BACA:
Bikers Against Child Abuse
Editor's Note: Many people think that our work at KotaPress is just about grief support after the death of a child. But we are also about providing information for healthy outcomes to pregnancies so the child and mother survive [a la the MISS Foundation "Baby's Breath" campaign]. We also want to see families healthy and alive as the children grow up, so this month we are offering information about BACA. This is a most interesting project!
Q:
What does BACA stand for?
A: Bikers Against Child Abuse
Q: How did BACA come into being?
A: It was started in 1995 by a clinical licensed therapist named J P Lilly who is also a biker.
Q: How many kids have been helped thru your organization? What exactly do you do to help them?
A: Over a thousand. We go to court and give them a sense of well being. We try to make them feel safe and secure again in a system that has severely let them down. We also go to the parole hearings with the children and their families.
Q: Are there chapters in every state? Do you have a website for those in states where there is no chapter?
A: No, not yet but we are working in it. Through the help of people like you doing these kinds of interviews, we are able to spread the word and the more people hear about us, the more interested they get, and then we get contacted and try to show them how to start up a chapter. [We] need more contacts in the media so that we can get to people like Oprah, Leno, Povich, Walsh, etc. We have a website www.bacausa.com.
Q: How do the children respond to your being available to help them? How do their foster or guardian parents who are keeping them safe respond to you all?
A: We are welcomed with open arms. We do not get involved with a family until we are contacted by one of them. There has to be a court case with a case number before we can get involved.
Q: How do you do what you do without responding in anger toward the people who might have hurt the children in the first place?
A: It is very difficult. We have to remember that if we respond with violence, the police and courts will not want [us] to get involved and give us referals. We would love to hand out our own kind of justice but if we did it that way, we would not be around very long and our main goal is to help children. There [have] been a few times that we have actually had to park outside of the childrens home to keep the perpetrator from entering and harming the child again. These perpetrators are very sick individuals and have no conscience.
Q:
What do you do when it pains
your heart so much to see
a child who is scared?
A: We have a reputation as being tough and "bad". The bottom line is we are all parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts and we do not like to see children hurt in any way. What do we do when we see a child hurt and scared? Some of us cry and we try to do whatever it takes to help that child feel safe and secure again. Yes, many of us are tough and can be "bad" if we have to, but hopefully we can get the perpetrator put away for a long time by working with the court system. Some of us are police officers, ex 1% ers, construction workers, lawyers, etc. We are people who love to ride motorcycles and who love children.
Q: How do the local police and family services offices work with you to best help the children in need?
A: They help by giving the families of children [who] are having a rough time, our phone number. We try to get the word out to these organizations by doing weekend fund raisers around our local towns to get out the word and to put money in our children's therapy fund that we have set up for some of the children [who] have no insurance.
Q: I saw in your newsletter that J.P. is also a play therapist. Can you share a little with us about how social work and play therapy work in conjunction with BACA's services?
A: You would probably have to talk to J P about that. I do know that J P got frustrated when he would help a child try to get through a bad time. He would make progress and the child would seem to get better and start doing ok again and then when it came time to go to court and testify, the child would go back into a shell and all the old feelings that J P tried to help them through, would come back. They would not sleep. They would be afraid of adults, would do poorly in school and would try to kill themselves in some instances. With BACA getting involved, the families have told us that there have been dramatic changes in the children for the best. Most families tell us that they do not know what they would have done without us. You would not believe how grateful these families are towards us.
Q:
If a biker wants to join
BACA and help with the cause,
how would they do that?
A: They can look us up on our website www.bacausa.com. All of the information that they need is on that site and all of the contacts.
Q: If a kid needs help and would like BACA to visit them, how would they contact you to make that happen?
A: Some of these children are very young and do not know about us. We rely on people like you and our booths that we set up on weekends to get the word out to the local authorities, families, schools etc. We then get phone calls from these people asking us to get involved. We have all passed FBI background checks and have a very strict policy as to how everything is handled from there. We have done presentations to schools, churches, chamber of commerce, police, and almost every kind of organization you can think of.
Q: Is there anything else you'd like to tell our readers?
A: If you or your readers have any contacts in the media that can further our cause, I would like to hear from them. My email is roofer29@networld.com. {Editor's Note: This email addy is for Paul DuBois who is the National Puclic Relations Officer for BACA -- feel free to be in touch with him!}
For
More About BACA
Please see www.bacausa.com.
