Adam Washbourne on how he used the rising sport of mixed martial arts to create a truly unique child abuse awareness campaign.
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Fighters Against Child Abuse Australia was founded on the 6th of June 2010 with one goal in mind: to wipe out child abuse once and for all in Australia. It was born on a Facebook page that was aimed at raising awareness and networking with fighters and martial artists to help children in need. In the 3.5 years since then Fighters Against Child Abuse Australia (FACAA) has grown to 20,000+ members on the original Facebook page and well over 250,000 people seeing its social media awareness posts across its eight different social media brand pages.
FACAA was recently granted full benevolent society status by the Australian charities and non for-profits commission and all donations to FACAA are now fully tax deductible. The charity group runs several programs aimed at ending child abuse once and for all:
–Survivors programs which offer mental health care
–Martial arts and combat sports training to teach youth self-defense and the core values of the martial artist.
–Educational reform programs aimed at teaching kids in schools about appropriate ways to stop child abusers in their tracks.
–Bully Buster programs which use professional combat sports athletes to mentor and help heal those who have been bullied and those who are doing the bullying (where applicable)
–A domestic violence wing which seeks to raise awareness for the issue as well as support for survivors.
I founded FACAA simply because it was needed. I have previously worked as a child trauma counselor so I know the evil that some children are forced to endure. I have also taught martial arts since I was 12-years-old and I know the incredibly positive impact that martial arts can have on kids who have survived abuse in their lives. I have personally been training in various martial art disciplines since I was 4 years old and when I started the charity I was able to call on my network of friends throughout the martial arts industry to help me out and come on board to help kids in our programs.
When I started it I asked every fighter and combat sports athlete I knew to please help promote us and get their gyms on board to help the kids of FACAA. I got a great reaction from almost every fighter who we went to. Most of them went out of their way to wear our patch, help the kids out and generally do whatever they could to help us out. To this day the original fighters are still with us and still wearing our patch and still mentoring the kids of FACAA. One fighter did brush me off and hand me a business card to talk to his “Rockstar Management Team” but the vast majority of fighters and athletes were incredibly supportive as outside of competition they are real and genuinely helpful people.
“Hey, we helped put that smile there where tears once were. It makes every hour and every dollar all worthwhile.”
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Initially FACAA started after I offered to pay the fees of a young boy covered in bruises who came into the gym where I was training. One of the fighters joked that I should be in every city. This got me thinking. I wonder why we can’t do this? I wonder why we can’t combine the two greatest ways I knew of to help kids who have survived child abuse: counseling and martial arts training. I knew for a fact that done correctly both of these combined could heal even the most broken of hearts. So why couldn’t this be done in Australia? At the time I had a good friend who was running a charity called Fighters Against Cystic Fibrosis and I thought “Hey that’s cool. Why can’t we fight against child abuse? A small bit of research later and FACAA was born.
I cannot tell you how incredible a journey FACAA has been so far; I cannot begin to describe the feeling I get when we receive an inbox from a family saying how amazing the help they received has been and how much their child’s lives have been turned around. All the fans, all the sponsors, all the fighters have just been awesome but none of it compares to the incredible feeling we get when we get a shot of one of the FACAA kids in their uniforms with the biggest beaming smile on their faces and knowing full well, “Hey, we helped put that smile there where tears once were. It makes every hour and every dollar all worthwhile.
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I have worked in child protection agencies and schools and am aware of the damage abuse of all kinds has on the lives of victims. Children are sexually abused in the home, church, school and by people who should be ensuring their safety. One young person said to me “Only if I had a book to read or someone to tell me how to identify the risks, then my story would have been different”. That statement prompted me to write this book for children “Secrets Can Be Told” by Linnet Brown to educate and empower children. This book has been… Read more »
Just as a matter of stats. They estimate around 1 in 5 kids under 18 is either sexually or physically abused. If you were to get all the victims of sexual and physical abuse to converge on Canberra you would be looking at almost 5mil people (20% of 22mil people) of all races ages gender class and religion. That’s a large enough voting block to change the course of politics in Australia, Its a group larger then the number of Christians or Pensioners or Poverty stricken. It isn’t a minority group. Its a representation of just how sick a large… Read more »
“I know the evil that some children are forced to endure…”
What a wonderful and invaluable service you provide…! An abuser does his best to disarm his intended target….using stealth and gradual escalation…when such a child is pounced upon, she may not know how to fight back or resist as the abuser may be someone in a position of trust….
I agree that the lessons to be learned from martial arts are profound…thank you for helping kids fight back…so often they are told to shut up and to just take the abuse….
I have followed FACAA almost from the start, and I have nothing but respect for the people who have dedicated their time and resources to helping children and adults to overcome the impact that abuse has in their lives. as a survivor of childhood abuse, I know how hard it is as a child to have nobody there or believing in me, so to have a person who is a skilled fighter watching my back must be an awesome thought for that wounded soul. to be believed and rebuilt is hard, yet the sooner the process starts the better the… Read more »
I need to address a glaring oversight on my behalf. I forgot to address the awesome role that the American FACA and in particular Joey Lee Primak have made with FACAA. I inboxed Joey and asked to become the Aussie FACA (hence FACAA fighters against child abuse Australia) as he had the name FACA (Fighters against child abuse) and was operating in the US at the time. Since joining forces with Joey our programs have proudly gone to the US and they currently run similar locally based anti child abuse programs to FACAA. Check out Jeoy and his crew at… Read more »
Could you recommend a decent trauma therapist in Brisbane. Useless is about the most positive thing I could say about my current counsellors (I’ve never seen the same one twice). I had about 13 years of physical abuse at the hands of bullies teachers and parents including a large number of life threatening events and it’s all coming back to haunt me at 40.
Hey David, presently we don’t have any mental health workers in the Brisbane area (except for a domestic violence counsellor) but we can offer you an online counselling and mentoring program or a placement in one of our fully accredited martial arts facilities if you want to give that a try ? Hit me up via inbox at http://www.facebook.com/facaaus and we can discuss it further mate.