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10 Tips for Sexual Abuse Prevention

 

When we consider the high numbers of children that are sexually abused it is disappointing how little is out there to support parents in prevention efforts. Although Erin’s Law has brought Sexual Abuse Prevention to many children in the school setting, parents are still often at a loss as to how to talk to their children about this difficult topic.

As a therapist who has specialized in treating child sexual abuse for twenty years, I have crossed paths with thousands of children and families that have been involved with Child Welfare and passed through our local children’s advocacy center.   They have been tremendous teachers.  I am so grateful that they have been willing and able to share their stories and help me gain expertise in understanding the context in which sexual abuse occurs. Their experiences have helped me to develop practical prevention strategies for caregivers, and professionals who work with children.

I considered what I thought parents need to know, and then came up with some very specific messages I thought their children needed to hear.  In working with countless survivors over the years I have met very few that understood what sexual abuse was and that it happens to a lot of kids.  Even fewer understood why it is hard for children to tell, and rarely had they had a caregiver let them know what to do if sexual abuse ever occurred.

Since child sexual abuse is often an overwhelming topic for parents, I have tried to make the information more tolerable by simplifying it into 10 Tips for Sexual Abuse Prevention.  I taught this information for many years throughout Colorado, and it is now available in a podcast, with links below.  This information will help caregivers to feel empowered.  They will learn specific strategies for how to talk with children about this difficult topic and how to respond if sexual abuse is suspected.  These tips identify misinformation caregivers have that put children at greater risk for sexual abuse trauma. In completing the class parents will feel confident giving children specific messages to make them a "least likely" victim

I hope you will take the time to listen to the podcast and pass along this resource to others.  In the meantime, here is a quick review of what I consider to be the 10 most important tips in sexual abuse prevention.

Tip #1 Understand Why Kids Need to Know About Sexual Abuse

The pervasiveness of child sexual abuse really demands that prevention happens in every home.  Children need to know that sexual abuse exists and that it happens to many children. Often parents avoid telling their children about sexual abuse for fear of scaring them or giving them information about sex when they are too young.  I give parents this script to help guide as they broach the topic: “I want you to know that sometimes grown-ups or other kids, even people we know, might want to look at, or touch, your private parts.  They might want you to play games with, or show you pictures of private parts or even make you look at or ask you to touch theirs.  If this ever happens, they are trying to break a rule and I want you to tell me about it so I can help you”. This simple information can be given to a child at any age, and I encourage parents to talk to their children like this from a very young age.

Tip #2 Caregivers Should Know Who Sexually Offends

Unfortunately, I have found that many caregivers rely on sex offender registries and “stranger danger” and thus inadvertently misinform their children. Over 90% of the time the child has a relationship with the offender.  Sexual abuse is not likely to happen in a “grab and go” situation but is more likely to happen in the context of a relationship that the parent is aware of.  Both children and caregivers need to know that sexual abuse by a stranger is incredibly rare and in most cases of abuse there is a relationship with the perpetrator. The element of betrayal in a sexually abusive relationship is one of the things that makes sexual abuse so traumatizing and difficult to report.

Tip #3 Watch out for Grooming Behaviors.

There have been too many instances where I have heard a parent say….“But he is such a nice guy, I can’t believe he could do something like that!”  “But she always wants to be with her uncle, she LOVES him!”.  Sexual offenders work to ensure that if a child does disclose abuse it will be difficult to believe them.  It is in their best interest to be perceived as a “nice guy” or a “trusted person” and so they work to manipulate and charm the child, the parents, and the entire community.  Cases like that of Larry Nassar and Jerry Sandusky have shown us how many people are willing to rally and protect these master manipulators.

Tip #4 Secrets Are Not Safe

In order to truly understand sexual abuse trauma, one needs to understand why children feel that they cannot tell.  Child sexual abuse victims rarely tell about the abuse right away, and this makes for a much more substantial negative impact.  I have asked so many children “what made it hard to tell”.  The most common responses – “I didn’t want my mom to cry”, “I didn’t want my dad to get in trouble for hurting him”, “I was embarrassed”, “I didn’t want to get into trouble”.  In order to truly understand the trauma of child sexual abuse one must understand the secrecy in which it thrives.  A very important message for caregivers to give their children is “Secrets are not safe!” Children should know the difference between secrets, surprises, and private things.

