Maraland Idol

Child sexual abuse has been reported up to 80,000 times a year, but the number of unreported instances is far greater, because the children are afraid to tell anyone what has happened, and the legal procedure for validating an episode is difficult. The problem should be identified, the abuse stopped, and the child should receive professional help. The long-term emotional and psychological damage of sexual abuse can be devastating to the child.

Child sexual abuse can take place within the family, by a parent, step-parent, sibling or other relative; or outside the home, for example, by a friend, neighbor, child care person, teacher, or stranger. When sexual abuse has occurred, a child can develop a variety of distressing feelings, thoughts and behaviors.

No child is psychologically prepared to cope with repeated sexual stimulation. Even a two or three year old, who cannot know the sexual activity is wrong, will develop problems resulting from the inability to cope with the overstimulation.

The child of five or older who knows and cares for the abuser becomes trapped between affection or loyalty for the person, and the sense that the sexual activities are terribly wrong. If the child tries to break away from the sexual relationship, the abuser may threaten the child with violence or loss of love. When sexual abuse occurs within the family, the child may fear the anger, jealousy or shame of other family members, or be afraid the family will break up if the secret is told.

A child who is the victim of prolonged sexual abuse usually develops low self-esteem, a feeling of worthlessness and an abnormal or distorted view of sex. The child may become withdrawn and mistrustful of adults, and can become suicidal.

Some children who have been sexually abused have difficulty relating to others except on sexual terms. Some sexually abused children become child abusers or prostitutes, or have other serious problems when they reach adulthood.

Often there are no obvious physical signs of child sexual abuse. Some signs can only be detected on physical exam by a physician.

Sexually abused children may develop the following:

Child sexual abusers can make the child extremely fearful of telling, and only when a special effort has helped the child to feel safe, can the child talk freely. If a child says that he or she has been molested, parents should try to remain calm and reassure the child that what happened was not their fault. Parents should seek a medical examination and psychiatric consultation.

Parents can prevent or lessen the chance of sexual abuse by:

Sexually abused children and their families need immediate professional evaluation and treatment. Child and adolescent psychiatrists can help abused children regain a sense of self-esteem, cope with feelings of guilt about the abuse, and begin the process of overcoming the trauma. Such treatment can help reduce the risk that the child will develop serious problems as an adult.

  

Understanding Child Sexual Abuse
Education, Prevention, and Recovery

What are the Effects of Child Sexual Abuse?
Children and adolescents who have been sexually abused can suffer a range of psychological and behavioral problems, from mild to severe, in both the short and long term. These problems typically include depression, anxiety, guilt, fear, sexual dysfunction, withdrawal, and acting out. Depending on the severity of the incident, victims of sexual abuse may also develop fear and anxiety regarding the opposite sex or sexual issues and may display inappropriate sexual behavior. However, the strongest indication that a child has been sexually abused is inappropriate sexual knowledge, sexual interest, and sexual acting out by that child.

The initial or short-term effects of abuse usually occur within 2 years of the termination of the abuse. These effects vary depending upon the circumstances of the abuse and the child's developmental stage but may include regressive behaviors (such as a return to thumb-sucking or bed-wetting), sleep disturbances, eating problems, behavior and/or performance problems at school, and nonparticipation in school and social activities.

But the negative effects of child sexual abuse can affect the victim for many years and into adulthood. Adults who were sexually abused as children commonly experience depression. Additionally, high levels of anxiety in these adults can result in self-destructive behaviors, such as alcoholism or drug abuse, anxiety attacks, situation-specific anxiety disorders, and insomnia. Many victims also encounter problems in their adult relationships and in their adult sexual functioning.

Revictimization is also a common phenomenon among people abused as children. Research has shown that child sexual abuse victims are more likely to be the victims of rape or to be involved in physically abusive relationships as adults are.

In short, the ill effects of child sexual abuse are wide ranging. There is no one set of symptoms or outcomes that victims experience. Some children even report little or no psychological distress from the abuse, but these children may be either afraid to express their true emotions or may be denying their feelings as a coping mechanism. Other children may have what is called "sleeper effects." They may experience no harm in the short run, but suffer serious problems later in life.

