In today’s digital landscape, rates of sexting and pornography use are on the rise amongst teenagers. Join Cassie Gillespie & Pete Cudney from VT-CWTP as they talk with Su Robinson, LICSW about the prevalence, best practices and dangers associated with sexting and porn.
Transcript:
Cassie Gillespie (00:03):
Welcome to the field. A podcast of targeted trainings for child welfare professionals. Join us as we chat with local experts about topics that are pertinent to child welfare in Vermont. I’m Cassie Gillespie and today we’ll be talking about teens and sexting with Su Robinson. Su has 25 years of experience working as a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and provides outpatient services at new England Counseling and Trauma Associates in Williston, Vermont. Her primary specialty is working with youth and adults who have engaged in sexually harmful behaviors. She provides training and consultation as well as evaluation services.
Cassie Gillespie (00:40):
Welcome Sue we’re so psyched to have you here.
Cassie Gillespie (00:44):
You’re very welcome.
Cassie Gillespie (00:45):
So this is a topic that we get a lot of questions about from the field. I think that the place that makes the most sense to jump in is just for you to give us a definition, if you don’t mind, about what sexting is.
Cassie Gillespie (00:58):
Okay, sexting is the sending or receiving of sexually explicit or sexually suggestive images, messages, or video. It most often occurs through texts, private messages or on social networks or on apps, such as Kik, Flickr, Instagram, Omegle, Tumbler, Skype. So that is the definition.
Cassie Gillespie (01:22):
I’ve never heard of most of those apps.
Su Robinson (01:23):
There’s a lot.
Pete Cudney (01:28):
So Sue, the way you described that, this isn’t directly pertinent, but I’m a father of two teenagers and it occurs to me that the way you described that there may be a fair amount of what we’re talking about, that’s going on, but what’s normal and what’s problematic? Help us out with that a little bit.
Su Robinson (01:52):
Well, I can do that. I would like to start if it’s okay by talking about the prevalence. And talking about some studies and then ask away whatever questions you might have. So there’s a 2018 study, Jeff temple out of the university of Texas. He’s the primary guy when it comes to research and sexting, he’s done a lot of different studies. So when this 2018 study, he did a meta-analysis that included 39 studies from 2009 to 2016 and over 110,000 youth.
Cassie Gillespie (02:32):
Wow.
Su Robinson (02:32):
So huge sample size. So what he found is that, and others, he had other people working with him that one in seven children, or youths, sends sexts while one in four received them. So you might ask why more receiving than sending because perhaps some of the respondents under reported or because sextors may have sent the same picture to multiple people.
Su Robinson (03:03):
And because the people who received the sext might not have reciprocated the message. So that’s why it’s one in seven. So the prevalence of nonconsensual sexting is 12.5%. So that’s basically one in eight youth reported either forwarding or having a sext forwarded without their consent. So youth were more likely to send and receive sexts also with increasing age. And the conclusion they came to is that youth sexting appears to be an emerging and potentially normal component of sexual behavior and development. So it’s become fairly common in the digital age. I’ll review some other studies. So the race has certainly increased. I actually think it’s more ubiquitous than this study suggests than one in seven. And it’s basically today, what is considered what was when you and I were young or I was young for space. Like that’s how they get to know one another, the increased prevalence of this behavior into older youth in particular is associated with their sexual exploration and identity.
Su Robinson (04:27):
Other findings of this study is that there’s very little research done on kids who are under the age of 12 when it comes to sexting, even though most kids at around age 11 have cell phones nowadays, there were no significant sex differences in the rate of sending or receiving sexts. Okay. So that might be surprising. So boys and girls equally participate in sexting, but there is a clear gender difference. So compared to boys, you might not be surprised to hear this, girls report feeling a lot more pressure to sext, and they are also very worried that they’ll be judged harshly for sexting or for not sexting. So either being labeled a prude or slut-shaming boys are more likely to see sexting more as an opportunity to showcase their social status. So the double standard really seems to impair or cause distress in many, many young girls, young women. Nonconsensual forwarding of sexts can lead to a lot of harassment by peers, a lot of cyber bullying and, or blackmail.
Pete Cudney (05:49):
Is there research on how prevalent that is, the forwarding?
Su Robinson (05:55):
That’s 12.5%.
Pete Cudney (05:57):
Oh wow. So that’s almost as high as one in eight. Okay.
