There are many systems and services available in our country that can be helpful to families in preventing child sexual abuse. It is important to work closely hand in hand with systems such as child protective services and law enforcement to prevent child sexual abuse.
In the story I describe in my book “Father Figure – my mission to prevent child sexual abuse” I describe in detail the part played by child protective services in helping a family member protect a couple of children for possible risks of sexual abuse. However, I also mention that at the beginning I did not receive appropriate support and action from the child protective services.
When I, as a family friend and a private citizen, detected the risks, I contacted the child protective services, but I did not feel that they were able to place appropriate priority on this matter to be able to do something significant. Fortunately I was then able to make a family member aware of the significant risks for the children and was able to convince the family member to contact child protective services.
I do wish that the child protective services had acted upon my concerns immediately and had worked with law enforcement to take some appropriate preventive actions, but I was not totally surprised because I was aware that they might not have had the resources necessary to attend to a preventive situation reported by me. But I was glad to see that when I was able to get a family member to bring the concerns to the child protective services, they did well in responding to the situation. That’s why I would like families to know that this service is available to them if some red flags are detected by one or more family members.