Sometimes when I make presentations about prevention of child sexual abuse based on my second book, I get a question about why I had decided to intervene to find a way to protect two female minors from possible sexual abuse. The following are some of the reasons as to why I had decided to intervene:
- I felt the children were at risk
- Charlie (the convicted sex offender in my story) had not shared his background information with the single mother
- He denied that he had done anything wrong
- He had violated probation twice
- He was again violating probation guidelines
- I did not see any signs of a reformed person
- I became aware of some actions that looked to me like “grooming”
- His previous crime was against a 11-year old girl, about the ages of the children I was concerned about
- He was identified as a “predatory offender”
- He fantacized about young girls of ages about 12-13
- I felt “prevention” meant doing something “before” it happened
- Maybe nothing would have happened – but I felt no one was looking after the interests of the girls – they called me “dad” – I felt the responsibility to make sure they were safe
- It would not have been any good if I waited for something to happen first!!!