It was a typical PTA meeting at my daughters' elementary school with talk of budgets, fundraisers and the upcoming school calendar, until a guest speaker stood up to talk, shattering the banality of the meeting with a story no parent wants to hear.
Jill Starishevsky, a New York City assistant district attorney in the child abuse and sex crimes bureau and author of the book "My Body Belongs to Me," shared a story about an upper-middle-class New York family, a story that still gives me chills two years after I first heard it.
A mom goes shopping, leaving her 11-year-old daughter and 9-year-old son home. The daughter is miserable and moping around the house so much that her brother asks her, "What's your problem? Why are you so sad all the time?" said Starishevsky. He then says something like, "It's not like Grandpa ... is boinking you."
At that moment, the 11-year-old realizes that her grandfather, her mother's father, is doing to her brother what he has been doing to her for the past three years. The children decide they need to tell their mother when she gets home.
And they do.
She cries and cries. She hugs them and then cries some more.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/29/living/sexual-abuse-talking-to-kids-parents/
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