The point I try to make in my book “Father Figure – my mission to prevent child sexual abuse” is that in order to prevent child sexual abuse it is important to prevent situations that could possibly lead to abuse. Remaining involved in children’s lives and maintaining good communications are two important factors.
Whenever I post a comment like the above in one of my social media pages, Ireceive a lot of interesting comments which are very useful and insightful. One person commented that in some situations the perpetrator is someone from within the family. That is an excellent point because in many cases that is exactly what can happen and that makes it very difficult for the other members of the family to act. That is why it is very important that services such as child protective services, Law enforcement, etc, need to be more active in a preventive situation.
However, if the risk is from outside the family, then the family members must work closely with the child protective services and law enforcement to work on preventive measures. The true account story I describe in my book, the possible threat was from an outsider, who had the support of an unsuspecting family member. In a situation like this, other family members need to work with external service providers to prevent the possibility of abuse. That is exactly what some of the family members eventually did in my story with good results, but it did take them a lot of time to act in this situation.