INTRODUCTION
The notes on this page are condensed from information distributed to a
very small group of friends during the period that started with the
creation of the song on the 2nd January, 2009. They give an insight
into the purpose of this help project and the culmination of a desire
of many long years to offer encouragement and support to the victims of
abuse.
8th January, 2008
The six days from 2nd January, 2009 were rather an exciting ones for me
as I returned to my serious music again after a 2 year break and having
written almost nothing.
Before I go too far, some of you (a very small number) have been in on
this project since it began, so the next part of this will be old news
to you, please bear with me.
Last Friday as I was preparing to have lunch, a song title thought came
into my head - Crying In The Silence - and 30 minutes later the
complete words had been written and a melody also written. The song
just flowed out of me.
In one sense it is not surprising, as it deals with a subject I have
been passionate about for at least 30 years (that I can remember) and
have had much training in the area as I have proceeded. The subject, of
course, being abuse, especially of children, and the need for more
people to be aware of its reality in our society and the long term
damage it always does to the victims.
Friday afternoon, evening and some of Saturday was spent programming
the keyboard music for the song. By Saturday evening I was
way ahead of my planned schedule for this song. This was by no means
the final keyboard mix (it was changed extensively later on). This was
just the first draft which I would be using to practice the song with
and I shared this with some close friends.
The work on the music, which was mostly editing and mixing took about
12 hours of work, which is a lot faster than normal so you can see that
the huge flow I had (30 minutes from first thought to completed words
and melody) had continued with this second stage which, normally would
have probably involved 30-40 hours of work at least.
Due to other commitments, things were put on hold
until Thursday 8th January, 2009 when I was able to get in and
download the final keyboard mix into my recording desk, add
the vocals and some extra guitars. The vocals have included a three
part harmony in the chorus which has been used to highlight the final
line of the song.
(For those of you who may think that I touch on something else in the
song - you are right. I am a survivor of a suicide attempt (many long
years ago) and I also know that the pain felt by abuse victims can (and
sadly does) drive people to suicide. That was the culmination of my own
personal abuse experience (physical and verbal) which had dominated my
high school years while attending a boarding school.)
The flow that I had experienced last Friday and Saturday continued on
the Thursday, which is really exciting for me. All in all, it has taken
around 20 hours of work (as opposed to normally 60-80 hours) to reach
the stage you will hear in the song. That, in itself, is an amazing
thing (those of you who are musicians will understand what I mean
there).
The song is 4:34 in length and I do not apologise for that in any way.
It needs to be that long.
Bob Burling
10th
January, 2008
I know God has touched me with this song but, as I look at the
responses so far, I realise that he has touched many others. In part,
that is what I wanted this song to do (and that is why the Lord has
given it to me, and done so in the way He did) but, I was not prepared
for the response rate that has come back. Out of the 24 copies
that were originally sent out on the 8th January, I have had 8 replies
so
far and from those 8 have come 6 victims of this horror. Admittedly, 2
of those I knew about before the song was even written. However, that
percentage is way higher than I thought possible. It alarms me that
there are so many and that the problem is so big, way bigger than we
have been led to believe in the past.
Now, I am aware that the sample, so far, is very, very small but, even
taking that into account, it is too high a percentage. No wonder God
wants to deal with the problem.
I made the statement yesterday to you all that I wanted to get a team
of supporters (preferably victims themselves, but not necessarily -
victims have a better understanding of the real issues, that's all)
behind me to be able to help once the song goes public, especially
once the video done and it goes on YouTube. It is also on this
site.
I no longer want to do that: the
reality is I
need and have to get a team together because
this is going
to be way bigger than I certainly imagined and I would be interested at
what others may think. These people can either help in the frontline
or, can support the frontline if they don't feel confident about being
in the frontline. Careful scrutiny will have to be carried out on all
those seeking to join the project so do not think it is something
anybody can be a part of. Team members, other than those strictly
screened for security reasons, will not have any direct contact with
people who make enquiries so as to prevent any undesirable interaction
between team members and the victims. This is a very high security and
privacy project and those who disclose MUST be protected.
A new development today was the desire and commencement of the web site
for this project. This was laid on my heart very early today and most
of the day has been spent creating the basics for the site and getting
a preliminary version of this site online with the words of the song
and a contact form.
All in all, things have moved at a break neck speed and, yet,
everything has come together in a remarkable way.
Bob Burling
1st
February, 2008
Almost one month on and so much has happened. Back on the last note we
had actually expanded the website to being 6 pages. Now we have grown
to 16 pages as various suggestions and ideas have come in from so many
people.
Currently we are looking for people who will be able to submit original
poetry that is relevant to aspects of abuse. We, of course, will review
all poems before they are placed on the site as, while a poem might be
very good, we need to keep in mind that children are encouraged to use
this site as they, probably more than adults, need to have access to
encouragement, advice and guidance. Children are the forgotten victims
of abuse because they are often forced, by the fear instilled by the
perpetrator, to suffer their abuse in silence for fear that they will
be
in trouble if they say anything.
