Don't stop the buck when it comes,
It's the dawn, you'll see ..
Man, kids can have it tough.
Any quick glance at the news over the last couple of days will have been overwhelmed with stories about the abduction and murder of April Jones, underage sexual abuse by Jimmy Savile and today, the imprisonment after a year of Jerry Sandusky, the Penn State football coach, in the States.
I really hope parents aren't shielding their kids from these stories.
I'm not a parent, and I can't imagine how it would feel to have your child abducted or be the victim of some paedophile, but I imagine it must be devastating. This is why exposure to these kinds of stories is better for children in the long run, hopefully making them more aware and thus more savvy as they grow up.
Most parents will have had that talk with their children about strangers and not letting them do anything, like touch you. But, a key point that I reckon ought to be added to that lecture is that if some sick fuck does touch you anywhere you're uncomfortable with, then it's supremely important to tell someone.
I bet all of Jimmy Savile and Jerry Sandusky's victims are wishing they'd spoken up sooner. But it's easy to see in both cases why some of these victims must have been shrouded in shame. Both Savile and Sandusky were men who were trusted by their victims, and it is from here that the aspect of a victim's shame stems. Put simply, they let a man do something to them that they knew was wrong.
I bet all of Jimmy Savile and Jerry Sandusky's victims are wishing they'd spoken up sooner. But it's easy to see in both cases why some of these victims must have been shrouded in shame. Both Savile and Sandusky were men who were trusted by their victims, and it is from here that the aspect of a victim's shame stems. Put simply, they let a man do something to them that they knew was wrong.
For children to admit to something like this, to any form of sexual abuse, is to admit that they did something they were not supposed to. To them, they were a part of something known only as "bad". Cast your mind back to childhood. How difficult was it to admit to stuff? Maybe you didn't do your homework, maybe you pushed a sibling over. You got into trouble for it because it was wrong. Sexual abuse is wrong. But it's no easy feat for young children to distinguish between these different kinds of 'wrong'.
Now think back to when you had the 'stranger danger' talk. How serious were your parents when they told you not to let someone do anything "bad" to you? Could you feasibly imagine going to them, age 10 or 11, and telling them that you'd let it happen? Imagine the disappointment they felt when you hadn't done your homework.
This is how it needs to be. Tell your children not only that there are dangerous people who might try and do horrendous things to them, but also that these people may not necessarily be strangers. And that should be followed up with "but if it does happen, tell someone". That they are not the bad person and they are not in trouble.
And simply having the confidence to talk at all is getting more important, because, as recent events have demonstrated, you can't always count on adults to do the right thing.
