Child Sexual ABUSE Awareness-SHARE tips

Re: Child Sexual Awareness Month-April

Also, go through CSA Awareness Month | Keep your Children safe

 

Re: Child Sexual Awareness Month-April

Thanks Racr
I am posting a video on CSA
Preventing Child abuse - YouTube
It shows how to teach children about CSA

 

Re: Child Sexual Awareness Month-April

This is purely from my experience as a child. I think we need to trust our children more. When a child, male or female, is uncomfortable with someone that is in our family or friends circle we need to show we trust our child and protect them. A lot of times we send mixed messages to children - and that is why they hesitate to reveal about the abuse.

I remember when I was in 11th standard, a friend fell sick outside college and me and another friend were trying to take her home and this guy suddenly comes and starts helping us out. He calls an auto and then insists that he will sit in the auto and drop us. For some reason I felt this guy is a creep, and was not talking much, but there were bunch of adults around us that kept saying 'oh uncle is so nice he is helping you out, let him drop you guys home' my other friend was okay with it.

Finally when we reach the friend's apartment, someone suggested that rather than carrying her upstairs, I should go call her parents downstairs. This man suggested that he would come up with me and that is when I could not take it anymore. I put my foot down and I said that I will not go alone with him and you know what, there were a bunch of people, who were surrounding us they started yelling at me, "he is such a nice man, how can you think in this direction. These days girls have too much brain.... Education has corrupted them etc... etc..." And that man also said "beta I am like your dad, you said such a thing to hurt me etc...." I got guilt tripped into going up the stairs with the man. Once I was at the friend's apartment, I felt so bad about what I had done that I remember telling myself that thanks to an overzealous mother I was always on guard.

But Days later I noticed this guy again outside our college and later I realized that he is always outside our college staring at young girls. However, I was too scared to even bring it up for sometime to my other friends because the above incident totally scarred me. I can imagine that is all the more difficult for younger children.

What we can do on our parts is also stop hyper sexualizing our children. I once told a friend who put a picture of her 3-year-old posing in a bikini on picture on facebook, that take that picture off because there are all sorts of creeps around. Don't sexualize a child's body. Similarly with male children too, don't put naked pictures on websites thinking it is cute - not everyone thinks that way.

I sometimes think that since I work with this population I am on 24X7 alert, but a lot of times parents unknowingly post naked pictures of children on social networking sites and you just don't know who is going to get their hands on it.

 

Re: Child Sexual Awareness Month-April

very true...recently one of my cousin called me up saying her daughter(10yr old) told her that the man who gives her arabic tutions tried to touch her at the wrong places.I asked my cousin what did she do about it...she said "i dont know...what if he didnt mean it that way"....I was shocked...i told her if you dont support your child now..your child will never tell you about such incidents again...we as parents must support our kids.And her daughter's arabic tutions were stopped immediately...thank god.
There were incidents which i could never discuss with my mom but i could with my other friends.Like there was this uncle(my friend's father) whom we used to call Rangeela uncle...because can you believe it he used to flirt with us (friends of his daughter)...and i could never tell this to my mom..how could i???
.But yes in our friends circle we used to have discussions about that uncle.

good that you brought up this point here...

 

Re: Child Sexual Awareness Month-April

A particular thread that has been disturbing me a lot is about husband staring at other women. One of the responses in it was by a female poster that said her father would constantly stare at other women while dropping her to school and her mother told her something like men are like that only.

On the surface it seems like just a comment, but imagine growing up with that perspective of the world! I find it impossible to even fathom the impact it has on a young mind. I know it does not have anything to do with CSA but I think it is related because children see and perceive things both subtle and not subtle things which socialize the ways in which they perceive the other gender.

Dinny your point about a friend's father. How many of us have friends with sleazy relatives? A lot of us can testify to that, it just takes a moment for a child to experience CSA and sometimes the child probably does not even know that CSA is happening to them. I remember having a conversation with a friend who told me that when she was 7, her close friend's older brother who was 17 then would constantly kiss and hug her. The guy was adored by her family and she always thought that he was being friendly. But thinking about it now makes her so angry and each time she goes home and sees this guy, she feels anger and resentment and it makes her feel "used". I think even growing up with such memories and living through that feeling of being manipulated is so painful....

I am sorry I just went off on a tangent....more later, perhaps

 

Re: Child Sexual Awareness Month-April

I get the drift of it arch...
Cultures intend to protect children from harm and hence they codified principles to protect them...
But cant say if it has really helped...
I want to post many such incidents but then dont want to go back in those bitter memories again...it still hurts

No why should you be sorry...we must discuss such things...in the open

.

 

Re: Child Sexual Awareness Month-April

We need to stop normalizing sexual harassment. How does one differentiate between a stare or an ogle? Shouldn't the person being "ogled at" "looked at" or "stared at" have the right to decide whether they are finding the stare, ogle or look as offensive? Sadly by cracking jokes we only normalize sexual harassment.

Almost 1,000 Haryana schoolgirls sexually abused, and 30,000 sexually harassed | Mail Online

Around 1,000 pre-teen girls studying in Haryana schools have reported sexual abuse and 30,000 have reported instances of sexual harassment. The startling revelations have come through a survey conducted by teachers of government schools in the state's Rewari district. It revealed that the girls were not safe either at home or school.
The study was conducted by 60 teachers deployed by the education department.

Sadly this news will not get much attention because right now the nation is focused on IPL etc... Also because it happened in Haryana and not in a city like Bombay, Delhi or any of the other leading metros. As a nation and as a society we really need to question ourselves and hold people more responsible to the comments that they make. I am sure if we take a random poll of women on this very forum almost, everyone will attest to having experienced sexual harassment as a teen at least once.

I am sure that the harassment these teenagers attest to are not just stares but more worse than that...