When our founder, Kristy Childs, was in her mid-twenties, she met a 14-year-old girl named Veronica April Neverdusky.  Kristy, who had run away from an abusive home at age 12, saw herself in the young Veronica who had been kicked out of her home for revealing her abuser.

 

Kristy admired Veronica’s courage to stand up to her abuser and put him behind bars, and they became very close friends, more like sisters. In 1993, Veronica, who was then 21 years old and the mother of three young children, was found murdered in Penn Valley Park. Her case remained unsolved until an arrest was made in March of 2007.

 

In 2000, seven years after Veronica’s death and after having spent twenty-four years in the life of prostitution, Kristy founded Veronica’s Voice, a Kansas City-based organization named in remembrance of Veronica. Kristy dedicated her new life to helping women and girls caught in the vicious violent cycle of commercial sexual exploitation. Kristy’s vision and passion has been seen through a host of services for victims, as well as education, advocacy and legal work to target the demand and avert entry into the cycle of abuse in prostitution.