Help4Guys.org (DBA, formerly the P. Luna Foundation) is the world’s top organization that spreads awareness about male abuse.
Our Mission
To educate and advocate for males who have experienced physical, sexual or emotional abuse and trauma.
Our Vision
Help for guys will have a meaningful educational program that will be given to a significant number of law enforcement agencies, colleges and universities, nursing homes and prisons and will be accepted and respected as a significant source of service information for males suffering from the trauma of abuse.
What do we do?
Child Abuse EDUCATION, AWARENESS AND PREVENTION
What are our Programs?
History: Help4Guys.org (the P. Luna Foundation)
Before help4guys.org existed, there were only a handful of organizations that dealt with abused males as adults and none that dealt directly with the social opinions of the topic as a whole. While these organizations do incredible work to bring comfort and services to these special victims, they all had a difficult time with the sensitive subject of the cycle of abuse, and rightly so. These are organizations created by abused men for abused men. None of them want to be seen in the light of being a potential predator themselves even thought statistically 30% of people who are abused as children grow up to abuse others. They also didn’t want to be seen as having volatile personalities, since many men who were abused as adults go down angry and/or destructive paths.
The P. Luna Foundation’s founder, being a female, was in a unique situation where she could address these problems without the fear and shame of potential finger pointing. She wanted an organization to protest, loudly and publicly, the reluctance of society to take the plight of abused males seriously. This attitude breeds angry and destructive males who are not contributing to society, and are vulnerable to serious social problems like addictions and crime.
The organization started out in 2007 as a social media group of like minded individuals. They got together and decided that it was time to change the perception of abused males, get them into treatment and stop the cycle of abuse. This program will ultimately benefit women, men, children and society alike.
In 2008 the P. Luna Foundation was founded and started their annual awareness campaign called Male Abuse Awareness Week Dec.1-8. The campaign’s goal is to promote the cause and break the social stigmas attached to it. The foundation’s website Help4guys.org was first published online in 2009 and today has become the world’s largest hub for information and resources regarding abused males.
Barbara Ochoa
Founder and Executive Director of Help4Guys.org
Profile: Musician Barbara Ochoa aka Petra Luna was an abuse victim her whole young life; sexually, emotionally, physically and by school bullying. Later, she like many others took the normal course of ending up in abusive relationships with her male partners. Fortunately, through extensive therapy, artistic expression and advocacy she overcame the crippling effects of her past and began her journey to help others who had been abused. After a few years of working with other nonprofits, Petra founded her own organization in 2008 she named the P. Luna Foundation. She has gained over 100,000 followers worldwide through social networking and her music and charity web sites receive over one million hits per year. “In 2006 when I was working for Domestic Violence in Los Angeles, I met Ken Austin, a retired basketball player for the Detroit Pistons who was also working in the cause. He told me in a meeting once that if I really wanted to help abuse victims, I had to deal with the male perpetrators of Domestic Violence. This made me very angry and I never forgot it. As I matured in the cause and found my voice in the fight against child abuse, I came to the revelation that Ken was right all along. If I really wanted to help victims of sexual abuse and domestic violence in addition to other issues like suicide prevention, drug & sex addition, etc., I had to help young men who were abused as children to lower their risks of going down destructive paths which hurt themselves and others. With time and after witnessing the effects of abuse on my brothers, cousins and my male friends, all that Ken said started to make sense. Today the main focus of our organization is to help the plight of abused boys and men through our Male Abuse Awareness Program.” In 2012 Barbara retired from the music recording business and in 2015 she and the Board of Directors renamed the organization Help4Guys.org in order to redirect the public’s image of the Nonprofit’s main purpose.