Stop Child Abuse Now (SCAN) - 1828

Tonight's special guest is Sequoya Griffin from Charlotte, North Carolina, a survivor of childhood trauma who entered the foster care system at 4 years old and was later adopted at 10. She's the author of "Goodbye, SaraJane: A Foster Child Writes Letters to Her Mother," described as the honest, heartbreaking story of an abused child's horrid experience. Her life in foster care was a terrible existence of emotional, physical, and racial abuse that was a continual ordeal of lies, beatings, and punishments by adults in the foster system. From the caseworker lacking empathy and turning a blind eye to the physical and emotional damages Sequoya and her siblings suffered by adults and foster siblings that went ignored, her story sheds light on some of the major failures of the current child protective service system in the United States. The emotional toll of being taken from one abusive family only to be placed with another was unbearable, and she had the experience of what sadly many foster children do of losing everything meaningful. Even her birth name was taken from her, and Sequoya says it best in her book that her adoptive mother "had slowly snatched my identity away from me." Currently, Sequoya is an advocate for neglected children and vulnerable young adults with a passion to continue bringing awareness to all aspects of the foster care and adoption system. Besides writing literature and music, Sequoya finds hope and strength as a survivor through her spirituality. She is the founder of Key Purpose Books LLC, a book and media publishing company of God-given stories.