Raising money to fight child sex abuse

BALTIMORE - At Party City on York Road near Towson, customers are being asked to help prevent something much scarier than the costumes they buy by adding a dollar to their purchase that goes directly to the Baltimore Child Abuse Center.

"They're saying yes we want to be a part of this and yes we want to make a difference."

Jennifer Sachs is the owner of 11 Party City locations throughout our area.

She says this campaign has raised nearly 50 thousand dollars since they started it back in September, a measured move to coincide with their busy Halloween season but the result has far surpassed what they anticipated.

"When they come to the register, they're asked to make a donation and it's left open and we've seen one and two dollar donations and we've seen a couple of donations of a 100 dollars and in between and it's really been fantastic," said Sachs.

"It's exceeded all of our expectations.  The people who have come in have just been incredibly generous and supportive."

Adam Rosenberg is the Executive Director of the center and is surprised and excited to see the amount of pledges already made by Party City customers.

A success he believes driven in part by the reaction to one of the worst sex abuse scandals in recent memory.

"There is a general awareness out there, larger than it’s ever been before about the problem of child sex abuse and people want to do something about it, when the see the reports about Penn State and the Boy Scouts and just the regular stories in the newspaper, they want to stop this and they want to be able to do something so that too they can do something locally," said Rosenberg.

Doing so one dollar at a time funding the fight against what we all saw in at Penn State, right here at home.

The program will go through Halloween at all of Party City's locations.

 Not only do 100 percent of donations go to the Baltimore Child Abuse Center, Party City will also match what's raised with an additional 25 thousand dollars.