CSA Prevention is Possible and Reporting is Crucial

Ending child sexual abuse is truly an adult issue. Children cannot be expected to fend off sexual predators. Which means we as adults must do our job to protect our children. The more this topic is discussed, the more people are aware, the more children can grow up in safe environments free of sexual abuse.

Find your local child advocacy center https://www.nationalchildrensalliance.org/nca-members/?postal_code=&miles=50&search=
Darkness to Light https://www.d2l.org/education/5-steps/
Saprea (prevention conversations)https://defendinnocence.org/child-sexual-abuse-risk-reduction/
https://www.rainn.org/articles/if-you-suspect-child-being-harmed

Healing requires energy, vulnerability, and hard work. It’s a lifelong journey and it's never linear. Whatever season you're in on your healing journey, hold on to hope. <3

I hope you have a lovely rest of your day!
Love,
MacKenzie Mae


For help NOW!
RAINN National Sexual Assault Hotline: 1-800-656-HOPE

For boys and men specifically: 1-800-656-4673

More resources here! https://linktr.ee/traumachatspodcast

Transcript

Hello fellow survivors and allies. Welcome back to another episode of Trauma Chats with Me, MacKenzie Mae! April is child abuse prevention month as well as sexual assault awareness month, which is why I’ve been focusing on child sexual abuse awareness, education, and prevention for the last few episodes! Two episodes ago I covered common misconceptions of sexual assault and last week I discussed the signs of child sexual abuse. If you haven’t listened to those yet, make sure you do because I shared so much information that could prevent sexual assault and abuse, offer better support to survivors, and help create safe environments to reduce abuse. In today’s episode, I’ll be expanding on the signs of child sexual abuse I went over last week by chatting about what to do if one identifies those signs and how to prevent it before abuse happens. Make sure to listen to last week’s episode first and then this one because I will be referencing back to it. Please please please share these episodes and this podcast to others so more people can be aware and educated on sexual trauma. And if you do gain value from listening to these episodes and would be so kind to leave a rating and review that would mean the world to me! It really helps this podcast. Trigger warning, I will be discussing child sexual abuse in this episode so listen at your own discretion. As always, please make sure you are physically and mentally in a safe space before listening. And lastly, I am not a mental health professional, I am just a survivor speaking on my own experience, sharing learnings from my personal therapy and from researching in books and online. Any sources used will be linked in the episode description. With all that being said, let’s get into today’s episode.

This episode is for everyone, but especially those who have children of their own or are frequently around children, such as family members of children, daycare employees, babysitters, workers or volunteers at youth club or sport organizations, religious members, or any other child-facing profession or involvement. Child sexual abuse is much more common than society believes, so we need every individual informed on what child sexual abuse is, the common signs of it, how to respond to those signs, and how to prevent abuse from happening in the first place. To reiterate from last week’s episode, child sexual abuse occurs when any sexual act is performed between an adult and a minor, meaning anyone under the age of 18, or between two minors where one exerts power over the other. It can include forcing, coercing, or persuading a child to engage in a sexual act, and non-contact acts like communicating in a sexual manner, exhibitionism, taking inappropriate pictures or videos of a child, voyeurism, or showing a child pornography. It’s important to understand what child sexual abuse entails to be able to identify it, report it, support survivors, and prevent it. Last week’s episode covered signs to be able to identify if a child may be enduring sexual abuse. Now let’s learn what actions to take if those signs are identified to ensure the survivor remains safe and feeling supported. 

There are three reasons why someone must respond to child sexual abuse. The first is if the child directly discloses the abuse they are enduring. The second would be if someone else concretely discovers a child is being sexually abused without the child disclosing that information to them. And the third is if someone suspects abuse is occurring through noticing a child who is exhibiting the signs of being abused or noticing someone else exhibiting the characteristics and signs of a child sexual perpetrator. If someone notices one or multiple of the common signs of child sexual abuse, they MUST intervene and investigate further.

