Steven has long had a desire to help with this issue, leading back to the 1980s when he was in a program for his personal recovery. There, he heard a story of a woman who had experienced incredibly painful and debilitating sexual abuse as a child and how those gruesome events put her on a path of suffering that eventually led to her abusing drugs to mask the pain. When Steven wrote the song “Janie’s Got a Gun” in 1989, he told the story of a young girl who is abused by her father. Over the 26 years since that song was released, Steven says he has often thought about what could have been done to prevent that kind of abuse. What kind of help could Janie have received that would have prevented her trauma? How often does sexual abuse like this happen in our country? What can we do about it? With Janie’s Fund, Steven is using his big voice to give a voice to the thousands of victims who haven’t had one. He feels this is his life’s work and legacy.
