A Time To Speak

Produced, directed and written by Tod Lending, A Time to Speak features young survivors who are at different stages of struggling to overcome their experience of abuse and neglect. This dramatic one hour national PBS documentary follows their powerful stories as they unfold in the trauma ward of a hospital; in physical and psychological exams performed at an intake center; and in a residential facility using peer pressure as an innovative approach for healing boys who have been severely physically and sexually abused and who now have become abusers themselves.

This film focuses on how a child overcomes the effects and consequences of abuse and neglect at the hands of those closest to them; captures the reality of what it means to grow up abused and neglected from the child's point of view; shows what choices they make in order to cope with the abuse while illustrating the consequences of those choices; and demonstrates the different ways in which survivors of child maltreatment rebuild their lives following their abusive experiences.