NOW SHE'S SAFE.

Did you know … 1 out of every 4 young girls is sexually abused before the age of 18?

...90% of them are abused by someone they know and trust?

… that there are currently more than 42 MILLION adult female survivors of childhood sexual abuse in the United States?

OUR MISSION:

NOW SHE’S SAFE is our nonprofit charitable organization founded with the vision of making the world SAFE for little girls again. It is our mission to protect young girls from sexual predators and guide adult survivors on a path towards healing and a brighter future.

Look around you. Everywhere you go, there are women of all ages who have survived childhood sexual abuse and need our help. Worse yet, there are little girls being abused who need to know there’s a way out. Your generous donation to NOW SHE’S SAFE, a federally recognized 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization is fully tax deductible and will help us get started on meaningful changes TODAY. Won’t you join us?

My name is Kelly Olexa, and I am 1 in 4. I was sexually abused as a child from age 4 to the age of 13 by an immediate family member. When I was 17 and brave enough to tell my parents, their tepid reaction was to instruct my abuser to “go tell Kelly you’re sorry.” There was no discussion. My father never addressed it - - never hugged me, never asked if I was okay, never even brought it up. I felt as if my parents wanted to sweep it under the rug, to do whatever was necessary to keep our supposedly happy family image intact. I was never taken to a doctor or therapy or even allowed to discuss it. When my mother discovered I had told close friends at college about my abuse, she scolded me, telling me this was a “private family matter.”

I lived my life this way, staying quiet, protecting my abuser, lying for him… all so he could raise a beautiful family and live a happy, consequence-free life. The problem was, my abuse took a major toll on me, no matter how hard I tried to ignore it. It affected how I saw myself. It permeated all of my relationships. It devastated my self-image. It affected how I lived my life.

Finally, in my early 50’s, I began trying to process what had happened to me as a young girl … but then the migraines started. They kept me from working for multiple days at a time. My husband and a close friend noticed that they seemed to be triggered by family events. I saw a neurologist for the pain. I started therapy. I was diagnosed with C-PTSD and told that the migraines were a manifestation of my childhood trauma. I lost about 2 years of my life trying to work through it all. The physical and emotional pain are indescribable.

Therapy helped in so many ways. It also helped me summon the courage to confront my abuser and my parents. I wish I could say we all lived happily ever after. But life rarely works out that way. When I asked for help, my abuser danced around the issue; told me he must have been sleepwalking (for 9 years?); and then rushed off the phone so he wouldn’t miss his tee time.

After this private confrontation and plea for help failed, I decided to get a lawyer. I told my parents. My father tried to mediate. When that didn’t work, he told me he'd cut me out of his will if I took this any further… but I wanted to be heard … finally. Unfortunately, I waited too long. I missed the statute of limitations. To add insult to injury, my abuser’s lawyer wrote a letter calling me every name in the book and threatening to sue me if I told my story. On the other hand, he said if I retracted EVERYTHING, my abuser would consider loaning me money if I could prove that I really needed it. How swell of him.

NOW SHE’S SAFE:

Standing up for myself and processing what had happened to that little girl was the most difficult thing I have done in my life. I spent a lot of time thinking and crying and trying to make sense of why someone could do the things he did to me and get away with it. I was devastated and depressed for quite a while. Then, sitting alone on the couch one night, I began reflecting on all the women I had met who told me they were also survivors of childhood sex abuse. Instead of being upset at my situation, I started to get angry. How can this have happened to so many MILLIONS of women? How can it still be happening to so many little girls? I decided to take my pain and the injury done to me as a child and turn it into something positive … something to help the millions of survivors of childhood sex abuse and the MILLIONS of young girls currently going through the same trauma I did. That’s how NOW SHE’S SAFE was born.

Oprah Winfrey famously said, “A girl child ain’t safe in a world full of men.”

I know from experience how true that is. But does it alway have to be that way? What if the millions of survivors stood up, made their voices heard, and said enough is enough? What if we gave each and every survivor a voice and an opportunity to finally be heard. Would society finally listen?

OUR PLANS:

• Survivor Network; Our website will include an interactive community membership program for survivors, allowing them to connect with others who have been through the same experience all over the country and ultimately all over the world.
• A Groundbreaking Mobile App synchronized with our website allowing 24-hour access to help for victims who need it, anonymously. This app will also provide education and community connection as well as links to local events.
• Now She’s Safe Podcast: Providing educational content on childhood sexual abuse and trauma and how to heal from it and ideally, move forward toward a more meaningful future. We’ll have expert subject matter guests, survivors, doctors, therapists, you name it, all here to provide perspective and advice for all of us no matter where we are on our journey.
• Legal Fund For Justice: This fund will provide select approved cases funding for those seeking justice against an abuser or seeking to defend oneself against unjust charges from an abuser.
• Recovery Fund For Healing: This fund will provide select approved cases funding when insurance is not available to assist with medical expenses or mental health expenses to encourage recovery from childhood trauma.
• Retreats for Survivors: These regional hands-on retreats allow survivors to learn healing techniques from expert practitioners in person, as well as connect with other survivors one-on-one. This type of experience has been shown to be an invaluable tool in making an impact on healing trauma and improving overall mental outlook for adult survivors and we’d like to make as many of them happen as possible on an annual basis.
• Education and Conversation: For us to be TRULY EFFECTIVE and MAKE CHANGE HAPPEN we must be DISRUPTIVE. The reason this epidemic has been rampant is due to the stigma around the topic, the awkwardness around talking about it. IF YOU CHANGE NOTHING, NOTHING CHANGES. We plan to change things in a big way and that means making conversations happen, everywhere. In our case, the focus will be social media and television, where most consumers are regularly tuning in on a daily basis. We’ll create highly impactful messaging relevant to each platform to generate conversation and build changed awareness of this problem. This is how change begins.