There is no universal definition of child sexual abuse. However, a central characteristic of any abuse is the dominant position of an adult that allows him or her to force or coerce a child into sexual activity. Child sexual abuse may include fondling a child's genitals, masturbation, oral-genital contact, digital penetration, and vaginal and anal intercourse. Child sexual abuse is not solely restricted to physical contact; such abuse could include noncontact abuse, such as exposure, voyeurism, and child pornography. Abuse by peers also occurs.

Accurate statistics on the prevalence of child and adolescent sexual abuse are difficult to collect because of problems of underreporting and the lack of one definition of what constitutes such abuse. However, there is general agreement among mental health and child protection professionals that child sexual abuse is not uncommon and is a serious problem in the United States.

The impact of sexual abuse can range from no apparent effects to very severe ones. Typically, children who experience the most serious types of abuse—abuse involving family members and high degrees of physical force—exhibit behavior problems ranging from separation anxiety to posttraumatic stress disorder. However, children who are the victims of sexual abuse are also often exposed to a variety of other stressors and difficult circumstances in their lives, including parental substance abuse. The sexual abuse and its aftermath may be only part of the child's negative experiences and subsequent behaviors. Therefore, correctly diagnosing abuse is often complex. Conclusive physical evidence of sexual abuse is relatively rare in suspected cases. For all of these reasons, when abuse is suspected, an appropriately trained health professional should be consulted.

 

 

 

Physical 

Touching private parts, fondling, making the child touch and/or manipulate the other's private body part, kissing, vaginal or anal intercourse or attempted intercourse  

 

Obscene language, dirty jokes, cats calls  

 

Visual 

Exhibitionism, peeping, voyeurism, showing and taking pornographic pictures, letting down the bars of privacy so that the child watches or hears sexual acts

 

 

 

Girls and boys under the age of 18 are potential victims. Boys are as victimized as girls. This is a problem that affects all races, cultures, religions, and income levels.  

 

 

 

What makes the children vulnerable to sexual offenders?  

Preschool children are most vulnerable to family members because of the importance of the family to this age. Boys are as vulnerable as girls.  

School age children are most vulnerable to non-family members and pedophiles because during this age their social system is expending. School age boys are more vulnerable than girls of the general belief that girls should be given more protection than boys, thus leaving boys to freely interact with adults and without much supervision, especially with males who could be abusers.  

Adolescent children are most at risk from each other because of the importance of peers of this age, especially in cases of date-rape and sexual harassment.

 

Abuse implies a relationship, thus a child is vulnerable simply because they are somehow related to a potential offender.

 

- A child's loving nature and need for affection

- The child's only or main source of protection and information is the family

- A child lacks the vocabulary especially of the Private Body parts

- They suffer from a disability

- They come from an unhappy family

- They have low self-esteem, few friends

- They have high needs for affection and attention

The sexual offender can be of any age, gender, and from any race, culture, religion, income level, or profession. Most abusers are men (80-85%), are well known to the child and frequently have a position of responsibility and trust for the care of the child. Studies indicate that only about 10% of the offenders are strangers to the abused child. 20% of the offenders are pedophiles (who tend to have a large number of victims).  

 

Many male sexual offenders begin abusing others while still in their adolescence.

Being sexually abused as a child could be devastating, depending on coping abilities and mental health of the child.

There is a variety of effects on children that could be cognitive, emotional or physical. The level of effect depends on the situation (age, duration and type of abuse, gender, degree of violence, who the offender is). Effects could be sexual misbehavior, homophobia, and fear of sex, shame, guilt, eating problems, interpersonal relationships, decision making problems, powerlessness, anger, depression, and suicide.

 

The most important effect of child sexual abuse, in order to understand from the perspective of the child is the Accommodation Syndrome.

All of these children adjust, or accommodate, to the abuse by convincing themselves that the behavior is good, the abuser is good and something is wrong with him/her.