Su Robinson (06:01):
Yeah. One in eight. Yeah. And then the final conclusion was how important it is to emphasize digital citizenship, which really encourages everyone to act in a way that is safe and legal and ethical in their online and digital behaviors and interactions. So that’s probably the largest study that has been done. Another recent study from 2018, this was a Pennsylvania Youth Risk Behavior Survey. That was over 6,000 kids. They found that 29% of kids sext.
Pete Cudney (06:42):
Okay. And is that including consensual as well as nonconsensual that higher percentage?
Su Robinson (06:49):
No that’s consensual sexting. 3% is nonconsensual.
Cassie Gillespie (06:53):
Can I jump in with a question?
Su Robinson (06:55):
Go ahead.
Cassie Gillespie (06:55):
I actually have two questions. So the first is that I’m surprised that the number is so low. I think that I had an assumption that a larger percentage of kiddos are sexting than those studies suggest.
Su Robinson (07:10):
Well, and again, some of the respondents might have under-reported how often they do that. I mean, certainly when I talk to kids, it does sound like it’s fairly ubiquitous. And according to the studies, there’s definitely been an increase over the last nine years or so. There’s a study from 2011 University of New Hampshire, and that was less than 16% of teens had created, appeared in, or received a sext. So I mean, clearly the number has been growing over time and the research might under-represent what’s really happening.
Cassie Gillespie (07:54):
That makes sense. The other thing I was wondering about in those studies is that when they break down the differences between boys and girls, to your knowledge, have they looked at any youth that don’t identify as either male or female? Like have they just done it in one of the traditional gender lines?
Su Robinson (08:09):
Yes. As far as I know, from what I’ve seen.
Cassie Gillespie (08:12):
That makes sense. Hopefully some, some other data will be coming around that at some point.
Su Robinson (08:16):
Yeah. So there’s one other, well, the two others, 2011 study with a 16% only in that study, two and a half of youth created nude or nearly nude pictures or videos. I mean, it was such a low rate and only 1% it was very sexually explicit. So that was really surprising to me. But again, it speaks to the increase over time about how this is just becoming more of a everyday thing. In 2014, there was another longitudinal association between teen sexting sexual behavior. So that was by Jeff Temple again. And what they found that six year study is that sexting fits within the context of adolescent sexual behavior and that there was no relationship between sexting and risky sexual behaviors over time. There was a slight increase in those that actively texted in terms of who would it be having actual sex the following year. So for those who were active texting, there was some relationship with sex the following year.
Pete Cudney (09:25):
So do you know, have there been any studies of parents asking how aware they are of whether their children are sexting or not? In other words, you know, if the, if the prevalence of sexting is growing, if it’s becoming a more normative part are the adults aware, are they keeping track of it?
Su Robinson (09:47):
I really don’t know. I haven’t seen anything of that nature.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
Okay it just, it occurs to me, I’m curious what, what your thoughts are about it that as norms change they’re changing for one generation, but the older generation, the parents, are only able to make sense of those behaviors based on what’s been normative for, for them when they were younger. Could you speak a little bit about that kind of divide and whether that’s a problem?
Su Robinson (10:22):
I think parental denial is a very big problem. And maybe some of that is generational, but I think that it’s very hard for parents to engage in conversations with kids. And I think it’s equally difficult for many, many children to have a conversation or be willing to have a conversation with a parent. So and that’s really what we have to be doing is having those open dialogues with our kids. But it’s hard. It’s a very hard thing to achieve if there’s an unwilling participant on one end.
Pete Cudney (10:58):
Absolutely. Yeah.
Cassie Gillespie (10:59):
So in terms of being prepared to have those conversations and to look out for kids, what types of behaviors should folks be looking for?
Su Robinson (11:11):
Well, I’ll give you three main categories. One is sextortion type of behaviors. So I’m going to give you a very well known kind of example of that. The Amanda Todd story, I don’t know if you’ve heard of that. So she was on a webcam. She was live streaming on an online chat room, which a lot of kids do. And she was encouraged to show her breasts in the moment. And so she flashed her breasts and while doing so, and when she was not aware, this was happening, a man took a picture and captured her topless image. So incidentally people who do this, that capture the image and then trade this image they are referred to as coppers.
Pete Cudney (12:02):
Oh, there’s a term for it.
Su Robinson (12:04):
There’s a term. From that moment on, she was the victim of sextortion and blackmailing. She was told if she didn’t send more images, her image would be sent throughout the internet. She was named called, slut shamed, bullied online. And she ended up killing herself when she was 15 years old.
Pete Cudney (12:25):
That’s tragic.
