Eight Brown County residents attended a peaceful rally in downtown Nashville Aug. 22 in order to protest child sexual abuse and raise awareness of the issue’s prevalence.

The event, titled the “#SaveOurChildren rally,” was organized by Brown County High School alumna Taylor Rosebrock.

“In high school I had no idea how big of an issue sexual abuse and rape are, especially child sexual assault,” she said. “I just didn’t know. Since then, I’ve learned a lot about how children in our county and around the world are affected by this.”

Rosebrock said the goal of the rally was to bring awareness to child sexual abuse and sex trafficking. According to the Children’s Advocacy Center, nearly 70 percent of all reported sexual assaults, including adults, involve a victim under the age of 17, and according to the U.S. Department of Justice, 90 percent of sexual abuse victims know the perpetrator in some way.

“Many people don’t realize how common this issue is,” Rosebrock said. “Even in this area, we have sexual abuse perpetrators that know and interact with children. I am just here to open people’s eyes to that.”

The idea for the rally in Brown County occurred to her around two weeks earlier when she heard that similar events were happening in Indianapolis and Mooresville. Rosebrock did not want to travel that far to attend, but still wanted to show her support and help to raise awareness.

“This is an issue around the whole world, but it also affects all of us directly, or it soon could,” she said.

Rosebrock said that she is not heavily involved or invested in the popular QAnon far-right conspiracy theories that have been linked to the #SaveTheChildren movement, but rather the sheer statistics she saw online are what motivated her to organize the event. Rosebrock said that rather than believing rumors blindly, she first did some fact-finding of her own.

“This is something that could reach or affect anyone,” she said. “After reading a lot of statistics online and doing my own research, I realized that this was an issue people need to know about.”

In attendance at the event were Kyla Hurt and Rachel Halcomb, two local women who wanted to show their support for the cause and express their disapproval of any sexual abuse.

Also in attendance was Hurt’s 4-month-old son, Sonny Hurt. Sonny was wearing a onesie that had “Not 4 Sale” written in red on it while his mother and grandmother held signs.

“This is the one I’m fighting for,” Halcomb said to a passerby while pointing at Sonny. “He’s not ever for sale.”