All of these children need to keep the secret in order to protect their offender, because if they tell, it's the child's fault when the offender goes to jail or when the family gets broken apart.

Sometimes the children are threatened with harm, but usually they are threatened with loss of love. In almost all cases, the child is the one who feels the shame, guilt and responsibility for the sexual relationship. The only way to cope with this adult responsibility is to accommodate, like a religious conversion, with the belief that what is happening must continue to happen.

The accommodation syndrome is the reason children cannot tell, or after disclosure they recant, or even hesitate on the witness stand.

 

 

“I see myself like a worthless individual whom no one likes because of my ugly past. My life has been in chaos since the sexual abuse. All the while, I'd been thinking that no one would ever help me, thus, I refused to talk in therapy. I became physically untidy and I felt that I have nothing to be proud of about myself to other people.

I hate my stepfather so much, he is like an animal who has no mercy for me.

I see myself as the most ugly person on earth and I've been keeping these thoughts and feelings for seven years which consequently made me unable to sleep at night.”

 

 

Curious at early age and often find dirty talks exciting

Not the same notion of body privacy and genital secrecy as girls

Lack of sex education – curiosity and vulnerability – acquire inappropriate information from other people

May be the one penetrating under the grooming/pressure of the abuser

Male victims seldom realize that what has happened to them constituted abuse especially if they enjoyed any aspect of the sexual behaviour or did not say no or fight back

Shame “nawala angpagkalalaki”

Protection of machismo image

Difficulties in expressing and verbalising the incident

Admission of victimization likely to be associated with character weakness or homosexuality

 

 

 

The Touch Continuum can help to better understand how children are affected differently by sexual or other touching, and to understand that regardless of whether there is intent to abuse (refer to definition) the child could still be negatively affected. The child's feelings must always be validated and affirmed regardless of the intent of the giver.

  

SAFE TOUCH are those which make the receiver feel affirmed. These touches are experienced by the receiver (child) as warm, caring, nurturing, and supportive. They do not diminish the receiver and do not take from the receiver. All persons need to receive this kind of touch.

UNSAFE TOUCH are those that hurt the receiver, that make the receiver feel bad, that inflict pain or that seem to disregard the receivers (child's) feelings. It is usually very clear that the child does not want this kind of touch, which is experienced by the child as manipulative, coercive, abusive, and frightening.

CONFUSING TOUCH are those which make the receiver feel uncomfortable, uneasy, confused, or unsure. The receiver experiences confusion and conflicting feelings about the touch and/or about the person who does the touching. The intent of the adult may be unclear, the touch may be unfamiliar. There are times when this kind of attention "feels good" but is also frightening, such as a touch that is sexually stimulating or stating in front of your friends how wonderful you are, but initiated by an adult. Thus, the attention or touch that "feels good" is not always good or safe.

 

 

 

Whether the touch or attention is "safe" or "unsafe" or "confusing" is determined by how the receiver experiences it, NOT by the intentions of the person giving the attention of doing the touching. The adult may intend the touch/attention to convey a certain kind of message (support, affection, etc.) but the message is entirely dependent upon how the receiver perceives the touch/attention, and the adults have no control over this. The adult's intentions are irrelevant.

     

It is, and has been, one of the goals of BACHNET to provide information about how to protect children from sexual abuse. Even before BACHNET was founded one of our author’s had articles published on the Web informing parents of how to protect their children with increased parental/adult responsibility in sexual abuse prevention. We at BACHNET see parental responsibility crucial in preventing child sexual abuse. This sexual abuse prevention comes through educating non-offending adults about sex offender behavior, as well as, treated sex offenders themselves speaking out about their crimes and methods used to commit those crimes. Every adult should take part in sexual abuse prevention. Sexual abuse destroys lives. Please help us spread the word about sexual abuse prevention.

