Since writing my second book “Father Figure – My Mission to Prevent Child Sexual Abuse”, I have come in contact with many individuals across the country who truly care about preventing child sexual abuse. Most of these individuals agree on one thing – in many situations close family members had an opportunity to prevent the abuse, but were not able to take appropriate preventive action.
The main reason for this is that in most cases the possible abuser is someone who is well known to the family. And it’s difficult for the family members to deal with the thought that someone well known to the family will actually do something harmful to a child. And because of this, family members seem to ignore any possible early signs and do not want to intervene until and unless they can be certain that the person will actually harm a child. Unfortunately, by the time one becomes certain about this, it is typically too late.
We all need to educate ourselves about the impact of child sexual abuse – even one single episode can scar the victim for the rest of his/her life. If family members understand this well, then they will not feel bad in intervening even when no abuse has actually happened – that is the only way to ‘prevent’ anything bad from happening.