Kristy Childs, Founder/Director of Veronica’s Voice and Juvenile Justice Reforms Pass The Kansas Legislature

Kristy Childs, Founder/Director of Veronica's Voice In July, 2000, supported by a start-up grant from the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth, Kristy launched a new program of services offered specifically to prostituted persons in Kansas City in honor of Veronica Neverdusky, a victim of commercial sexual exploitation murdered in 1993. It began in Kristy’s dining room. Early services included staffing a 24-hour crisis line with survivors of prostitution to address victims’ needs for urgent care support, and reaching out to women on the streets with peer support and personal items. The effort has expanded, contracted and branched out over time providing services and help as the need it itself changed. Some of the programs they started were a comprehensive restorative justice program, or “Johnz School” to educate buyers on the realities of commercial sexual exploitation, and an alternative sentencing program allowing women charged with prostitution or related crimes to receive diversion from incarceration and intensive probation supervision. 2003 brought the opening of the “Safe Center,” an outreach and recovery center in one of Kansas City’s most well-known areas for crime, prostitution and drugs. Veronica’s Voice received the Northeast Community Betterment Award for its work enhancing the quality of life in…