I created an episode on the difficulties of disclosing abuse where I chat about what disclosing abuse entails, the difficulties of it, and how to appropriately respond to a disclosure. If you haven’t already listened to that one, it will solidify and bring an even deeper perspective to the discussion in this episode, so I’d recommend listening to it after this! If someone discovers a child is being abused by someone else telling them or witnessing the abuse themselves, they may not have a direct conversation with the child in harm’s way and go straight to reporting it. But for a case of a child disclosing abuse or someone investigating concerning signs they have observed, one will be engaging in a conversation with the child. When engaging with a child on this topic, one must be incredibly careful with how they go about it to ensure the child feels safe and won’t shut down. It’s vitally important, that they intervene compassionately and calmly to ensure they don’t frighten the child or make the child think they did something wrong. A non-threatening environment MUST be established to allow a child to feel safe enough to open up about something of this nature. As a survivor of child sexual abuse, myself, I know first-hand how hard it is to disclose abuse. In fact, only about 38% of child victims disclose their abuse as a child, 40% of which will only disclose to a close friend rather than an adult. I disclosed my abuse at age 13 to my best friend who was also 13. I begged my friend not to tell anyone, even made her promise not to. Oftentimes, friend-to-friend disclosures won’t be reported to authorities. But fortunately, my friend made the hard decision to go against her promise and tell her mom, which led to an official report. The reason I share this is to illustrate how children tend to not disclose abuse to an adult if at all, so in order for them to open up to you, you must be seen as a safe person who truly cares about them. There are a few strategies to use to create a non-threatening environment. First of all, you must communicate in a calm tone, so the child feels safe and doesn’t think they are in trouble. A serious, worried, or frightened sounding tone could cause the child to feel threatened or scared. So, when approaching them to ask about having a conversation and throughout that conversation, ensure your tone remains calm. If you happen to get emotional, that is completely understandable since these conversations can be incredibly upsetting. Just make sure to let the child know you are not upset with them, you are just upset at the situation because you care about them. Another strategy to create a non-threatening environment is to carefully choose a location and time to intervene. Try to have them tell you where they would feel most comfortable to have a conversation, and ensure it’s away from others, especially anyone who could potentially be harming them. Choose a time you think they’d feel most relaxed. Once you determine an appropriate location and time to have this conversation, open it up by expressing how much you care about them, that you will support them no matter what, and that you are a safe person to speak with. Then you can ask them how they are feeling, encourage them to let you know if there’s anything they need to tell you, or if anything’s bothering them. Keep the questions open-ended. You could ask, “what happened next?” or “tell me more.” Refrain from asking specific, detailed questions. Never ask, “are you sure?” That can come across as you not believing them and cause them to shut down. Allow for silence in the conversation. The intention shouldn’t be to get to the bottom of it. It should be to allow the child to feel safe and vulnerable so you can get as much information as possible to support the child and keep them safe. Silence and pauses should be expected since the child is most likely terrified to tell someone their secret, but those pauses can also foster more opportunities for the child to speak. It’s about them opening up to you, not about you asking every question you could imagine. Assure to them that what happened was not their fault and they have no reason to feel ashamed of it. Then thank them for telling you and let them know you’re proud of them for being so brave. If a child feels threatened, they will most likely answer in a way to get out of the conversation as quickly as possible. These steps will help set the conversation up to be truthful instead of the child saying what they think you want to hear to get out of the conversation or attempt to protect themselves by holding back the truth. Other than needing to keep the conversation non-threatening and compassionate to allow the child to open up to you, it’s also vitally important for the child’s well-being. This conversation must be met with compassion to set them up for success in their healing journey. If they are not met with compassion and are made to feel guilty or shameful, it will have a massive negative impact on the course of their healing journey from then on. 

Before you report, it’s important to be honest with the child. Inform them that you will be reporting the abuse to get them the support they need. They may feel worried or scared of this because many perpetrators threaten their victims to keep them silent but ensure the child that the perpetrator cannot harm them anymore after this. The child also must be kept safe from interacting with the perpetrator between the time you have a conversation and report the abuse. If you are concerned that the child may still be in harm’s way, make sure the person you report the abuse to is aware of that. If you are not the child’s parent and have complete confidence that the child will not be harmed further by their parent, you can inform them that you will be reporting the abuse. And lastly, being reporting abuse, gather your thoughts, make sure you are prepared to share all the information you have on the case to the person you’re reporting it to, and make sure you are supported as well. It can certainly be difficult to learn of such information, especially if you are close with the child in question, so look out for you own well-being as well. 

Once you know abuse has occurred or you have reasonable suspicion it has occurred, you must report it. It’s a moral obligation to report child sexual abuse whether you are a mandated reporter or not, whether you may receive repercussions or not. You must report child sexual abuse. One may be torn because it could be a family member and they don’t want to be the one to break up the family. One may not want to disrupt a youth sports team by reporting the head coach. One may not feel like they can support themselves or their children if they report their spouse. No matter what though, there is a child in need, and that child needs you to intervene. You can get your own support for any repercussions you may experience, but that child cannot get the support they need without you. Doing the right thing isn’t always the easy thing, but it still must be done. My mom was the one who initially reported the abuse to local authorities in my case. She didn’t care about any of the repercussions. She just wanted me safe. However, she, myself, and others who supported me felt the repercussions. The man who abused me was a highly adored, national level taekwondo coach. Many parents were angry that their child couldn’t train with him anymore. They couldn’t fathom he could do such a thing, so they didn’t believe me. They blamed my mom and said she coached me to make the accusation. So yeah, there were repercussions, but they were nothing compared to me continuing to endure abuse or potentially saving other victims from going through the same thing. Do the right thing, and report abuse. 

