Father-Con luncheon unites community against human trafficking
Dr. Gregory Williams speaks at Father-Con’s Heart of the Father luncheon in Downey on Thursday. Photo by Alex Dominguez
DOWNEY — Father-Con held its Heart of the Father Luncheon on Thursday, continuing to promote its mission of helping men to be better fathers to help stop human trafficking.
The event was held at the Springhill Suites by Marriott and served as a major fundraiser for the nonprofit.
The keynote address was delivered by Dr. Gregory Williams, an author who spoke on his personal experiences with sexual abuse as a child.
He said that “we need to break the cycle of what is going on in our society right now.”
“When you think all of those skeletons and demons are hidden away in your emotional basement, and you’ve locked the door and thrown away the key – they’re dead, they’re gone, they’re silent – let me tell you they’re not dead and gone,” said Williams. “They’re down in that basement lifting weights, waiting for the prime time to stomp up those stairs and kick down the door, and come out in you in the worst possible way, and it will be so ugly that you won’t be able to handle it.”
“All the times being sexually abused by dad, after three years of being sexually sold to his friends – I never had one person ever ask me, ‘Greg, are you okay? Is there anything wrong?’ Because of that I went literally quiet, because this was my life, this was my hurt, this was my heart, and I never told anybody of what was going on.”
He said that kids are not as resilient as many claim them to be.
“Things don’t run off their back like water on a duck’s back,” said Williams. “Children hurt. Their hearts are ripped out; they don’t bounce back. Resiliency is in them, but we need parents that can teach them how to be resilient, how to handle those issues.
“Big boys don’t cry? Oh yes, they do. It hurts, and we have to provide them a way to teach them, and train them, and bring them up with honor to be able to deal with that.”
Williams’s memoir, “Shattered by the Darkness: Putting the Pieces Back Together after Child Abuse,” details his recovery after nearly 17 years of sexual abuse.
Patrick Erlandson, the founder of Father-Con, said that fathers “play this indispensable role in how their children feel about themselves and how they feel about others.”
“We all hear all these figures all the time – the incarceration rates, the dropping out of school, criminal behavior, sexual behavior – all these things that are associated with and linked to not having a father in life,” said Erlandson. “The idea that fathers are just disciplinarians or atm machines is just not true. Fathers do an incredible job of inspiring their daughters and their sons in different ways, way beyond just being a disciplinarian.”