Su Robinson (12:26):
So I think clinically, I had a client not too long ago, she posted a picture of herself online. It went to the wrong person. And so he ended up threatening to kill her and her family, If she did send more photographs.
Cassie Gillespie (12:45):
That’s terrible.
Pete Cudney (12:45):
So the power and the coercion is a huge part of it.
Su Robinson (12:48):
It’s unbelievable. And I also worked with a male victim of this who thought he was trading images with a 20 year old female or I think she was 25, 25 year old female. And as soon as he sent some material to that person, that person said, I’m just like you, I’m male. And then proceeded to say, if you don’t send me more images, I’m going to send this video all over the place. So, you know, that stuff is really scary. There’s just so much so much risk for predatory behavior.
Pete Cudney (13:31):
Yeah, that sounds so tricky. I mean at the same time that it’s potentially becoming more normative, and children are exploring it on their own because their parents either are in denial or don’t know, or don’t know how to talk about it. There’s this huge risk that what would potentially be normative if in the wrong hands, I guess becomes a real isolating and threatening experience. Oh, wow.
Su Robinson (13:56):
Yeah. The other kind of behavior is revenge porn. So sending out another person’s nude pictures or videos of that person involved in sexual activity as a way to get revenge or to express anger that can certainly happen in relationships with the exes. And then the other thing is relationships, people in relationships where one partner might be pressuring, the other partner maybe subtly, or not so subtly, but you cannot have compliance and consent at the same time.
Cassie Gillespie (14:35):
I’m thinking about the intersections here between all of these types of pressure and sex trafficking, commercial, sexual exploitation, you know, the way the statutes are written in Vermont, the exchange that being forced or coerced to share a sexual for someone else’s gratification or profit. It definitely falls under the legislation.
Su Robinson (14:57):
So in terms of what kids need to understand, I think they first need to know that once they press send, obviously the picture is no longer in their control and social networks unfortunately make it especially difficult to gain control since they are designed to publish and share images quickly and easily. So even if you think of Snapchat, even when someone opens a Snapchat, they can take a screenshot before it disappears, and then they can send it to whoever Flickr and Instagram also allow open and unrestricted sharing of pictures. So I don’t think kids are really, you know, kids think they’re invincible, much of the time. They just don’t seem to recognize the danger. And then the other thing they have to understand, not so much in Vermont, cause I’ll talk about the statute in Vermont, but in other places, depending on where they live, miners who can create, send or receive images can be charged with child pornography.
Su Robinson (16:10):
And that is just a huge issue in the United States continues to be. So in 2019, there was another research article. Again, Jeff Temple being involved teenagers sexting and the law, which was published in pediatrics. And so as of then when it was written in 23 States, sexting between teens is still considered child pornography. In 2015, there were 30 States without modern day sexting laws. So the good news is progress is being made. The bad news is that it is not being made quick enough. So I’ll give an example of that. So when I worked in Colorado, I worked with a lot of kids who are charged with child pornography or sexual exploitation. And unfortunately they were put on the sex offender registry. And that was even when there was consensual sexting. So you think about consensual sexting between adolescents and you get stigmatized as being a sex offender.
Su Robinson (17:22):
But if two people were 19, they wouldn’t even think about getting charged, right. It would not be a State issue. So I’ll refer to the case of initials TB, recently, the Colorado Supreme court, they upheld his adjudication as delinquent for sexually exploiting children, which requires him to register as a sex offender for at least 20 years. And that was based on behavior he was doing in 2012 and 2013 when he was swapping erotic pictures with two girls, a 15 year old and a 17 year old. Because the law in Colorado did not change until January, 2018, a law, which basically said teenagers were not going to be prosecuted for sexual exploitation anymore. TB was held to the archaic law from when he was first adjudicated. And so if you could imagine being on a sex offender registry for 20 years for consensual sexting.
Cassie Gillespie (18:25):
And he was a minor at the time of the act?
Su Robinson (18:27):
Yes, he was 15 years old.
Pete Cudney (18:30):
And it wasn’t coercive. There wasn’t a power imbalance.
Su Robinson (18:34):
No.
Pete Cudney (18:34):
Yeah, that’s a shame. It strikes me, I don’t know if this is true in your experience Su, but in my previous clinical practice, I often found that people either tended to I don’t know, maybe this is oversimplified, but either over react or under respond when there were concerns around inappropriate sexual behavior, either, either they seem to kind of deny it and brush it under the rug and not respond at all, or they became so fearful that their response was way too extreme. Is that your experience with sexting?
