I asked you for help, and you told me you would

If I told you the things he did to me.

You asked me to trust you, and you made me

Repeat them to fourteen different strangers

I asked you for help and you gave me

A doctor with cold hands

Who spread my legs and stared at me

Just like my father.

I asked you for protection

And you gave me a social worker.

Do you know what it is like

To have more social workers than friends?

I asked you for help

And you forced my mother to choose between us.

She chose him, of course.

She was scared, she had a lot to lose.

I had a lot to lose too.

The difference is, you never told me how much.

I asked you to put an end to the abuse

You put an end to my whole family.

You took away my nights of hell

And gave me days of hell instead.

You have changed my private nightmare

Into a very public one.

Prevention than Cure

Very clearly, prevention is better than cure when it comes to Child Sexual Abuse. It has to be a matter about prevention rather than punishment.

And this prevention lies in the hands of each and every parent, the father and the mother.

How can you protect your child?

• remember this at all times: Child Sexual Abuse is a crime situation where the fact is known only to the abuser and the abused, where the abuser enjoys advantages of age, relation and social prestige, where the offender is a mature person and the victim is a child
• teach your child to speak up and ask an adult several questions if it is not comfortable with what is being done to, or around, it; questions like ‘what are you doing?’, ‘why are you doing it?’, ‘should I tell my daddy?’ can have their desired effect
• please explain all this to your child in a one-to-one tone with the usage of simple language and in a manner which does not make the child feel like it is mentally deficient to understand such things; do not explain all this to your child in ‘totlaa’, or what you think is child language; you would be embarrassed at the number of children who find adults speaking to them in ‘aley ley ley, mela laja’ language as exceedingly stupid
• establish a comfortable and free atmosphere at home so that it encourages your child to disclose anything he, or she, may have felt as a violation, especially if it has been felt within the family: remember, your child’s silence is what the abuser has been trading on
• find the language to explain Child Sexual Abuse to your child, use simple terms specially for genitalia like breast, anus, vagina, penis, bum; please do not continue using the words you taught your child while potty training it like ‘chi chi’ and ‘ka ka’ for vagina and penis and anus; it is also very wrong on the part of a parent to be teaching a growing boy words like ‘little brother’, ‘bell’, ‘chilli’, ‘parrot’ et al for penis, it may sound cute to some parents but is enormously misleading for the child’s understanding of its own body
• teach the child the difference between a ‘good touch’ and a ‘bad touch’; this is crucial
• let the child know that it is not the child’s fault if someone does a ‘bad touch’; and that you are there for the child if it wants to come and tell you if it feels frightened or confused about the ‘bad touch’
• help the child understand its right over its own body, specially the right to say ‘no’
• do not force your children to hug and kiss others, this sets a critical pattern for abuse later
• intervene on your child’s behalf when he, or she, cannot say ‘no’
• know where your child is at all times, be familiar with your child’s friends and daily activities
• train your child to check with you each time it has to go out of the house and to inform you where it is going, with whom and for how long
• let the children in your building understand that they must use the ‘buddy system’ while playing downstairs, each one keeps an eye on the other
• believe what your child tells you, be alert to small changes in behaviour
• observe the adult who is paying an unusual amount of attention to your child
• also observe your child if it is being suddenly over-affectionate to an adult, check to see if gifts and chocolates are being given without your consent
• ask the child not to go near strangers or be friendly to them if they offer gifts or chocolates
• repeat this bitter chocolate message firmly; children do not always obey their parents and it is important they understand this
• give your child emergency telephone numbers where he, she, can call if they sense danger
• ensure that your child’s school runs non-graded and no-test sex education courses which include Child Sexual Abuse information for junior classes; senior classes would be given additional information on Aids and nurturing respectful relationships between genders
• ensure that your child’s school and college appoint professionally qualified child counsellors who are trained to handle cases of Child Sexual Abuse as well; do not expect teachers to do this job for you for two reasons: if you as a parent do not want to address such issues, why should a teacher want to do it; also: teachers cannot always be expected to go beyond their brief specially when they are working in overflowing class rooms run in factory-like schools and colleges