• primary prevention: preventing the child’s sexual abuse by eliminating its causes; by developing positive competence in the children (as described in the earlier chapter ‘Prevention than Cure’); by increasing awareness among parents, teachers and other caretakers of the child that child abusers are to be found at all levels and classes of society and in all ages; by recognizing that little boys are as much at risk as girls; by establishing a more conspicuous social vigilance about Child Sexual Abuse so that potential abusers might be deterred; by insisting on establishment by the state of an effective and immediate penal policy which removes from circulation child sexual abusers because they represent a disproportionate and long-term risk to the child population
• secondary prevention: by identifying abuse sufficiently early for effective intervention to put a stop to it; by creating an atmosphere in schools and families through formal and informal means which would make children feel able to report abuse; by providing them with a vocabulary for at least the parts of their own body so that they disclose what they are experiencing; by removing the offender from the child’s home; by understanding, with a very clear recognition, that children rarely lie about sexual abuse
• tertiary prevention: by developing treatment programmes so as to reduce the possibility of future psychological impairment which would include communicating with the child that the blame and responsibility are not theirs even if they ‘co-operated’ or ‘consented’; that is, to minimize the consequences of the abuse without minimizing the abuse itself through formal interviewing and ‘treatment’ which is maintained at a minimally intrusive level by people who provide a sympathetic and undramatic yet supportive response to the disclosure: this would include the police, the courts and mental health professionals

Parents play the most important role in primary prevention and then in secondary prevention. Studies show that if the sexual abuse of a child is nipped in the bud, it inflicts the least damage on that child. But parents, for all practical purposes, cannot always be with their child. Therefore, it becomes all that more important for them to be closely involved with as many aspects of both primary and secondary prevention. The starting point is, as always, the home. Parents need to be friends with their children, use the open house concept for their own children, and an open mind concept too. So that the children can talk. And disclose.

What should you do to ensure that your child would, indeed, want to talk to you about its sexual abuse? What should a parent or guardian be doing to facilitate any kind of disclosure by a child? Here are some strategies to deal with disclosure; much of this has been advised as approaches for counsellors in the Child Protection Units run by the British police so that they can encourage the child’s disclosure of its sexual abuse. Absolutely no reason why they would not work as well with parents who can make for the best counsellors for their children.