Su Robinson (19:11):
Absolutely.
Pete Cudney (19:11):
Yeah. Okay. So we have to find that sweet spot in the middle, I guess.
Su Robinson (19:15):
Yeah definitely. And I worked with one female youth in Vermont who was charged with child pornography. This was like 12 years ago though. Because she sent very sexually explicit images of herself to adult men. But very sexually explicit. That was the only case I’ve heard of here. And then in 2009 is when Vermont, actually Vermont is very progressive I think in the, in this regard, if we still think of 23 States that have not changed to modern day sexting laws. So 2009 is when Vermont changed their laws. So kids would not be charged with sexual exploitation. There was a scandal on 2011 involving Milton students, high school students, 22 of them ages 14 to 17. They took part in a teen sexting ring and it was five male Milton high school students. They should set up a shared Gmail account, bromail@gmail.com and they then ask female students to send indecent pictures of themselves. So the girl sent pictures to the boys and they forwarded the images to this group Gmail account. And so eventually the students started getting alarmed about what was happening and reported them. And there was an investigation about whether the boys should be charged, but they were not charged. They just wanted to use this case as more of an education to get the word out and talk about sexting.
Pete Cudney (20:57):
Yeah, but that does seem a little bit more nuanced in terms of a response. Cassie, were you going to say something?
Cassie Gillespie (21:03):
What I’m thinking about is what can adults or Family Service Workers or caregivers or kin caregivers be doing to support kids around this issue?
Su Robinson (21:15):
Well, there’s a lot of things they can be doing. First is I think we have to have open dialogue with kids who are doing this about the online dangers of sexting behavior. We have to give them information that if they’re going to sext that they have to be safe doing it. And that in part means you’re not going to share videos with people that you don’t actually know that you haven’t actually met. And I think it’s not about telling kids that they have to abstain entirely because obviously that’s not going to happen.
Cassie Gillespie (21:54):
Right. It’s a harm reduction approach.
Su Robinson (21:57):
We need to focus on preventing acts of sexual violation, you know, pressuring a partner to sext or sending a sexual image to an unwilling recipient that happens a lot too. And sexual education in schools, I think really has to be very proactive and include allow it to majorly focus on sexting behaviors because this is the new norm. And if it is like first face, we can’t just not talk about it. If we know that kids are doing this, if we know kids are getting harmed by it by sextortion or relationships that are abusive or whatever I think there does have to be an emphasis on digital sexual ethics really based on the rights to one’s body and freedom from harm. And I think that schools need to distinguish between harmful aggravated, and adult involved incidents versus youth only developmentally normative sexting.
Pete Cudney (23:05):
Do you have a sense to what extent this is currently talked about in health curricula in middle school or high school?
Su Robinson (23:12):
I really haven’t heard much at all. I don’t know if you have, you have two teenage boys.
Pete Cudney (23:20):
I have two, yeah, a boy and a girl. But honestly I’m behind in terms of these conversations with them. So after this is done, I’ll probably be following up with them. I don’t know what the curricula is. That’s a really good question. I don’t know.
Cassie Gillespie (23:33):
I do know that as a trainer, we get a lot of questions from the field around how DCF workers should handle this conversation about what they should do if they find that a youth that they’re working with has been sexting. And one of the things that’s coming up for me listening to you is that if we know that we need to have these conversations with youth who are sexting and we have no way of knowing who’s sexting, we should just be having these conversations with all youth full stop all the time, right?
Su Robinson (24:05):
Yeah, and I think youth, they have to learn how to manage those risks. They have to learn to resist. If they’re being pressured, they have to learn how to seek support when it comes to the issue of sexting, they’ve got to learn about healthy relationships, rights, and respect and responsibility towards oneself and others. And then the other thing with parents, I think parents really need to be careful about this abstinence only attitude or likewise having really, really shaming responses to their kids. And I see that a lot of the time it’s that, denial or conversely, just really making such a huge deal out of it. And sometimes it does need to be a huge deal, but that’s not across the board.
Pete Cudney (25:00):
And it occurs to me that sexuality in general is a fairly taboo subject in our culture. I know that parents struggle with talking with their kids about any kind of sexual behavior, access to pornography. Are you aware Su? Are there resources that parents can turn to for guidance on this issue, locally within Vermont, or online?
