Five Hills royalty rock against child abuse

Special to Leader-Press

Today, 175 Texas children will be victims of abuse. One in 10 children will be sexually abused before their 18th birthday. This would equal 740,000 children in Texas. The Copperas Cove Five Hills royalty rocked against those statistics with the approach of April, Child Abuse Awareness Month.
Preteen Miss Five Hills 2018 Briana Liles and Miniature Miss Five Hills 2018 Naomi Williams joined other volunteers in getting out the paint and brushes and painting rocks to draw awareness to child abuse in Bell and Coryell Counties. The event, Rocking for Kids, was sponsored by the Central Texas Advocacy Center and invited anyone interested to participate.
Williams, 4, said the rock painting was “awesome.”
“We got to paint rocks and pick whichever colors we wanted and painted with paint brushes and fingers,” Williams said. “We did it for children so that they would have the number to call if they need help.”
The queens painted different designs including the five hills of Copperas Cove and the Texas state flag and included messages to draw awareness to child abuse. 
The goal is to ultimately have thousands of rocks spreading awareness and resources, said Crystal Daniel, outreach coordinator for the Children’s Advocacy Center of Central Texas.  
“We are painting rocks for Child Abuse Prevention Month in April. We are going to distribute 5,000 rocks throughout the community, and they all have the child abuse hotline reporting phone number written on the bottom so that people can find them in the community,” Daniels said. 
Liles said she had a lot of fun painting the rocks knowing that it was going to help a good cause. 
“I pray that no children get abused. But because I learned that it does happens more often than it ever should, I pray for their safety and their healing and hope the rocks help put a stop to child abuse or help others step up if they know it’s happening to save children that is happening to,” Liles said.