#kill predators

WASHINGTON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - What landed Mia Paz in jail was the sexual abuse she had suffered as a child. For three years, the Miami girl was abused by her uncle, a trauma she dared not speak of. Instead she ran. "I had so much fear, I didn’t know how to manage it, and I lashed out. I ran from police until my first charge was for resisting arrest at age 15," Paz said. "I was arrested again at age 16. The police officer he sat on my back and he lashed my feet to my hands. What that policeman did, it felt not much different from what my uncle did. I could speak about the police, but I couldn't talk about my uncle, the fear was deep inside." One in four girls will experience some form of sexual violence before the age of 18, and without care and support, the trauma goes unrecognized and many of these girls become truants and runaways who end up in prison, according to a new report. Paz, now 29 and a law student in Florida, recounted how her childhood sexual trauma paved the way toward incarceration at the launch on Thursday of the report, "Sexual Abuse to Prison Pipeline: The Girls' Story". Compiled by The Human Rights Projects for Girls and Georgetown Law Center on Poverty and Inequality, it calls for an overhaul of the U.S. criminal justice system to identify and treat sexual abuse trauma that lies at the root of victimized girls' arrests, particularly girls of color. (continued)