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Denny Abbott on "They Had No Voice: My Fight for Alabama’s Forgotten Children"

Co-presented with the Prince George's County Office of Human Rights

Denny Abbott first encountered the Alabama Industrial School for Negro Children at Mt. Meigs as a twenty-one-year-old probation officer for the Montgomery County Family Court. He would become so concerned about conditions for black juvenile offenders there―including hard labor, beatings, and rape―that he took the State of Alabama to court to win reforms.

In "They Had No Voice", Abbott details these battles and how his actions cost him his job and made him a pariah in his hometown, but resulted in better lives for Alabama’s children. Abbott also tells of his later career as the first national director of the Adam Walsh Child Resource Center, where he helped focus attention on missing and exploited children and became widely recognized as an expert on children’s issues.

April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month. Join the Prince George’s County Office of Human Rights, the Prince George’s County Human Trafficking Task Force, and the Prince George’s County Memorial Library System in conversation with Mr. Abbott about his book, the Alabama Industrial School, how the forced labor experienced by the children at the school is a form of labor trafficking, as well as the new podcast Unreformed which further sheds light on the school and the experiences of the children forced there.

Denny Abbott served as National Director of the Adam Walsh Child Resource Center from 1981-1989. He twice testified before U.S. Congress to support the establishment of The National Center For Missing And Exploited Children, which President Reagan signed into law.

In 1990, Mr. Abbott became Coordinator for Victim Services in Palm Beach County, FL., and counseled the victim in the William Kennedy Smith rape trial. He wrote Victim Rights Legislation, which became Florida law. He appeared on Sixty Minutes to argue the point that all clergymen have a duty to report child abuse to law enforcement, also appeared on NBC Today Show, CBS Evening News, and has been quoted by the New York Times, Newsweek, Time and other major newspapers nationwide. He has testified as an expert witness in state and federal courts.

He filed Federal Court Class Action Lawsuits in 1969 and 1972 to stop the institutional abuse of black children in Alabama and was suspended from his job, threatened by the Ku Klux Klan, and subsequently fired for those actions. These lawsuits form the basis for his memoir, They Had No Voice.

Mr. Abbott has a Master’s Degree from Florida State University and has served as an adjunct professor at two community colleges and four universities.