Trailblazing Wellness with Dr. Pamela J. Pine

Welcome to ‘Trailblazing Wellness” with Dr. Pamela J. Pine, Director, Stop the Silence® — A Department of the Institute on Violence, Abuse, and Trauma (IVAT),  Author, Artist, Speaker, and member of The Wellness Universe.

The Wellness Universe is a resource and community of amazing humans we call WU World-Changers! Our members are vetted teachers, therapists, transformational leaders, coaches, and guides who support well-being and help us further our vision of achieving global peace by way of happy, healthy, healed human beings through the work they do.

Today we want to introduce you to Dr. Pamela J. Pine.

The Wellness Universe (WU): What is your mission?

Dr. Pamela J. Pine (Dr. PJP): For some time now, since 2000, beginning when I made a commitment to doing something real about the pandemic of child sexual abuse (or CSA) and then started the international non-profit Stop the Silence® — Stop Child Sexual Abuse, Inc., my mission has been to prevent, expose, and stop child sexual abuse (CSA) and (now) other adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and help survivors heal worldwide. In 2021, Stop the Silence® became a part of the larger San Diego-based non-profit the Institute on Violence, Abuse, and Trauma (IVAT), and that’s when we added ACEs to our focus.

WU: Please tell us about yourself.

Dr. PJP: I grew up in a middle-class Jersey home, and I was raised by an artsy mom and a scientist dad, and they thankfully exposed me to both worlds, encouraged me at every turn, and made it quietly clear that if there was something I could add to a situation, I should. I grew up inspired by ideas, beauty, art and creative spirits, service with others, work well done, happy childhoods, and true kindness and humility. I looked up to heroes in my younger and evolving life who have included Helen Keller, Jane Goodall, Beverly Sills, Chagal, and Monet, among others. I arrived at adulthood as a scientist, humanitarian, leader, singer, painter, and author, combining all these to find a way to tackle some really big problems.

Traveling through a career in international health, I’ve been motivated now for additional decades by the need for the work that I do in collaboration with others on the international prevention, treatment, and mitigation of child sexual abuse (CSA) and other adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) through advocacy, education, and training, using science and art as a way to educate and open hearts and minds toward understanding, as well as the other involvements in my life.

Traveling through a career in international health, I’ve worked for the past 2.5 decades on the prevention, treatment, and mitigation of child sexual abuse and other adverse childhood experiences through advocacy, education, and training, using science and art to educate and open hearts and minds toward understanding, as well as the other involvements in my life.

WU: Now that we know a bit about you, explain what it is that you do and how it helps people to be happy, healthy, and healed.

Dr. PJP: CSA and ACEs are overwhelmingly and despairingly common. One out of four girls and one out of six boys, for example, are sexually abused in the United States alone, and those kinds of numbers are seen all over the world, with devastating consequences like major psychological problems (e.g., depression, anxiety, personality disorders, psychosis), short- and long-term physical problems (including chronic disease and early death as a result of extreme and sustained trauma), social problems (e.g., relationship problems, drug and alcohol abuse, homelessness), economic problems (e.g., ability to get and maintain employment, medical costs, costs to society), etc.

Internationally, I advocate to change social and political environments, educate all types of providers (e.g., parents, educators, therapists, police, lawyers, judges) so that they understand the realities and ramifications of not doing anything or not doing enough, and train numerous types of non-professionals and professionals who can then apply relevant information in their lives and practices, protecting and treating children and helping them and the adolescents and adults they become. We provide survivors with the information and the referrals they need to get the right type of help to grow, heal, and thrive.

WU: How long have you been doing this?

Dr. PJP: I’ve had a focus on child trauma for 25 years. My international work began a couple of decades before that.

WU: Why are you so passionate about preventing, treating, and mitigating CSA and ACEs?

Dr. PJP: The situation that exists with child trauma and its impacts is not only unacceptable but threatens everyone’s fundamental well-being, from the children effected to the adults they become, the individuals around them, families, societies, and the world as a whole. I’m truly not being melodramatic when I say that the impact of child trauma affects all of us psychologically, physically, socially, economically, and politically. It affects who tries to lead and how and how members of society are able to function.

WU: Did any specific life experience cause you to follow this path?

