One out of 91 children are autistic. A global escalation has put disabilities as a targeted concern.  From Jay Leno’s recent coverage to John Travolta’s son, Jed’s  untimely death, to alarming statistical findings has elicited concern for our own children, neighbors, and friends. We are asking a vital question: Why the escalation?One out of 91 children are autistic. A global escalation has put disabilities as a targeted concern.  From Jay Leno’s recent coverage to John Travolta’s son, Jed’s  untimely death, to alarming statistical findings has elicited concern for our own children, neighbors, and friends. We are asking a vital question: Why the escalation?

Dr. J. Blumenthal, a neurologist, lists among the possible causes of Autism: environmental toxins, mercury, the preservative Thimerosal in vaccinations, processed food, compromised immune systems, and a genetic propensity. He advocates identifying the underlying cause before medicating and suggests the earlier the diagnosis helps the prognosis. If you suspect your child has a behavioral, language or speech challenge have an assessment. Your local school may have someone on staff to begin the process or they can recommend one.

Parents feel distraught upon hearing the initial diagnosis –Autism. A pediatrician often seals the fate, “Your child is disordered and it will last for a lifetime.”  Reticent to give false hope they tell you what your child can’t do, rather than encouraging what they can do. Unable to predict the future, the journey of negotiating through this complicated syndrome becomes a maze of uncertainty. What treatments, diet, speech, social skills therapy or alternative modalities to pursue? How can a challenged child can fit-in, end the isolation of being different and feeling out of sync?  Without isolating in their private world, is there something he or she can relate to, feel good about, including moments of respite?

When I heard Joanne Lara’s, a notable expert on Autism (M.A. in special education and a BA in dance) words,  “I’m on a mission to bring arts back into the schools and into the lives of our kids,” my heart leaped with applause. Fifteen years earlier I had made the same commitment with our Morph America Programs, geared for the arts.

Her intense enthusiasm blazed, sharing the benefits of her program Autism Movement therapy (AMT), a method to ‘wake up’ the brain.  AMT is an empowering sensory integration strategy that connects both the left and right hemispheres of the brain.

Ms. Lara explained, “There’s a bridge between the left and right hemisphere that transmits information. What happen with Autistic kids is that the transmission of the information is not going through. Dance and music forces the brain to reorganize itself. Through the music and movement the child is asked to hear the music, process the sequence and the patterns, and then dance, it takes both sides of the brain to dance. A child, who rarely says a word, will sing.”

Children with autism excel in art: Visual arts, yoga, martial arts, horseback riding and surfing are effective and enjoyable adjuncts to traditional therapy.

The whole brain cognitive thinking approach can improve behavior, emotional states, academic, performance social, and speech language skills.  AMT offers a twelve-week period in which the individual can increase overall self–determination awareness along with healthier, improved self-esteem, the ultimate goal.

After attending AMT classes, and using Aut-erobics, an empowering companion video, the mother of a 9-year-old related that her daughter finally found a way to relate to her peers, and she had made her first friend. A miracle to behold, for a child that isolated, refused to speak or look someone in the eye.

Ms. Lara shared, “We’ve seen extraordinary breakthroughs, kids have fun, they laugh, and they dance their hearts out. Interaction with music opens their trust levels and their soul bursts forth. Dancing and singing is a living dream for a child who won’t speak, but desperately wants acceptance.” Autistic children feel their way through life, rather than think their way. They sense their environment first and pick up things we don’t ordinarily perceive. We tend to label and identify, while they are they are communicating through behavior and their emotions.

Watching Ms. Lara interact with students is an eye-opener; literally she makes direct eye contact, something autistic children typically avoid. She uses her whole body in a rhythmic flowing sign language that allows choice. She motions to the floor “Do you want to sit?” Then lunges a leg toward the dance floor, “Or you can dance.” Most of the children will choose dance.

Open and authentic communication with our children is vital. If you are sad, don’t deny your emotions with a happy face, instead be truthful and relate, “I am sad.” Authenticity alleviates confusion for the child who senses the discrepancy and needs help to put his emotional, upside-down world in order.

Learning whole-brain techniques apply to all of us. Learning to communicate, to listen, to acknowledge your child fundamentally as OK, helps to discipline, to be heard, and keep trust channels open with your children. If you are challenged to give direct statements to your child, whether he’s autistic or in the normal range, Aut-erobics could help build your skills to discipline, communicate effectively, and have fun with your child.

Let’s not abandon a well-rounded arts program for our children and make it our ongoing mission. The arts enrich and give meaning and understanding to ourselves and the world around us.

http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=news/health/your_health&id=7401714

Kyle Cousins – Glee audition tape

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=104146666#mstv_thread

The lines between fiction and nonfiction are blurring and giving rise to a new form that might best be called “true fiction.” So it is with San Francisco-based Charles A. Bonner’s ground-breaking new novel “The Bracelet” that is presented as fiction but is based on literally thousands of cases, some he litigated as a Civil Rights Trial Attorney, many dealing with child prostitution and child safety issues.The lines between fiction and nonfiction are blurring and giving rise to a new form that might best be called “true fiction.” So it is with San Francisco-based Charles A. Bonner’s ground-breaking new novel “The Bracelet” that is presented as fiction but is based on literally thousands of cases, some he litigated as a Civil Rights Trial Attorney, many dealing with child prostitution and child safety issues.

