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| Dr. Brook Bello Screenshot from Illinois Family Institute video |
More Too Life helps survivors of sexual abuse by providing them with mentoring and education. She received the Lifetime Achievement Award from former President Barack Obama for her work.
At the invitation of
Parents for the Protection of Girls, Dr. Bello spoke about her experiences and gave an impassioned speech about
why parental notification is so important.
“I was raped at 11 years old. I started being trafficked as a young teen,”
Bello said. “Our traffickers made us get abortions. Had my parents been notified, my mother would have known what city I was in. She would have known what street I possibly would have been near. She could have contacted law
enforcement.”
She also spoke about how the abortions she was forced to had a permanent effect on her gynecological health. She suffered “miscarriage after miscarriage after miscarriage.” By the time her doctor learned that she had issues related to previous abortions, it was too late to reverse the damage. Untreated scar tissue left her unable to carry a child to term.
“I ask the public, and I ask the Illinois legislature, ‘why would you want a child to keep something secret that’s going to affect the rest of her life?' I beg of you, I plead, Illinois, to not reverse and to please notify parents. I think that every state should notify parents. Why keep something a secret that affects someone for the rest of their life, and is absolutely connected to various issues of human trafficking and rape and violence that that youth is probably afraid to share? Give them a safe place to fall, and notify parents.”