Dr. PJP: I’m an international public health specialist that has worked on some of the world’s most difficult problems around the world (e.g., leprosy, HIV, TB, maternal child health, child survival, tropical diseases). In the year 2000, I started getting educated about CSA and then ACEs due to information that came across my desk from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and was just appalled at the fact that so little was being done for such a huge problem deleteriously affecting so many children as well as all the rest of us in so many ways.

WU: Care to share a story of how you have made a difference in someone’s life?

Dr. PJP: To address this, I’ll share one survivor’s tale, written in his own words (shared from the FOREWORD to Stop the Silence® – Thriving After Child Sexual Abuse, written by Akerei Maresala-Thomson, published by Brave Healer Productions, 2023).

“I met my colleague and friend Dr. Pamela J. Pine in 2017 at the Institute on Violence, Abuse, and Trauma (IVAT) Summit. Her involvement in our work helped me start coming out of my shell. I was a very angry young person and blamed every white person, as, apparently, they were the problem for my community’s issues. But within a year, we had a major grant that Pam wrote that brought critical programming to New Zealand. I got mentoring, coaching, and pastoral care from her and her associates at IVAT, and I was able to build resilience. These people were critical to my growth and my development. The connection helped build the skills I needed to help me and also help my family navigate everything that was going on.

“Along the way, I realized that my story wasn’t unique and that there were a lot of people telling stories like mine. I realized that we can all help each other. It’s important we recognize that we cannot handle all this alone. We have to do it together. Everybody has a role to play in a person’s life.

“Today, I’m the co-founder of MYRIVR, a social-good community app that connects users with [over 10,000] health and social services around the country of New Zealand, and a program to encourage local entrepreneurship. Pamela Pine has now been to New Zealand three times to help us train our service providers and conduct comprehensive programming that involves the MYRIVR app. We continue to collaborate to bring critical programming to other parts of the world.

“In the future, I look toward MYRIVR becoming the largest enabler of community services globally, connecting those with the support they need within their communities. I know my work, your work, and our work is not in vain. Our people move forward because of people like me and people like you, dear reader. This book is also a part of advancing all that. On behalf of my family, my community, and my colleague, Dr. Pamela J. Pine, I’d like to acknowledge and give you, the reader, a great big thank you for your interest, concern, commitment, and any work you do that embraces these ideas. Because without people like us, there wouldn’t be people to help empower others to flourish—and no one to change the world. Fa’afetai.”

WU: What would you say is your crowning achievement thus far?

Dr. PJP: Honestly, there’s more than one (including the impact on survivors, as above), so maybe I can tell you briefly about a few. When I first started working on CSA and tried to get financial support to do the work I think needed to be done, I couldn’t get any—or hardly any—from anywhere. I mean, most people who I tried to speak to from companies or organizations seemed to want to ignore the issue or seemed to be afraid or embarrassed about talking about it. This was nearly 25 years ago, and the issue had not yet “hit” the airwaves. The Catholic Church scandal had not been public yet, nor had the private boys’ schools, or Native schools, or Olympics, or any of them.

I realized there was an awareness problem. Drawing on research I conducted with the help of the University of Maryland’s Department of Communication, I started the Race to Stop the Silence®, a foot race and walk with a kids run through downtown Washington, D.C.—very public, very “out there.” Stop the Silence®, the organization, hosted this race for 10 years, from 2004 to 2013, during the month of April each year, Child Abuse Prevention Month.

At its height, there were 1,200 people running through the streets and communities of D.C. with “Stop the Silence®—Stop Child Sexual Abuse” on their backs and entertainment, food, and prizes—an athletic event and major party that advocated for awareness, education, and change. The Race attracted major media: TV channels 4, 7, 9, Maryland Public TV, PBS, CNN; NPR and ClearChannel (now iHeart Radio) as well as other radio across the U.S.; backlit Metro posters in the stations; The Washington Post; major magazines; and corporate and organization support and outreach from the likes of Pepsi Cola, Ms. Foundation for Women, and the football team now known as The Commanders; etc. I didn’t have the money for a proper evaluation, but I know (I know!) that the kind of exposure that the race brought to society helped catapult the issue into the public sphere. I’m proud of that.