Do we read nonfiction in order to receive information, or do we read it to experience art?  Bonner does several things at once. Taking his cue from Truman Capote’s “In Cold Blood,” Bonner dons a memoirist’s hat as he interweaves his own experiences as a lawyer fighting to expose serial sexual predators.

And as a facile prose stylist, he vividly convey the sights, sounds, and smells that their victims encountered living in the ghastly chamber of horrors, the windowless, underground room, the dirty foam bed, the grate with a metal chain, the bucket for a toilet, the daily beatings, rape, humiliation of the young women who tell the same horror story of being dragged off the street into a dungeon, losing all contact with the outside world.

With Bonner’s  deft, artful writing, readers meet multi-millionaire Karl Burmel ( John Jamelske in reality) a collector of women — a serial rapist who scooped up runaway girls and other vulnerable women off the street and stashed them, one by one, in his windowless, concrete cocoon until he finally released them, blindfolded or in the dead of night, after months or years of captivity. This is true fiction, freed from rigid constraints, the boredom of statistics.  What remains is an unforgettable tale that demands attention.

“Bonner is not one of God’s easiest creatures, but he surely is one of the best.” There are adjectives that come to mind when describing the famed African-American lawyer, who for 30 years has set the standard for prosecutorial skill in America. Some are intrepid, brave, independent, brilliant, driven, indomitable, respected, focused, relentless and confident. Each fits perfectly well. But after reading “The Bracelet” one is compelled to add two more adjectives to that already formidable list: principled and enraged.  Beyond all other characterizations one may ascribe to Bonner, the principal descriptors today for this inherently honorable man that is he is committed to protecting the world’s children.

Of course, there’s another descriptor that has long been associated with Bonner That descriptor is justice, to which he has devoted his life. Yet not until now – until this searing new chiller of a thriller about child sexploitation, has justice assumed an even greater role.  Justice has morphed from a noun to a verb — enacted by Bonner with a vengeance — fueled not only by his intense love of justice, his profound knowledge of law, but his unparalleled ability to dispense it. Charles A Bonner is a man of action. While others speak of justice, Bonner creates the ways to achieve it — and he has done so in this book casting a sharp eye over the political and cultural landscape as he takes a literary scalpel and a shotgun to the guilty parties.

The fact is, Bonner has been described as decent a man as you’ll ever meet. He’s written the book that others were too afraid, too inexperienced and too unskilled to write.

The book’s action begins when Macie, a bored young African American teenager is tricked into sexual servitude by a perverted old predator that chains her into submission. Karl Burmel apparently was a master of manipulation and cunning.   After liberation, Macie went undercover to discover the other children imprisoned by her depraved jailer.  It is horrifying to see up close the psychic damage to the young victims.  A number had become alcoholics, some developed suicidal tendencies and post-traumatic stress.  What is truly alarming is how closely their stories resemble one another, according to their ages when they were abused. Secrecy and shame are first cousins. 

But Macie was determined to survive and thrive and not to let Burmel win.  Survival with vengeance. “We cannot direct the wind, but we can adjust the sail.”  After winning a legal victory through Adam Conner (Bonner) she discovers four other girls who were also enslaved by Burmel.  With the proceeds from his estate, the girls  bravely  band together to become counter traffickers.  Determined to rescue the victims of the global sex trade, they find the source players who profit from the billion dollar business of human sex merchandising. They infiltrate brothels in Thailand, Japan, Brazil, Ukraine and Israel. They hold first-hand interviews with victims, their pimps, and their abusers. They map the trafficking routes of the sex tourism industry, and chart the commerce fueled by the purchase and sale of minors—discovering that virtually the entire globe is involved and affected by this maliciously evil growing industry.

Brought to light are the established mafias that dominate the trade. The big players in Europe today are Russians, Albanians, and Ukrainians (and recently, in Italy, Nigerians). In southeastern Europe, Turkish, Kurdish, Serbian, Greek, Bulgarian, Hungarian, and Romanian networks move Eastern European women into Western Europe and the Middle East. Many of these groups simply added human trafficking to existing crime portfolios, often running women alongside traditional contraband, like drugs and arms.

Even those in the group at highest risk—poor young women—tend to see trafficking as something that may happen to someone else, but not to them. In surveys, most victims say that they don’t know anyone who’s been trafficked. That may be partly because women often conceal this experience, even from their own families. Add desperate poverty and an unhappy household—the standard “push factors”—and the pipeline of likely trafficking victims never runs dry.

By gracefully weaving in interviews with madams and other sexual gatekeepers — and sometimes even the pimps or johns themselves —Bonner constructs an insightful, resonant, and nuanced narrative that details just how complex and massive this problem.

Why do we treat children as victims in cases of sexual abuse, but as soon as money is exchanged, we deem these sexually abused children as “criminals?” Why is there such an overwhelming demand for sex with a child? Are we adequately teaching our children sexual respect? Why are men obsessed with power, property, and world domination of women? The problem is monumental:                                                               

Bonner makes compellingly clear that if we’re not seeing the problem, it’s only because we’re not looking. But Bonner’s book charts a clear path:

. The secret ancient power of the divine feminine

. The key to the gender code

. The debt men owe to women

. Who profits from the $10-billion-a-year business of sex slavery

A portion of the proceeds from this book will go to the Bracelet Charitable Foundation Freedom Fund to empower victims of all forms of slavery.

Verily Publishing Company, 261 pages,  $9.99