To this end, we have recently added a Kids Page to the site which,
among other things, contains a replay option on the page, of the song Dear Mr. Jesus, a
song sung by a child for children and from a child's perspective. Yes,
we are aware that some of the graphics in this video clip are very
strong, but so are the consequences of abuse. We have added some
preliminary advice for children and this will be expanded as time goes
on. What we are currently looking for is a "comic strip artist" who can
portray these pieces of advice into a comic strip that maybe even
really young children can understand. If that is your gift and you
believe in what this site is doing, then we would love to hear from
you. Once we have made contact then we can discuss guidelines
and allow submissions. We will review each strip (and it has
been suggested that each piece of advice could be a 3-5 pane strip) and
from those submitted we will upload suitable material. Remember that
the key word for these is that young children can get the message from
the pictures.
At the suggestion of a site viewer, we are in the process of adding a
blog page to the site so that people can, anonymously, tell of their
own
experiences to encourage and help others to cope with their
victimisation. This has to be done carefully as the site will be read
by children so we need total control over these blogs so that they can
be reviewed before they are publicly seen, if it is at all possible. We
are not sure whether what is available to us will allow that or not but
it would be the best, for the sake of the children.
A music only player is soon to be added to the site and we are
certainly asking people to submit songs that are about the issue of
abuse to be considered. When you submit a song, we need to know the URL
of that song so that the link can be made available to the player. We
will also consider unreleased material that are from original artists.
These songs would be actually located on our site and the player would
access them in much the same way as any other song. When submitting
such material you will need to be able to show that you are the
rightful owner(s) of the song, submit an MP3 version to us (contact us
using the form and we will tell you how to send the song to us) and
then we will send you a statutory declaration for you to sign to show
that you are the authorised person(s) to allow the song to be used.
We are also really looking for resources that can be linked, news
stories relevant to your country and anything else that you feel may be
of help to allow this site to provide really top facilities for victims
of abuse.
Publicity has also started to happen in the last couple of weeks with
several interviews taking place (including one from Vision
FM,
Australia's national Christian broadcast network with almost 350
stations). This publicity is all adding to make the site known
to people, especially victims. There is a tri-fold brochure now
available and this can be printed from the site (it is in PDF format
and
in colour) so that organisations (such as churches) and individuals can
print copies of the brochure for distribution. We do ask that you print
these in colour, if you possibly can, as this will add to the impact of
the brochure. Churches may choose to have these brochures available to
their members and visitors.
Also with publicity, radio stations may contact us for a Royalty Free
CD version of Crying In
The Silence to use in their stations play list. A number
of these have already been distributed.
Finally, we ask you to talk about this site and let people know that it
is there. You never know who is a victim of abuse, and by telling
people, you may have helped them to change from being a victim to being
a survivor.
Bob Burling
Saturday 2nd January, 2010.
Today is exactly one year since Crying In The Silence was born, for it
was on this date last year that I wrote the song, Crying In The
Silence, which launched this whole new venture.
And what a year it has been.
From that small song, which I might add is still touching hearts and
lives, has come a massive International organisation that is continuing
to grow as it provides Christian based guidance, encouragement and hope
for the victims of abuse. Contributors continue to write material for
us from their personal experiences of abuse and we continue to guide
people to established organisations and agencies that are available
world wide for specific areas of abuse.
As is hardly surprising, child abuse (especially sexual) has become a
very large feature in our links and references and this is a sad
reflection on our society where so many people seem to think that
children are there just for their sexual pleasure, without thought to
the price that each child must pay fir the rest of their lives.
Interestingly, though, we have come to acknowledge a whole range of
different abuse types that are found right across the world. Our total
list now numbers 42 but I get a feeling that our list is not yet
complete, another sad reflection on the human race.
We now have active members in the following countries: Australia, USA,
United Kingdom, Holland, Germany, Philippines, The Caribbean, India and
Pakistan. In addition we have supporters in many other countries. This
is encouraging.
As for the website, from what was just a few pages when we started, we
now have a total of 30 main sections in the site (many of these main
pages have a number of sub-pages), certainly something that was not
envisaged when we started things.
While our visible traffic counter is no longer functioning (we are
searching for a suitable one to use, as the company that was doing that
seems to have disappeared without notice), the logs show over 25,000
visitors for the 12 months and that is really encouraging. We are still
not to be considered a major league player, by any means, but people
are coming to the site and that means people will be finding help and
encouragement. We have obviously filled a gap that was existing.
As I look to the future, I see the site continuing to grow as more and
more people become involved through contributions or in other ways. The
more involvement we have, the better we can provide for encouragement.
Our areas of need are the expansion of linked services (especially into
new countries) and further writings and other contributions from people
who have moved from being victims to being survivors of abuse.
We will continue to use our sub-site on Shoutlife and to add our
newsletters to the Tagged site (we would encourage all people to share
the newsletter on to their social network sites as well).