 It is through a combined effort that sexual abuse can be prevented. Our Web Site is designed for that purpose. We have free literature available 24 hours a day covering most of the topics necessary to put an effective prevention plan in place. We also have many other tools coming, including videos, a hot line, a place to anonymously ask questions to a Therapist or a Treated Sex Offender. Through some of these an adult could discreetly ask about someone’s behavior that the parent/adult might suspect as possible targeting or threatening behavior.

Over the last several decades we as parents have pushed the burden of preventing/stopping child sexual abuse off onto our children. Currently over 500,000 children are abused each year. Nearly all prevention programs have focused on children rather than molesters. We have done this through teaching them about inappropriate touching or stranger danger discussions. The burden to prevent child sexual abuse should not fall on our children it should be on our, the parents, shoulders. Children are not knowledgeable or mature enough to handle these types of decisions and determine the intentions of adults behaviors to protect themselves. Time and time again news reports show a child that has been abused for years illustrating how hard it is for a victim to confront their attacker and turn them in to the authorities.

      As parents, it is our responsibility to prevent and stop sexual abuse. We must learn everything we can about sex offender behavior. It is through this new knowledge that we can truly protect our children, grandchildren or help protect other peoples’ children.   As parents, we must make every effort to learn about the following areas regarding child predators:

 

·           ·           Who are the offenders likely to be ( a suspect list)?

·        ·         What types of offenders are there?

·        ·           What techniques (manipulation, grooming, etc.) do offenders use?

·        ·           What are the common traits of sex offenders?

·        ·           What is the truth about sex offender behavior versus misconceptions (media hype)?

·        ·           What would be considered suspicious behavior?

·        ·           How do sex offenders silence their victims?

SEXUAL ABUSE: LIES FROM MOLESTER 

The following are typical lies that Sex Offenders tell their victims: (Remember that most young children think in terms of absolutes – everything is black and white to them). Sexual abuse takes many forms and sexual abusers use many different tactics when targeting children. Sexual abusers lie about everything and sometimes they mix in a little of the truth which has an even greater secrecy impact on children.

 

 

 

Now, let’s talk about who your children are at the most risk from. The overwhelming majority of all child sexual abusers (90-95%)^[1][1] abuse a family member or family friend. There are varying statistics on how many children are actually abused each year, but on average 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 6 boys are abused each year (these vary greatly depending on which source is quoted and because a lot of sexual abuse goes unreported).. With that in mind, how do you deter somebody that you trust? Believe me if your child is being targeted by a sex offender, the chances are extremely high that you trust this person. NEVER think that it won’t happen to your children and not do anything to prevent it. If your child is being targeted the chances are great that he/she is a person you trust.. The reasons why and how are too in-depth to go into in this article, but will appear in a later one.

To actually deter, prevent, and or stop your child from being sexually abused (it is possible that it may be happening now) will take your continued support and reassurance to your child. I say this because this is not something you do only once – it must be done often! Regardless of how uncomfortable it makes you feel – you must do these things for your child’s sake. Here are some things I believe will help make your child safer and then I will tell you why it will work:

 

1. BOTH parents (together) talk with your children about sexual abuse. Talk to them alone or together if more than one child-whichever you feel your child/children will be the most comfortable with, and begin as soon as your child can understand sentences and knows the difference between right and wrong on some level. Tell them what inappropriate touching is, and that it is unacceptable from anyone –INCLUDING you as the parents (see last page for books on this subject). I can’t emphasize that last point enough. So many offenders tell their victims that it is OK because they are their Dad or Mom. So tell them together that it is not alright from anyone. Tell them to watch out for people who “jokingly” talk about sex, or that seem to “accidentally” walk in on them when they are in the bathroom or changing clothes – anytime that the child may be undressing. You as the parent can think of other times like these to give as examples. As your child grows older and matures both emotionally and mentally you can increase the depth of these discussions, but never believe that you can stop having them too soon. Continue these until your child understands these things completely and then continue to reassure them of your support. For more details on what to tell your children go to:

 