So how you report child sexual abuse? There are a few different options. You can call law enforcement. You can call a child sexual abuse hotline. Or you can call the local child advocacy center. Every option should be able to guide you in what to do next, how to file a report, how to ensure the child is kept safe, and what to do to ensure you don’t compromise the investigation. In the episode description, I will link the website where you can find your local child advocacy center. I also always have the hotline to call at the bottom of every episode description. Child advocacy centers are a critical component to child sexual abuse cases. They have trauma-informed forensic interviewers to aid in the investigation, and so many other resources to help survivors as well as their families to ensure everything is handled correctly and causes the least pain. This ensures the child’s needs are met, that they don’t have to recollect their abuse more than necessary since it can retraumatize them, and that their case is handled correctly.

Alright to recap a little bit, here are the most important steps to take once you suspect abuse is occurring. First, you must compassionately intervene. Ensure the child feels safe, supported, and cared for and create a non-threatening environment for that intervening conversation. Let the child talk, allow for silence, and remain calm. Next, let them know the abuse was not their fault and that you will be reporting it to get them help. Lastly, report the abuse to law enforcement, a hotline number, or to the local child advocacy center. 

It's so so important to know how to react to abuse because of its prevalence and the immense impact your actions can have. Now that we went over how to react if abuse has already occurred, let’s learn about some proactive ways to prevent it from happening in the first place. By implementing prevention strategies, we as a society have the power to massively decrease the number of children that will fall victim to child sexual predators. Darkness to Light, a nonprofit organization with a mission to end child sexual abuse, created a training called Stewards of Children for adults to learn about child sexual abuse, how to respond to it, and how to prevent it. I recently completed the training myself and highly recommend everyone takes a look at their site and maybe take the training as well! In that training, they go over their framework called 5 steps to protecting children. 1. Learn the facts 2. Minimize opportunity 3. Talk about it 4. Recognize the signs and 5. React responsibly. If you’re listening to this episode, you’re already on your way to step one of learning the facts. By understanding the facts about child sexual abuse, one can better identify it, support survivors, and prevent it. It’s the foundation needed to do all those things. The second is minimize opportunity. This step is one of the ways to be proactive about preventing abuse. This step entails being aware of where children are, with whom they are with, and how long, not only physically but also virtually online through the internet and social media. One of the best ways to minimize the opportunity for a child to be abused is to eliminate one-on-one interactions. More than 80% of child sexual abuse occurs during isolated, one-on-one interactions between the perpetrator and the child. Most youth organizations, schools, and other locations where many children are present have a code of conduct or policy that inhibits any one-on-one situations. These policies state that every interaction must be observable and interruptible, and should be available for everyone to access, typically posted somewhere and sent to any parents or guardians of children who are a part of that institution. So if you’re a parent sending your child to a youth sports organization, a way to proactively prevent abuse is to inquire about their code of conduct or policies and ensure they clearly state their stance on no one-on-one interactions. Another good question to ask if they background check the employees or volunteers at that organization. Not all sports or religious organizations require background checks, and obviously those checks won’t catch every sexual predator, but it’s a good start. Another prevention strategy is to complete an environmental check of the facility. Look around and see if there are secluded areas, if there are, check and see if there are cameras. If you work somewhere with children and there are secluded areas, bring it up and try to find a solution to either eliminate the secluded area or install cameras so a predator is deterred from committing any abuse at the facility. Many people don’t know that 90% of child sexual abuse survivors know and trust their abusers. Sexual predators can be a close family friend, a family member, a beloved sports coach or religious member, and the list goes on. So always be aware of who children are spending alone time with. Many sexual predators are the people you least expect and may even trust. In my experience, my taekwondo coach is the person who abused me. He groomed me and manipulated everyone around me, especially my parents, to seem like a great friend and dedicated coach. My parents truly trusted him and never expected that he was abusing me. If a child needs a ride home or has a 1-on-1 practice or something similar where there’s no other option than leaving them alone with someone, try your best to randomly check up on them. Call them or the person they are with or show up randomly to let that person know you are paying attention. The internet is a common place for children to be sexually abused. Remember, child sexual abuse also includes non-contact acts like virtual sexual communication, showing a child pornography, video chats where a child is coerced into performing a sexual