Emotions were high at the state capitol today as a victim of years of sexual abuse finished a 500 mile walk from Tampa and collapsed on the lawn of the old capitol. Lauren Book-Lim was molested by her nanny as a child. She spent the last 20 days walking to raise awareness of sexual abuse and to encourage victims to speak out and hold their heads high. <\/p>\n

“I think that the pain that I suffered as a child was awful and should never, ever happen to a child. But today, it’s not so much pain; it’s elation, it’s excitement, it’s huge relief. We’re just so proud to be here and I’m just so glad that I was able to do this and speak for other survivors,” said Lauren. <\/p>\n

Her Father, Ron Book, one of Florida?s most influential lobbyists, was over come with pride for his daughter?s effort to stop sexual abuse. <\/p>\n

?The ability for her to go out there and just try to tell people, look
\nat me, I?m OK, shed your shame, shed that embarrassment, don?t be
\nafraid. It?s a big deal. There was not a day of the walk that she did
\nnot get incredible stories,? said Book. <\/p>\n

Lauren is asking lawmakers to boost funding for programs that help sex crimes victims and is leading a program to teach kids how to report sexual abuse. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Emotions were high at the state capitol today as a victim of years of sexual abuse finished a 500 mile walk from Tampa and collapsed on the lawn of the old capitol. Lauren Book-Lim was molested by her nanny as a child. She spent the last 20 days walking to raise awareness of sexual abuse […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,12,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flanews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9307"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flanews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flanews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flanews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flanews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9307"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.flanews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9307\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9308,"href":"https:\/\/www.flanews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9307\/revisions\/9308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flanews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flanews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flanews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}