King County Sexual Assault Resource Center would like to thank the Enumclaw community for your tremendous support and commitment to ending the silence around sexual assault. You have given your time, voice and financial support. You, the residents of Enumclaw, are truly a significant and valued partner in KCSARC’s work to eliminate sexual assault.

You may have heard that sexual abuse of children has decreased 38 percent nationally over the last 15 years. This is encouraging news, but we still have much work to do. Fifty-two percent of KCSARC’s clients are children and teens. At KCSARC, we’re involving the parents and guardians of the children we’re working with in their recovery. We’ve seen an increased interest from parents, schools and organizations that work with children in learning skills and tools they can utilize to help prevent sexual assault.

We are in the planning stages of bringing additional innovative prevention programs directly to Enumclaw’s children and teens. We chose Enumclaw to be our first partner in this endeavor, not because Enumclaw has more cases of sexual assault than other areas in King County, but because Enumclaw is one of the most engaged communities in KCSARC’s work to end the silence around sexual assault.

We heard from you that KCSARC is important to your community when we did not hold our annual fundraising breakfast this last spring. When making this difficult decision, many factors contributed including our recent economic climate, staffing constraints and fundraising best practices. We feel that this change reflects the best use of KCSARC resources to raise funds to support our services to victims of sexual assault and their families in the Enumclaw area. In a partnership with Enumclaw residents, we want to focus on bringing the next level of prevention efforts to you. Our goal is to stay connected with Enumclaw and hope that our upcoming prevention and education programs will maintain that partnership. Overall, we believe this change will make a greater impact in our collective goal to end sexual assault.

Together KCSARC and Enumclaw can make great strides in ending sexual assault. We have some exciting ideas and welcome yours as well. Please continue to talk to your friends, neighbors and associates about sexual assault and look for KCSARC in Enumclaw this fall.

Mary Ellen Stone

Executive director