If one wants to prevent something, then it becomes necessary to take some precautionary measures. It is the same thing when it comes to preventing child sexual abuse. In this case, precautionary measures include keeping an eye open for any possible red flags and following through to make sure children are not at risk of any kind of sexual misconduct.
In the story I wrote about in my book “Father Figure – my mission to prevent child sexual abuse”, I talk about a single mother (named Kim in the book), with two young daughters, starting to date a convicted child molester (named Charlie in the book). I absolutely agree that just because Charlie was convicted of a crime, it does not take away his right to start dating again. That is not a problem at all. The question really is whether or not Kim needed to be more careful about introducing her daughters too quickly to Charlie. My suggestion is that someone in Kim’s place should take a bit of time to get to know Charlie better before introducing her daughters to him.
I was a family friend and had decided to do a bit of background research on Charlie. I found a lot of information on him simply from publicly available documents. I uncovered a large number of red flags that I had shown to Kim. The red flags clearly indicated to me that there were risks involved for Kim’s daughters and that she needed to be careful about moving forward.
Prevention means doing something proactively, keeping the children’s safety in mind. I often tell people that keeping your front door open does not mean that there will be a burglary for sure, but locking the door is the right preventive move.