On Thursday, April 27, 2017, during our fifth annual symposium on child sexual abuse prevention, held at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, our keynote speaker, Patrick McCarthy, president and CEO at the Annie E. Casey Foundation, pledged to donate $100,000 to support our Center operations and research.

This gift was unexpected and our team was moved by the sentiment that it conveyed – that McCarthy not only believed in our mission, but also felt strongly about investing in the idea that child sexual abuse can be prevented.

“The generosity of individual donors is critical…but we also need public policy makers who are willing to invest public funds in solving this public health problem because that is the scale of investment that we need,” McCarthy said.

We couldn’t agree more that we need both individual donors as well as public funds to address child sexual abuse, and we’re very thankful to have the support of the Annie E. Casey Foundation to help us develop universal, evidence-based prevention programs and reverse policies that cause harm.

Watch McCarthy’s keynote address as well as other speakers from our April symposium.