Then there are the stories about all the work we’ve done using the arts to raise awareness across the U.S. and Europe through advocacy events, theatre, and film; the trainings we’ve done to help governments and non-profits in Cyprus and New Zealand, for example, change awareness and governmental and organizational policies; our best-selling and award-winning Stop the Silence®—Thriving After Child Sexual Abuse book (published by Brave Healer Productions and available on Amazon), written by 23 international survivors of CSA who tell their stories and provide healing tips.

And I’ll close this focus with information about something really important, designed to “put the world on the same page” in understanding and knowledge: our online, go-at-your-own-pace, highly affordable, comprehensive, taught-by-experts Certificate to Master’s Degree in Child Protection. It’s one of a kind, as far as I know. People wanting to know more or sign up for our next semester for the Certificate, which starts on Sept. 6, can go to our website, https://www.ivatcenters.org/stop-the-silence, or click here: https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/ev/reg/ky4aggr/lp/d391547a-80ec-4a93-9280-131713463c1f

WU: What’s next on the horizon for you?

Dr. PJP: I have a few goals over the next couple of years:

• I want to make our online Child Protection Program “sing.”
• I want to raise major funds for and conduct national and international education and training programming.
• I want to increase our presence on the speaking stage toward heightened awareness and knowledge.

And, finally, I’d really like to make some time for little ol’ me to get back to my painting—that is the reason I put that art studio in my backyard, after all! And I’ve traveled for work my entire adult life—I’d like to play in more of it.

WU: Thank you so much for sharing today! Any final thoughts?

Dr. PJP: I have put my heart and soul into my work, and I would like to share this concerning it.

“There’s a lot to learn about CSA, and now, thankfully, there is a lot of information available. Let’s use that information to understand, prevent, and treat it. Barring major campaigns in the U.S. and elsewhere (which are still needed), we all need to take responsibility for knowing and helping. In a nutshell, we need to understand: What CSA is; Who it happens to and how (e.g., the grooming process); Who the perpetrators are; What the often-severe impact is on survivors but also on their families and communities; How to protect our and our neighbors’ children and get them the help they and others’ need.

“I believe it is equally important to say: I have heard people state that it’s the victim’s fault or that they cannot understand how a person could possibly get themselves in Padma’s position. Perhaps they would understand it more, given her age. Still, people of much greater experience have found themselves in a similar position to hers, and perhaps more often than not, as a result of someone else’s traumatic childhood.

“Let’s manage how we truly address CSA (and other adverse childhood experiences, ACEs). Let’s make sure that we not only educate ourselves, our children (in developmentally appropriate ways), and our families, but let’s also take a more active role in educating and training others. If you’re not in this field, how can you do that? Some of it is fairly simple. If you go to the pediatrician, internist, family doctor, or dentist or are involved with legal matters, schools, politics, or any other field that involves children or families, speak out. Ask, ‘Do you have a policy on child sexual abuse?’ And if they say, ‘No,’ ask them, ‘Why not?’ and ‘How can I help you develop one?’ Please join me. Let’s all do our part.” (Dr. Pamela J. Pine in Stop the Silence—Thriving After Child Sexual Abuse, Brave Healer Productions, 2023, p. 8)

WU: Include a testimonial you have received.

Dr. PJP:

• “You are the most together and considerate person I have ever known. I think your PhD is in thoughtfulness. You are so gentle and considerate.” Ward, Survivor
• “This lady is very hard-working and loyal to the cause. I identify with her in that I’d love to be as dedicated to helping fight for children’s rights as she has been for many years.” Bonn, Public TV Access Producer
• “Dr. Pine has always displayed a high degree of integrity, responsibility, and ambition. She is definitely a leader rather than a follower. In addition to her excellent scholastic accomplishments, she has proven her leadership ability by organizing a highly recognized non-profit charitable 501(c)3 organization, Stop the Silence®, that works to prevent and treat child sexual abuse… Dr. Pine is a most dependable and reliable team player. Her good judgment and mature outlook ensure a logical and practical approach to her endeavors.” LaQuisha, Educator.

If you would like to connect with Dr. Pamela J. Pine (Pam), please visit: https://www.thewellnessuniverse.com/world-changers/pamelapine/.

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