Children and Sexual Assault / Abuse

In a 1991 Canadian study, about 4% of boys and 10% of girls experienced severe sexual abuse before the age of 17 (MacMillan, Fleming, & Trocme et al, 1997). In this study, severe sexual abuse is defined as an adult threatening to have sex with a child, touching a child's "sex parts", trying to engage in sex with a child, or sexually attacking a child.

Signs of Abuse

Not all children are able to tell their parents they have been abused so it is important to be aware of signs your child may exhibit. Changes in behavior may be signals that something has happened.

Children often feel responsible and blame themselves for what happened, or are told by the offender that if they tell anyone they will get into trouble. Therefore, children will not want anyone to find out for fear of being punished.

Children harboring such guilt often manifest it in ways which seem to have little to do with sexual abuse.

Be alert to this possibility if you observe any of the following:

What to do if you suspect abuse?

• If a child says she or he has been abused, try to remain calm.
  
  
• Reassure the child that what has happened is not his or her fault.
  
  
• Seek a medical examination and psychological consultation immediately.
  
  
• Know that children can recover from sexual abuse, particularly if they have the support of a caring, available parent.
  
  
• Get help yourself. It is often very painful to acknowledge that your child has been sexually exploited. Parents can help children by not minimizing the abuse. Therapy can help caretakers deal with their own feelings about the abuse so that they are able to provide support to their children. If a parent or caregiver was sexually abused as a child old feelings may surface at this time.

How to Protect your Child

The prospect of discussing sexual molestation with our children can make us feel very uncomfortable. Yet avoidance of the subject deprives children of the knowledge of how to prevent such abuse and reinforces the view that it is a taboo subject. The abuser requires such silence from the victim and others in order to succeed; not talking about it helps create this silence.

• Make it clear to your child that they do have a right to voice their objections to adult behavior which they find confusing and uncomfortable - even if the adult is someone they know (i.e. family friend, babysitter, teacher, relative, or member of the immediate family). Remember, offenders are known to the child 85% of the time.
  
• Offenders make use of the secrecy surrounding private part of the body. Teach your child proper names for the private parts of their body to remove this power from the offenders. This can be started at an early age when teaching the names for eyes, ears, knees and so forth.
  
• Children should be taught the difference between secrets they can keeps and secrets they shouldn't keep.
  
• Expand your child's vocabulary regarding feelings.
  
• Teach your child to trust their feelings.
  
• Teach your child the difference between

Online Safety
The internet is the perfect medium for child molesters. It is unregulated, anonymous, and secretive. An offender can easily become whatever age, gender they pretend to be.

Fortunately, there are a number of things that can be done to keep children safe.

Guidelines for Children:

• Never give out personal information.
• Never agree to meet in person with anyone you have spoken to online.
• Never enter a chat room without supervision. People may not be who they say they are.
• Never tell anyone online where you will be or what you will be doing.
• Never respond to or send e-mail to new people you meet online.
• Never send a picture over the internet or via regular mail to anyone you've met on the internet.
• Never respond to anything that makes you uncomfortable. End such an experience by logging off as soon as possible.
• Always tell someone about something you saw or a message you received, intentionally or unintentionally, that is upsetting.

Guidelines for Parents:

• Get to know the services your child uses.
• Supervise your child when they use an online chat.
• Make computer time a family activity.
• Stay in touch with what your kids are doing online.
• Set reasonable rules and guidelines for using the computer.
• Find resources (online and in print) that suggest child-appropriate content and can inform you about web sites.
• Consider installing blocking software that logs your child's internet activity.
• Consider installing software on your computer that blocks or filters incoming information or e-mail or signing up with an Internet Service Provider that takes care of it on their end.
   
  

Child Abuse Statistics and Studies

• The most extensive study of child sexual abuse in Canada was conducted by the Committee on Sexual Offences Against Children and Youths. Study findings indicate that, among adult Canadians, 53 percent of women and 31 percent of men were sexually abused when they were children (Badgley, 1988).
  
• In 2003, 61% of all victims of sexual assault reported to the police were children and youth under 18 years. Reports of girl victims were highest at ages 11 to 19 and reports of boy victims were highest at 3 to 14 years of age (Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics).
  
  
• There is little evidence that children deliberately make false allegations or misinterpret appropriate adult-child contact as sexual abuse. In the few recorded cases in which children appear to have made false allegations, it has usually been the result of manipulation by an adult. False denials of sexual abuse (saying it did not happen when it did) and recanting a disclosure of abuse (denying that it happened after having told someone about being abused) are much more common than false reports (Health Canada, 1997).
  
• Among substantiated sexual abuse cases reported to Child Welfare Authorities in Canada, non-parental relatives represented the largest group of alleged perpetrators (28%), followed by biological fathers (15%), and step-fathers (9%). Biological mothers held 5% (Trocme, MacLaurin, & Fallon, et al. 2001).
  
• In an analysis of 23 research studies (Jumper, 1995), significant relationships were noted between the experience of child sexual abuse and subsequent depression, lowered self-esteem, and psychological symptomatic including anxiety related problems, personality disorders, suicidal behaviors, psychiatric illness and dissociate disorders.