Su Robinson (25:23):
I don’t know specifically about Vermont. There are a lot of wonderful resources online. There is a resource from Media Smarts and Canada, and that is digital citizenship, a guide for parents. There’s also Common Sense Media, which is awesome as man, as well as AmandaToddLegacy.org. That’s wonderful too. I mean, there’s some very wonderful resources.
Pete Cudney (25:56):
Well, that’s great. Thank you for pointing us in those directions. That’s helpful.
Cassie Gillespie (25:58):
Yeah. I think that so many parents, and again, I’m going to also loop in and caregivers and Family Service Workers are feeling a little bit caught about how to discuss a totally different digital landscape, right. Because today’s youth are so exposed to pornography online in a way that we were not as children.
Su Robinson (26:21):
So would you like me to get into the, the pornography realm?
Cassie Gillespie (26:26):
Yeah, let’s get into it.
Su Robinson (26:29):
All right. So oh boy, there’s so many issues when it comes to the pornography, you know, lots of teens are getting very desensitized to pornography and pornography addictions can lead many young men into having ED.
Pete Cudney (26:49):
Erectile Dysfunction.
Su Robinson (26:49):
Yeah. And so what’s happening is now there’s this huge, NoFap movement. I don’t know if you’ve either one of you have heard of that.
Cassie Gillespie (27:00):
No. What does that stand for?
Su Robinson (27:01):
NoFap is a movement specifically about getting males to stop masturbating to pornography. And it is all over the place online because what a lot of young men have realized is that they now have erectile dysfunction and you know, their lives are really impaired by that. And so, yeah, so that’s a big thing.
Su Robinson (27:32):
So the mainstreaming of pornography is very problematic and if you can believe about 30% of all internet traffic is porn.
Pete Cudney (27:43):
Wow. Of all internet traffic?
Su Robinson (27:45):
Yeah.
Cassie Gillespie (27:46):
And is that in the States? Worldwide?
Su Robinson (27:49):
That’s worldwide. So more than 90% of boys have seen online porn and 60% of girls and 88% of the scenes of the most popular porn include physical aggression. 48% include verbal aggression, and 95% of that aggression is met with a neutral or a positive response.
Pete Cudney (28:20):
It’s so confusing.
Su Robinson (28:22):
I know. So, then there’s this thing called Gonzo pornography. So it places the viewer directly in the scene it’s called the point of view angle. So one or more of the participants both participate in the film, in the filming and doing other sexual acts. So it takes a storyline, strips a storyline out of the pornography and goes basically straight to sex.
Cassie Gillespie (28:50):
And so the current wave of pornography is really teaching youth that pleasure and sexual satisfaction come from aggressive sex. So it’s highly problematic in that way. There is such a thing called the internet rule 34. And I don’t know if you’ve heard of that, but it basically means that if it exists anywhere out there, if an idea is now existing, there is pornography about it.
Pete Cudney (29:23):
Is this related to where Disney Anime characters are folded in?
Su Robinson (29:25):
Yes, totally. So I think we have to equally have those conversations with our kids about what they’re getting exposed to online how they’re processing that information, you know, the problem is too, if they get desensitized to certain pornography, then they start looking at different forms of pornography and then overtime their arousal template changes.
Pete Cudney (30:02):
Right. They’re going toward more extreme, more extreme.
Su Robinson (30:05):
Yes.
Pete Cudney (30:07):
It’s almost like a substance abuse pattern where, what used to cause the physiological response no longer does. So you have to increase the dose.
Su Robinson (30:17):
Absolutely. And when you think about sex and what a powerful reinforcer it is, it can lead to very addictive like behaviors and yeah.
Pete Cudney (30:30):
Okay. And so overall we really need to open up lines of communication is what we really need to do at the center?
Su Robinson (30:39):
Absolutely. There’s a film that a NYU professor made called the price of pleasure, pornography, sexuality, and relationships. And it really the film explores what happens when images of sexual degradation are used for arousal. And in this film, she asks like if a 12 year old boy grows up watching a woman being penetrated by five men, what is that? What’s going to be appealing to him when he’s 25 years old, you know? So it speaks to the need to have careful supervision or at least discussions and checking. There are a lot of parental control apps nowadays. So that’s good. If a parent feels like they need to do that for their kid. And there’s also other websites there’s fightthenewdrug.org. And that is a video based program for youth about pornography and talking about the impact of pornography on their brain and their heart and the world.
Cassie Gillespie (31:49):
There’s also it’s time we talked.com, which is about violence prevention that supports young people, parents, schools, and even government and the community sector to understand and address the influence of pornography.