2. Develop a network in advance for your children and involve them in the selection of who goes on that list. It should be a list that your children are comfortable with-not you. This is a network of people that your child can turn to in the event they are being sexually abused or feels that someone might be setting them up for sexual abuse. Never make the mistake of believing your child does not need this network, because they do. Not only do they need this network, they need your permission to go to any of them in the event they are abused. It’s not that they actually need your permission, it’s that they need to know ahead of time that you, as the parents, won’t be upset with them and that they won’t get into trouble if they do. This is extremely important, because if the offender is family, your child already feels very confused, scared and would feel even more uncomfortable and confused if he/she had to tell Mom what Dad is doing, or vise-versa. Sex Offenders know this and use it against your children to keep them quite. Update this list with your children often, especially as your child grows older and matures emotionally and mentally, and at least once a year and make any revisions to it. Let your child know that it is alright for them to go to anyone else that is not on the list if they have to.

 

3. Tell your child that if something does happen to them to tell at least two people on that list and to keep telling until the abuse stops. That if they are abused that an offender may tell them – it is their fault, or that they will get into trouble, or that they will be taken away, or that you ,as the parents will stop loving them and will hate them. Tell them ahead of time that these will never happen and are not true. Sex Offenders use these lies very effectively to silence their victims, and tell them that. When you take away an offenders ability to get his victim to keep silent you take away his power and his desire to target your child. Click here for more details on lies by molesters:

4. Make it a point to reassure your children constantly. The more comfortable they are the more confidence they build and their self-confidence can be a very strong deterrent to most sex offenders – Sex Offenders typically stay away from children with strong self confidence because they believe they couldn’t get them to keep their terrible secrets.

 

5. Let all the people on your child’s network list know that they are on it. Let them know your child has your permission to contact them in the event something happens and ask if they are alright with it. (Then tell them about this plan that you are doing so they can do it with their children.)

 

6. This one is one of the most important steps I can tell you about. This step is the one EVERY other abuse prevention plan doesn’t tell you about, but it’s the most important. In addition to those on your child’s network, let ALL of your family and friends, as well as, your child’s friends parents – especially those that your child is closely involved with – sleepovers and such - know about this plan in detail! No matter how uncomfortable it maybe, because trust me - it is not only important - but vital to your child’s safety. Also, tell all your new friends about it as well – never believe you can stop doing it. I’ll list all the reasons why next.

 

7. Now for why this will be effective with deterring a sex offender (it’s not absolute- but it would have deterred the majority of offenders I have interveiwed). By doing these things and going over them with your child often – updating your network, friends, neighbors, etc. – you are letting anyone that is a potential sex offender (active or inactive) know that you, your child, and friends are prepared for them. That their lies will not be believed by your child and your child WILL tell on them without any hesitation. I’m sure you are wondering how will an offender know these things? Simple – YOU told them already! Remember what was said earlier about 90-95% of all child sexual abuse victims are victimized by family or friends? So, if your child is/was being targeted by an offender the chances are enormous that he/she is someone that you know and trust and could be even someone on your child’s network – that’s why you have your child tell 2 people on that list – it provides and extra safety measure for your child. Because a sex offender takes advantage of children’s vulnerabilities, being a victim of previous sexual abuse is a big one that they could easily exploit. By following this plan you have in effect told these potential offenders they are going to get caught ahead of time. Sex Offenders generally target children where the risk of getting caught is sufficiently low enough to be worth the risk they are taking. This plan puts your children in, what I believe to be, an unacceptable risk category. This means they will target someone else and leave your child alone.   Sex Offenders typically keep a mental note of potential victims for future use and by doing this plan they would be taking your child off that list. As disgusting as that sounds it is very true. That is why telling every one you know about this plan is so important. That is really the secret to its success. Afterall, for years parents have been telling their children about inappropriate touching, the lies, staying away from strangers and other things about child molesters, but this hasn’t prevented a lot of children from being abused. It probably was the reason the abuse ended when it did, but it had very little to do with true prevention. That’s because no one was telling the potential offender ahead of time. Telling any would be offender that your child is prepared for them WILL scare most of them off. 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    -Abie Notlia.

 

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