In the true story I describe in my book “Father Figure – my mission to prevent child sexual abuse” my purpose was to point out the fact that risks of child sexual abuse can come from various different directions. One of the messages I particularly wanted to stress is about the importance of family members and friends keeping a watchful eye on the children in the family. Grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, grand uncles/aunts, etc and family friends can all make a difference in preventive action by making sure children are not in a situation that could possibly lead to abuse.
In the story in my book I focus on the challenges I faced in my efforts to prevent a situation that could possibly lead to child sexual abuse. I found out that it was a challenging experience to try to get child protective services or law enforcement to take any significant actions in this preventive scenario. This was extremely surprising to me. However, it turned out that when I was able to get some family members involved in this effort, it was possible to get the systems to act in this preventive process.
In other words, with the help of some family members, it was possible to mobilize child protective services as well as law enforcement to dismantle a scenario that could possibly lead to abuse. However, it took a lot of time and effort to get the family members to take the matter seriously and to take appropriate actions. Although in this case the outcome was positive, my hope is that family members would act more promptly when it is a matter of preventing the possibility of child sexual abuse.