Cassie Gillespie (32:05):
That’s super helpful. Su at what age do you feel like it’s important to start having these conversations with youth? And I know that different kids are at different levels.
Su Robinson (32:16):
It’s kind of hard to generalize. I do think that if a child starts asking questions related to internet, they have full access to a cell phone. Probably soon after a child gets his cell phone, there should be some kind of dialogue. If you run into this, then I want you to tell me if you see an image of a naked person, let me know. But 12, usually around 12, 13 when they start getting some exposure about stuff in school, I think and what’s healthy and what’s not healthy regarding screen time, like that is talked about in school.
Pete Cudney (33:11):
Well, this is, this is a compelling subject. I’m finding myself really wanting to think more about what steps to take both personally and professionally around this as well. And I really appreciate the resources that you’ve given us, Cassie I wonder if we can make these available in the text that goes with this podcast episode as well.
Cassie Gillespie (33:33):
Absolutely. And I think we can upload them on the webpage too. We’ll find out, but I’m pretty sure we can put some links in there.
Pete Cudney (33:43):
Perfect. Sue, are there, are there aspects of this subject area that we haven’t touched on that you’d like to make sure we include before we wrap up?
Su Robinson (33:52):
Well the only thing, well actually a couple of things. First is I want you just to know that the law in Vermont falls under the obscenity statute. So let’s say you have a teenager, that’s doing this. I think it’s important to know the law in Vermont. And it says, no minors, shall knowingly and voluntarily without threat or coercion use a computer or electronic communication device to transmit an, indecent visual depiction of himself or herself to another person. So they will not transmit it. Likewise, they shall not possess a visual depiction. So that’s how the law is worded, but it states that a minor who transmits a photo or possesses a photo who has not previously been adjudicated for sexting that they will not be prosecuted. So it provides an opportunity for a teen to go through Diversion instead, but if a teen is caught a second time at that point, they can be adjudicated or they could be charged in district court. But nevertheless, they will not be subjected to sex offender registration.
Cassie Gillespie (35:15):
I just want to make this crystal clear, even though this is now becoming kind of a normative part of teen sexual development, you know, quote unquote, first base, this sexting is still against the law, under the obscenities statute with these additional provisions that prevent certain charging or judication, but it is still illegal there.
Su Robinson (35:38):
Yes. And the other thing I think is really important is for kids to learn the, what if, or could, this questions. And those would be questions like could sending this lead to drama? Could this lead to future regret? What if I accidentally send it to somebody I didn’t intend to send it to? What if a friend scrolls through my messages and sees the pictures? What if I feel pressured to send a Sext and I don’t want to? What if my mom checks my phone and sees a sext? What if my relationship ends badly, and my ex decides to send it out to whoever? So they have to learn to ask themselves those questions. And as well, I think that kids really have to know the differences between consent, coercion, and compliance. I don’t think they get that in any curriculum, sexual education curriculum.
Su Robinson (36:35):
So they have to learn that just complying, “oh, okay, okay”, they have to know that is actually not consent that is compliance. And that pressuring a girlfriend or a boyfriend for that matter that’s coercion, you know, so they have to learn the language and to know the difference and coercion. And the other thing they have to really learn that offline friends are not the same as online, quote, unquote friends. I mean, it’s a very different scenario when you have like Facebook and have 300 friends that you’ve never met in your life. So those are the, some of the things I think we have to help kids learn.
Cassie Gillespie (37:19):
And I’m imagining that for the kids involved with the child welfare system, kids who have had disruptions to their natural support networks or their family networks it’s even more important for the adults in their lives to be talking about these topics with them. To make sure they’re protected.
Su Robinson (37:34):
Yes. Yes.
Cassie Gillespie (37:36):
All right. Well, thank you so much for talking to us. This has been so educational.
Su Robinson (37:42):
You’re very welcome.
Cassie Gillespie (37:43):
It’s always a pleasure.
Su Robinson (37:46):
You take care.
Pete Cudney (37:47):
Yeah. You too.
Cassie Gillespie (37:51):
Thanks for listening. If you have any ideas about topics that you want us to cover or episodes that you’re interested in hearing, shoot us a message. You can reach me by email at Cassie.Gillespie@uvm.edu, or you can leave us a comment on the webpage where you downloaded this podcast. Welcome to the Field is produced by the Vermont Child Welfare Training Partnership and the State of Vermont and a special thank you to Brickdrop for composing and recording our music. See you next time!