Prevention in the Home - Listen to the Children!

 

IN BRITISH COLUMBIA, Canada, a recent study examined the careers of 30 child molesters.  The results were chilling. the 30 individuals had, between them, abused 2,099 children.  Fully half of them held positions of trust-teachers, ministers, administrators, and child-care workers.  One  molester,  a50-year-old dentist, had abused nearly 500 children over a 26-year period.

However, The Globe and Mail of Toronto notes: "In 80 percent of the cases, one or more sectors of the community (including friends, or colleagues of the offender, families of the victims, other children, some victims) denied or minimized the abuse." Not surprisingly "the report suggests that denial and disbelief allow abuse to continue." 

Some of the victims had told on the abusers. However, "parents of young victims were unwilling to accept what their children were telling them," The Globe and Mail quotes the report as saying.  Similarly, a government official in Germany recently cited a report that child victims of sexual abuse have to approach adults with their story as many as seven times before they are believed.

"Get Help Now"

"IF YOU are a man and you are sexually involved with children, you may be saying to yourself, 'She likes it,' or 'I'm teaching her about sex.' You're lying to yourself.  Real men are not involved sexually with children. If there's any part of you that really cares about that child, stop it. Get help now," A proposed public service announcement, quoted in the book By Silence Betrayed. 

Next time: Common Misconceptions

From the jw.org publications