I am writing today on behalf of the Maine Council of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry to express extreme concern regarding how reports of sexual assault are being handled by our elected officials.

It is not the council’s place to take a position on the recent confirmation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. We do, however, want to very strongly make the following points:

• We must make our youth safe from sexual assault.

• We must hold our youth (and adults) accountable for sexually assaulting other youth.

• When one of our youth is sexually assaulted, we must make it safe for the youth to tell her/his story and begin her/his healing. We must not be surprised when the youth’s memory of the assault is splotchy or uneven – that is the nature of traumatic memory.

We live in a poisoned political climate. We must not, however, let that climate keep us from working to reduce the alarmingly high rate of sexual assault of our youth. Our colleagues at the Maine Children’s Alliance point out that, in the 2017 Maine Integrated Youth Health Survey, more than 10 percent of our high school girls report having been physically forced to have sexual intercourse. That is a terrible number. We must work together to drastically reduce it.

When our youth are, God forbid, sexually assaulted, our community must make it safe for the youth to speak and heal. When any of our elected leaders mocks someone who says they are a sexual-assault survivor, we must tell that leader they are way, way out of line, that their comments are deeply injurious to our youth and that we will not accept such comments in our community and culture.

Lindsey Tweed, M.D., MPH

president, Maine Council of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry

Vassalboro