As a longtime volunteer CASA guardian ad litem and writer/reporter on child abuse I know how voiceless children are. Almost no one listens to them. Think about it, they don’t even know that what is happening to them is wrong.
I know how common child sexual abuse is and how sex abuse traumas destroy childhoods and lasts forever. It is the most tragic and under-reported crime in America.
Yesterday I sat through a terrific class on self-defense developed for children about escaping from sexual predators. The instructor presented powerful information that will save pain and violence for kids in the class before and even after they enter adulthood.
About half of all women experience sexual violence in their life and about one fifth of men.
As a CASA guardian ad litem I helped to remove fifty children from toxic homes where half of them had been sexually abused.
One two-year-old, several four-year old’s and the rest under ten – and most of them suffered daily sexual abuse for years before child protection became involved. I have witnessed again and again the long term effects of child sex abuse traumas.
I was crushed at the end of the presentation yesterday when the instructor stated that she very deliberately allowed no opportunity for a child in her predator avoidance class to describe sexual violence already experienced because “I am a mandated reporter and you know what that means”.
How few opportunities a child has to tell someone and how likely the abuse is going to continue until they can tell someone that will help them.
What’s a five-year old to do?
Let’s not put ourselves out or get some of this on us is a big part of the problem.