44% of student respondents to a 1993 Harvard School of Public Health survey drank heavily at least once in the two weeks prior to the survey. Drinking and driving accidents are the No.1 killer of Americans aged 18-24. 90% of all vandalism, fights and assaults (verbal, physical and sexual) occur after one or both parties have been drinking. One in six women will be a victim of forced sex from a man that she knowsBand in almost every situation,... > Full Story

A teenage runaway peers from the second floor bedroom window. She lives at the clubhouse of a biker gang. A pasture dressed with wild grass and stately evergreens stretches out before...

Continue reading "Drugs, Rape, Booze and Running Scared"

I can tell you about growing up in a home with an alcoholic father, who beat my mother. Or I can tell you what life was like when my parents divorced, and I couldn’t see my...

Continue reading "Home at Last"

I remember when my brother, Jim, left home. I came from an able, happy family, but this did not stop us from having problems. I was born in Kisumu, the third largest town in Kenya....

Continue reading "The Prodigal"

I had an “attitude.” I’m sure you’ve heard that phrase before, but to me it was real. Only I didn’t recognize it at the time. I come from a family of...

Continue reading "The King’s Daughter"

I don’t remember many details of my early childhood, before I turned five. Just a sense of sadness about those years–a sadness that I didn’t want. A sad childhood My...

Continue reading "Beyond Sadness"

How close I came to making a total wreck of my life I’ll probably never know. When I went to work for the U.S. Government, I met Al Larson at the USO. Within six months we...

Continue reading "I Wanted to Belong"

I am an American Indian woman from the Northern Paiute Tribe near Benton, California in the United States. Knowing who I am, many people are surprised to learn that I do not have...

Continue reading "All Natives’ Son"

Story told by Joe Ciccanti as told to Erin Pentelechuk I thought indulging in certain sexual practices was harmless and just a “normal thing that kids do”.  I started masturbating...

Continue reading "Finding a New Strength"

I am a Native North American woman. I was abandoned at the age of four, with five other siblings, in a hotel in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. My parents were on a drinking spree....

Continue reading "Hope and a Future"