The Chair of Voicing CSA Phillip Lafferty recently announced that Marise Thomas had accepted the position of Director within the organisation.

Marise has released the following statement as a commitment and acceptance of her role.

“It is an honour to recently be appointed a Director of Voicing CSA

I have been involved with Phil and Nigel since the start of VCSA and have been fortunate to meet so many inspiring people who have found the courage to share their experiences, and I continue to learn from them every day. Their strength and resilience to be heard is nothing more than heroic.

The time is now for us to make society accountable. We have kept silent for too long. When anyone in the past has had the courage to speak, it has fallen on deaf ears.

No more.

This is our one chance to make a difference and we need to grab it. Let us not waste time fighting each other, but start to support each other and our determined effort to get child abuse, both past and present, out in the open and those responsible to be held accountable and make the necessary changes to ensure child abuse is the thing of the past.

We need to educate the educators that child abuse is endemic in our society and the effect it has on victims and survivors who battle the effects every day.

Ignoring it, and pretending it will go away must never happen. We have moved on. It continues to surprise me how many people continue to think it is something that ‘doesn’t happen to us’ and ‘doesn’t affect us’. There are also people who still feel ashamed to come forward and have accepted it as a normal part of their childhood.

Let’s not normalise child abuse and say it happened in the past and it is not relevant.The effects of child sexual abuse are all around us. It has a profound effect on us. We cannot continue to dismiss and normalise it.

With your help, I hope to be part of these changes.”

Marise Thomas