The Single Biggest Barrier to Resolving the Child Sexual Abuse Epidemic is Silence
1 in 4 girls will be sexually abused before the age of 18
1 in 6 boys will be sexually abused before the age of 18
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30-40% of victims are abused by a family member
Another 50% by someone they know and trust
Read More Statistics About Child Sexual Abuse
As you can imagine and have probably experienced for yourself, child sexual abuse is a difficult subject for most adults to talk about, let alone the children who are its victims. As such we must begin with the basics and break the silence. In doing so, we achieve five key objectives as follows:
- We encourage community members to accept the fact that child sexual abuse happens in every community;
- We inspire community members to make a personal decision to learn to protect kids by participating in prevention training;
- We teach adults, teens and children “the language of abuse” and open the lines of communication;
- We help survivors understand that they are not alone and support their healing journey;
- And most importantly, we put offenders on notice that we’re watching and our kids are off limits!
In her book The Socially Skilled Child Molester, Dr. Carla van Dam states that “Child molesters [also] gravitate to those people who are most likely to be too polite to fend them off, too shy and anxious to tell them to leave, too dependent to be assertive, and too impressed by rank, power, status or money to do the right thing. Child molesters deliberately associate with adults who cannot address these issues. They seek out adults who worry about hurting people’s feelings. They charm adults who do not believe it could happen.”
You Can Protect a Child from Sexual Abuse
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