Tip #5 Who's the Boss Of This Body

One of the best ways that caregivers can educate their child to prevent sexual abuse is to teach them, “You are the Boss Of Your Body”.  I wrote a children’s book “Who’s the Boss of this Body”, so that caregivers would have a useful tool to help start this this conversation. Children need to know that no one has the right to look at or touch their private parts, and no one has the right to make a child look at or touch their private parts. I found that a lot of the prevention books out there were sometimes kind of creepy, and sometimes put too much blame on the child.  I wanted to make a book that was light and funny and easy for caregivers to read.

Tip #6 Make Child Sexual Abuse Prevention Part of Your Everyday Parenting

Many caregivers confuse a conversation about sexual abuse with “the sex talk”.  All too often when I ask a parent what they have done for sexual abuse prevention education thus far a parent will answer “Well I think they teach the kids about that in middle school”.  Talking about sex and talking about sexual abuse are completely different.  Sexual abuse prevention is not a one-time awkward conversation, but more a style of parenting that empowers children to know their boundaries and not keep secrets.

Tip #7 Know the Signs of Child Sexual Abuse

Although there are no definitive signs of sexual abuse, there are certainly red flags that parents should look out for.  Children often communicate through behaviors and there are some that may indicate sexual abuse.  Parents should familiarize themselves with emotional. behavioral, physical, and sexual signs of sexual abuse.

Tip #8 Know How to Respond

All too often a child is faced with a “dead end disclosure”.  This means that even though the child tells, the report goes no further. Sometimes well-meaning caregivers think that this is the best way to protect their child -- “They have been through too much, I didn’t want to make them go through even more”.  But I have found that a caregiver's response to disclosures of sexual abuse is critical to a child's recovery.  A sexual offender has one simple rule they want followed – “Don’t report me to the police”.  Very often the trauma continues as the child remains under the power of the perpetrator and follows their rule.  If the child tells and then the caregiver also joins the offender’s team by following their rule of silence, the child is even further traumatized.

Tip #9 Know the Risk and Protective Factors

While no child is immune from sexual abuse there are some risk factors that may increase their likelihood of abuse. Understanding what protective factors can be put into place will ultimately reduce the risk of being traumatized by abuse.  Caregivers who seek to be informed about sexual abuse and are willing to believe the possibility that abuse could happen to their child, actually reduce the risk of victimization. Homes that encourage secrecy, where there may be domestic violence, substance abuse, or high conflict divorce, put children at greater risk.  Offenders have been known to say they seek out children who are good at keeping secrets.  Additionally, children who identify as LGBT, preschool children, and children with disabilities are at greater risk for sexual abuse.

Tip #10 Raising Resilient Children

Child sexual abuse victims who continue to be stuck in their trauma are at risk for re-victimization. All children who have experienced sexual abuse should be assessed to see if they need mental health treatment, and if so, they should attend an evidence-based trauma focused therapy. Caregivers need professional support so that they are not only preventing further abuse, but they are also preventing post traumatic stress.

For more information, please see the following resources:

"Who’s The Boss Of This Body?" is available in English and Spanish (“Quien Es El Jefe De Este Cuerpo”) on Amazon.

The podcast can be found by searching for “10 Tips for Sexual Abuse Prevention” or by using the following links:

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All great tips for parents and caregivers to have those ongoing conversations with kids. I'm not sure that I would agree "how little is out there to support parents in prevention efforts" though. There a quite a few organizations that offer information/trainings at no- to low-cost to the general public:  Darkness to Light; Early Open, Often; Stop It Now; the Zero Abuse Project (although they are geared more for professionals); and the Beau Biden Foundation.

Thank you Megan.  I appreciate your comment.  I will definitely check out the resources you mention.  I am also a D2L trainer, but feedback I have gotten from many attendees who have done both courses, is that they appreciate the specific strategies I give to parents to use with their children.  I hope you are able to check out the podcast and  I would love your feedback.

thank you Frank.  I think you make very good points.  I intentionally made the character in my book a little boy for exactly this reason.  Many other children's books that address child sexual abuse fall into the same trap as the media.  The reason that I developed my 10 Tips class was to dispel many of the myths about sexual abuse, and the misconceptions about gender for both victims and offenders is definitely something I talk about.  i hope you check out the podcast, I look forward to getting feedback!

When I was growing up during the 1970s and '80s, male sex-crime plaintiffs would have been considered very un-masculine and seriously not what a 'real man' would be claiming.

