, to try and collect any and all good news in one place. It was a good idea, and as I thought about how I would respond to something like that, I thought of some of the good things that have happened this year. I’ve had some pretty nice successes at work. I’ve connected on a deeper level with my wife, and managed to stay connected to a close group of friends and family. Those were good things, but at the end of it all, I kept coming back to something I talked about at the end of 2019 on the Find Your Voice Podcast, and then again on this very blog on January 1 of 2020.

    “I’m Still Here”

  • How Much Blame Should We Really Get for not Picking up on Grooming?

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 4 minutes

    Think about it. Right now, this very second, you are reading this post because either you found the headline intriguing and clicked, or someone shared it with you and said you should read it, and you clicked. In both cases, you were persuaded by another person to do something. If you saw it on Facebook or other social media platform, there’s a Facebook algorithm watching you and trying to give you more stuff you like, to persuade you to keep coming back to Facebook, and you’re reading it on a device that you were persuaded to purchase by some other factor in your life. 

    Not to mention the fact that parents, teachers, or someone, somewhere, persuaded you to learn to read. You were persuaded, even manipulated, to go to school, study, become the sort of person who could get a well-enough paying job to own a piece of technology and pay for an internet connection, and all of that wound up with you, right here, right now. 

    You were “groomed” to do what you are doing right now. And yet, so many want to look at children, and make them responsible for knowing which persuasion is good for them and which isn’t. 

  • Just Stop – The Universe did not Cause My Abuse For My Greater Good

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 5 minutes

    I was abused by people who made the decision to abuse me. I did nothing to cause it, and there was no lack of purpose to which I needed to be directed. I was a little kid being beaten, and eventually molested, for years. My purpose in life was to be a little kid. There was nothing fair about it, there was no sense to be made of why it happened, it was the result of another person’s actions which happened to be directed toward me because I was there. And, I was there by chance. Not by divine interference, just random chance. 

  • Combined Subscription to Both Blogs

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 2 minutes

    If you hadn’t noticed before, this site actually hosts two blogs. One, my personal thoughts and writings, and the other the Survivor News and Reviews, stuff I’m sharing along with some quick thoughts, or sometimes a contribution from someone else. That has always meant two RSS feeds and two email subscriptions for you to follow…

  • To the Class of 2020

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 4 minutes

    I’m sure you’ve all seen the Facebook “thing” going around asking folks to post their Senior pictures to show support for the kids who are going to miss out on prom, and graduation, etc. this Spring due to the virus lock down. I’m sure many of you have also seen some posts questioning why sharing…