Overcoming Abuse: Child Sexual Abuse Prevention and Protection

Training your child is not a happenstance; it is a calculated effort to teach your child wisdom and healthy choices for his life. This training, which includes teaching your child about Child Sexual Abuse (CSA), must be done sooner rather than later.

The research clearly indicates that the leading challenge to overcome if CSA is to be prevented and children protected from victimization is the deficiency and absence of awareness regarding the dynamics and prevalence of child sexual abuse. To protect a child from CSA, parents, caregivers, helpers, and children must be trained. Training your child on CSA means instructing him on the difference between proper and improper body touch. It means protecting him from unsafe body touch.

You have been specially selected, assigned, called, and equipped to teach your child about CSA and body safety. I say equipped, because if you have already researched CSA or have picked up this book as a part of your research, then you’re equipped! God always equips those whom He calls to a responsibility. And it is your parental responsibility to pass on that equipped awareness of CSA to your child at age-appropriate levels.

Sexual abuse is a challenging topic for most parents to bring into discussion, especially with their children. But, as unpleasant as the subject may be, sexual abuse is an essential conversation for all parents and caregivers to have with their children, because sexual abuse is a serious, heart-rending, everyday problem in our world that affects both male and female children. Also disheartening is the fact that the abuser is usually an older child or adult already known to the child, typically an older authority figure the child loves and trusts.

There are a lot of rude-awakening facts about CSA, but the fact that a child may or may not show any abnormal outward symptoms of child sexual abuse should set off a siren that ought to motivate every parent/caregiver to learn more about CSA and compel them into that must-have conversation with their child. If you’re thinking, “This doesn’t happen in my family,” or “Not to families like ours,” consider thinking again. The prevalence of child sexual abuse is real, and it is easy for those of us caught up in the fast-paced daily rat race filled with other responsibilities to miss the CSA data.

But there’s still a way to catch up on the facts. One way to gauge the prevalence of CSA in your neighborhood, community, city, state, and nation is to ask yourself if you have ever known or heard of someone who has been the victim (or perpetrator) of sexual abuse. Chances are, the answer is yes, and probably more than once. Most of us have heard of someone sexually abusing someone or someone being sexually abused. It’s just that, for the most part, the child sexual abuser and the victim go unreported to the authorities.

If you haven’t heard the most recent child sexual abuse facts or need an update, here are a few facts to bring to memory a reminder of the importance of teaching children body safety. Let’s begin with a crash course on the basic facts of child sexual abuse:

• The child is generally acquainted with the abuser, who may be a family member, friend, clergy member, teacher, tutor, coach, babysitter, or other authority figure.

• Child sexual abuse usually happens to a victim more than once. It can go undetected for months or years.

• Sexual abuse includes, but is not limited to, sexual behavior with a child through activities involving body or genital contact as well as non-body contact events, such as exploiting the child by showing him pornographic images or taking nude images of the child.

• Children with obedient, shy, compliant, respectful personalities are more likely to become victims of CSA.

• Children with a history of upscale authoritarian homes or who are from dysfunctional families are more susceptible to sexual abuse due to their affection deprivation, strict authoritarian upbringing, or lack of boundaries.

• Children who have been sexually victimized will either display none or some behavioral symptoms. The child may keep the sexual abuse a secret. Or, a child sexual abuse victim may withdraw from the usual things they used to enjoy, detach from family or friends, experience academic difficulties, sadness and anxiety, or become aggressive and engage in self-defeating and injuring behaviors.

How does a busy parent who works and who perhaps has more than one child and a household to tend prepare for such an important conversation with their child? By becoming well-informed about the dynamics of child sexual abuse and learning the skills to prevent and protect their child from sexual abuse.

There is a complete section in Part I on educating and training your child on CSA. However, keeping in mind that parents/caregivers/helpers are extremely busy or may be undergoing a CSA crisis with need for a quick read, summarized lists of strategies for teaching and training the self and child have been provided with subheadings throughout this guidebook.

When should you begin to read to and have a discussion with your child about body safety? Just as soon as your child has an attention span to sit still and watch an entire episode of a child’s television program. If a child can sit and watch cartoons, your child is old enough to listen to you share body safety skills.

I have written this book to assist you in your endeavor. In addition, I’ve created a book for preschool to elementary age children entitled, My Body Belongs to God and Me, which you can use as a guide to help your child become aware and skilled on body safety.

What if your child has already been abused? There are strategies in this book for that as well. Remember, a child that has been empowered through your teachings on CSA will not only benefit himself, but he will also pass it onward to the next generation (your grandchildren).