act, and more. And many times, these virtual connections can make their way to in-person interactions. If you’re a parent, ensure you are aware of what your child is accessing on the internet. There are several restrictions you can enable. You could turn off the Wi-Fi at night. Or have frequent phone checks to ensure your child is safe. Whatever works for you to make sure you’re aware of their internet activity and aren’t conversing with a potential predator. It’s best to be honest with your child though, letting them know you are completing phone checks, and communicating WHY you are doing those and WHY you have certain restrictions. Children are smart. If you talk to them and teach them what is okay and not okay, what’s safe or not, they will learn. Which goes into the next step to protecting children: talk about it. By talking about the dangers of the internet, characteristics of sexual predators, personal safety, boundaries, and more, children will have an incredibly lower chance of falling victim to sexual abuse. Not only will the child become educated on these topics, but you will build a caring, protective bond with them which can lead to the child feeling safe around you and feeling comfortable having vulnerable conversations with you. This bond will increase their feeling of confidence in you that you are indeed a safe adult who cares about them, and someone they can rely on. So if they happen to have an adverse experience, they will be more likely to come to you for support instead of feeling alone and falling victim to more of those adverse experiences, one being sexual abuse. Of course, there are appropriate conversations to have with children depending on age. One HUGE prevention strategy is to teach young children proper names for all of their body parts, including their genitals. When they learn about other body parts like their legs, nose, elbows, whatever, also teach them about their breasts, vagina, penis, etc. They must know the proper words to 1. Be able to communicate if those areas were violated and 2. So they don’t feel ashamed of body parts that are simply part of being human. Using aliases for private areas can cause children to feel wrong or embarrassed about using the proper names which can lead them to feeling wrong or embarrassed for having body parts that every other human has. On top of knowing the proper names, children must be taught personal boundaries. Young children need to be taught what consent means. They need to know the areas that no one else can touch and they need the vocabulary to communicate those boundaries to others. Children need to be taught that they have autonomy over their body. If they don’t want to hug someone, they don’t have to. If someone touches them and they don’t like it, they need to have the vocabulary to set that boundary. They also need to know that no one ever can touch their genital areas, breasts, or mouth, and be able to communicate that as well. Children need age appropriate, concrete examples of what is okay and what is not okay in terms of personal safety and boundaries. These learnings are vitally important and an incredibly significant way to reduce child sexual abuse. Predators target children who don’t have the vocabulary of their body parts or the ability to communicate boundaries because they are easier to confuse, manipulate, and keep silent and compliant. Saprea, another nonprofit organization, has so many incredible resources on how to have these conversations and specific conversation criteria for every age group. Their website will be linked in the episode description. On top of talking about it with children, it’s also important to talk about it with other adults, especially those around children. Talking about these topics will raise awareness of the issue, encourage learning, offer support to someone whose child has experienced abuse, and put out alerts that you are an adult who prioritizes boundaries and whose child is aware of boundaries being violated as well as what sexual abuse is. So this not only will help raise awareness for other parents to protect their children, but it will also let any sexual predators know that you are taking precautions to prevent your child and others around from being abused, which will hopefully deter them from abusing those children. Step 4 in protecting children is to know the signs, which I covered in last week’s episode, so make sure you listen to that one. And step 5 is reacting responsibly, which I went over earlier in this episode, but to reiterate, you must take appropriate action and report any disclosures or suspicion of child sexual abuse. Remain calm, cool, and collected, and let law enforcement and child advocacy centers do their jobs. With these 5 steps, child sexual abuse can be dramatically decreased. The more this topic is discussed, the more people are aware, the more children can grow up in safe environments free of sexual abuse. Ending child sexual abuse is truly an adult issue. Children cannot be expected to fend off sexual predators. Which means we as adults must do our job to protect our children. 

That is all I have for this week’s episode. I will link sources I’ve used in the episode description if you want to learn more on how to prevent child sexual abuse, how to respond to it, or just learn more about it. I truly thank you for taking the time to listen to this episode. Like I’ve said over and over, this topic is so so soooo important. Child sexual abuse has a multitude of lifelong impacts like chronic health problems, mental illnesses, and substance abuse, which can all be avoided if more people are educated on how to prevent it. Please share this episode with anyone and everyone, especially those around children. I appreciate you and I hope you have a lovely rest of your day! Chat with you next time.