Psychologist/psychotherapist/author Tom Falkenstein writes in The Highly Sensitive Man (2019, Ch.1) that: “Women have thus been understood as the nondominant group, which deviated from the norm, and they have been examined and understood from this perspective. One of the countless problems of this approach is that the experiences and specific challenges of the ‘dominant group,’ in this case men, have remained hidden. ...

“You only have to open a magazine or newspaper, turn on your TV, or open your browser to discover an ever-growing interest in stories about being a father, being a man, or how to balance a career with a family. Many of these articles have started talking about an apparent ‘crisis of masculinity.’ The headlines for these articles attempt to address male identity, but often fall into the trap of sounding ironic and sometimes even sarcastic and critical ...

“They all seem to agree to some extent that there is a crisis. But reading these articles one gets the impression that no one really knows how to even start dealing with the problem, let alone what a solution to it might look like. One also gets the impression from these articles that we need to keep any genuine sympathy for these ‘poor men’ in check: the patriarchy is still just too dominant to allow ourselves that luxury."

thank you Frank.  I think you make very good points.  I intentionally made the character in my book a little boy for exactly this reason.  Many other children's books that address child sexual abuse fall into the same trap as the media.  The reason that I developed my 10 Tips class was to dispel many of the myths about sexual abuse, and the misconceptions about gender for both victims and offenders is definitely something I talk about.  i hope you check out the podcast, I look forward to getting feedback!

Thank you. ... I read an article, headlined “'Grave Sexual Abuse': When the Word Rape Doesn’t Apply To Boys” [by Zahara Dawoodbhoy, 21 Sep 2020], about a South Asian nation/culture in which men have redirected their rapes upon boys, with impunity.

There, girls’ vaginal virginity is traditionally/normally verified before an arranged marriage takes place; however, boys are neither arranged to be married nor their ‘virginity’ ever verified, and therefore they cannot be ‘spoiled’ thus considered raped. The following relevant segment is taken from the article:

_____

.... ‘Ships Don't Leave Tracks On Water’

According to the Penal Code of Sri Lanka, the word ‘rape’ is defined as a man having sex with a woman, under specific circumstances that lack consent. The rape of boys—and men— therefore, do not fall under this official legal definition, and the crime instead gets tried as ‘grave sexual abuse’. Although the punishment for the two offences is the same, the euphemism used to describe rape when it occurs to boys points to larger social attitudes of who we consider can be victims.

“I think there is a myth that it only happens to female children, and that has to do with the cultural aspect of people feeling that rape is a female-related issue,” Sonali Gunasekera, Senior Director of Advocacy at the Family Planning Association (FPA) told Roar Media. “That is probably why this archaic law is still in place — because that's how it was seen from afar.”

Despite this myth, the fact remains that instances where young boys are raped in Sri Lanka are surprisingly frequent. Director of the Child Protection Force, Milani Salpitikorala, says that 90% of her current cases involve young boys, and the idea that the boy child is somehow less susceptible to sexual abuse and rape in this country is completely false.

“Our mindsets are set in a culture of ‘Don’t worry about your child if he is a boy,’ but the boy child is as unsafe in the hands of perpetrators as much as the girl child is, if not more,” she said.

In 1997, a community study was conducted on university students in Sri Lanka, where a questionnaire was administered to two sets of undergraduates—one that had heard a lecture on child abuse prior to completing the survey, and one that had not. In both groups, the percentage of boys that admitted to being sexually abused during their childhood was higher.

Despite these findings, little research has been conducted looking into the demographics of child rape, and prevalant social attitudes around gender continue to erase boys from the demographic of people considered to be rape victims. Even when the abuse does come to light, it is shrugged off by the idea that ‘ships don’t leave tracks on water’, which is a phrase used to imply that because there is no physical virginity to be lost, no harm has been done.

“In many cases I have seen, families and peers of young boys who are being sexually abused don’t take it seriously because the ‘issue’ of virginity doesn't come into play,” Thushara Manoj, Senior Manager for advocacy at the FPA told Roar Media.

“When a girl gets raped, this is seen as an issue because it is believed her virginity has been compromised, and she also has the capacity to become pregnant from it. This means that her marriage prospects will suffer, and there is a risk of her abuse becoming apparent.” But with boys, Manoj explains that this fear does not exist, and as a result, families are unlikely to intervene, especially if the perpetrator is a member of the family or community at large.



A Vicious Cycle

Like all victims of rape and sexual abuse, boys face severe psychological trauma as a result of their abuse. For Mahesh, it took almost two decades for him to process his abuse, and only at 29 was he able to admit what had happened.

