By  Steve Huff

(Continued)

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As a beauty pageant contestant, Nona Dirksmeyer's platform the social issue of most concern to her was child abuse.  Nona did not choose this issue lightly. Reporting in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette on January 29, 2006, journalist Debra Hale-Shelton explained why Nona had even entered the world of pageants as a contestant in the first place:

"Nona hoped that 'if she won Miss Arkansas, she'd be able to go around to the schools and educate people about child abuse,' [Carol, Nona's mother] Dipert said.

"Initially, Dipert said, Nona picked sexual abuse of children as her platform but scaled it back.

'She said people didn't want to hear' about sex crimes, Dipert said.

"Dipert believes the competitions helped her daughter, who was the reigning Miss Petit Jean Valley when she died"

The article related that the reason Nona Dirksmeyer chose the issue was because she herself had been a victim of sexual abuse as a child. In high school Nona's best friend, Chelsea Huckaby, revealed to her mother Margie that Nona was cutting herself. Nona was able to talk to her own mother about the abuse then, and she began to get help. In part, her focus on music as a vocalist and her participation in pageants was directly related to having survived such demons. When she was murdered in December, 2005, Nona Dirksmeyer was really beginning to live.

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