“I had a lot of self-hatred, and for most of my life, I would not acknowledge that I had been raped as a child because I felt that as a man, I should have been able to protect myself and fight,” he said. “It was only five years ago, when I was working in [activist] spaces and was surrounded by these narratives of how victims are never to blame that I was finally able to admit that there was nothing wrong with me, and what had happened was completely the fault of [the perpetrator]”.

Mahesh admits he was able to take significant steps towards healing as a result of being exposed to more empathetic narratives and surrounding himself with people whom he felt would not blame him for the abuse he had suffered. But in Sri Lanka, this kind of support and understanding from community members is rare, and many male victims of rape become trapped in a cycle of abuse that often carries on to the next generation.

Although male children are raped and sexually abused at the same rate, if not more, than female children, common misconceptions about gender roles allow for this crime to be treated lightly, or ignored altogether. Photo Credit: newshub.co.nz

In the same 1997 community study, a significant finding was that 71% of males who had abused younger children had been abused themselves during childhood. Salpitikorala has also found this to be true.

“From our cases we have come to realise that boys could develop perpetrator behaviour after facing the trauma of being abused themselves,” she said. While the reasons behind this are multifaceted, it is important to note that the primary cause of this phenomenon is rarely the sexual abuse itself, but rather external factors such as damaging expectations of masculinity and a lack of healthy outlets for boys to express emotions that hinder them from processing their abuse.

It is also important to note that while there is evidence to suggest that the majority of males accused of child sex crimes have a childhood history of sexual abuse, the same is not true the other way around: Most victims of sexual abuse in childhood will not become perpetrators of sexual assault, and a history of sexual victimisation is not a necessary or sufficient condition to sexually offend. ....

*Name has been changed to protect identity.

Source article: https://roar.media/english/lif...es-not-apply-to-boys

Last edited by Frank Sterle Jr.

Hi Meghan! I am the Content and Partnerships Manager at Darkness to Light and a I write the content for our Child Safety Pledge brand which is geared toward a parent audience. I would love to connect with you about sharing this on that platform!

tleonard@d2l.org

All great tips for parents and caregivers to have those ongoing conversations with kids. I'm not sure that I would agree "how little is out there to support parents in prevention efforts" though. There a quite a few organizations that offer information/trainings at no- to low-cost to the general public:  Darkness to Light; Early Open, Often; Stop It Now; the Zero Abuse Project (although they are geared more for professionals); and the Beau Biden Foundation.

Last edited by Megan S Banet

thank you Frank.  I think you make very good points.  I intentionally made the character in my book a little boy for exactly this reason.  Many other children's books that address child sexual abuse fall into the same trap as the media.  The reason that I developed my 10 Tips class was to dispel many of the myths about sexual abuse, and the misconceptions about gender for both victims and offenders is definitely something I talk about.  i hope you check out the podcast, I look forward to getting feedback!

Even today, male victims of sexual harassment, abuse and/or assault are still more hesitant or unlikely than girl victims to report their offenders. Boys refusing to open up and/or ask for help due to their fear of being perceived by peers, etcetera, as weak or non-masculine.

It's as though boys are somehow perceived as basically being little men, and men of course can take care of themselves.

I have also noticed over many years of news-media consumption that, for example, when victims of sexual abuse are girls their gender is readily reported as such; but when they're boys they are typically referred to gender-neutrally as simply children. It’s as though, as a news product made to sell the best, the child victims being female is somehow more shocking than if male.

Additionally, I’ve heard and read news-media references to a 19-year-old female victim as a ‘girl’, while (in an unrelated case) a 17-year-old male perpetrator was described as a ‘man’. Could it be that this is indicative of an already present gender bias held by the general news consumership, since news-media tend to sell us what we want or are willing to consume thus buy?

Meanwhile, a New York Times feature story (“She Was a Big Hit on TikTok. Then a Fan Showed Up With a Gun”, February 19, 2022) written by reporter Elizabeth Williamson, at one point states: “Instagram, owned by Meta, formerly known as Facebook, has … been accused of causing mental and emotional health problems among teenage female users.”

A couple paragraphs down, it is also stated that “Teen girls have been repeatedly targeted by child predators.”

The plain fact is, teen boys are also targeted by such predators. Another plain fact is that mental and emotional — along with physical — health problems are being suffered by teenage boys directly due to social media use.

But a collective mentality may still societally persist, albeit perhaps a subconscious one: Real men can take care of themselves, and boys are basically little men.

Last edited by Frank Sterle Jr.
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