Over the years I have made several presentations based on my book titled “Father Figure – my mission to prevent child sexual abuse”. One of the topics of my presentations is “Prevention of child sexual abuse – role of a school counselor”. This presentation is based on the details described in my book which elaborates on the challenges in preventing child sexual abuse. In this presentation I focus more on how school counselors might be able to intervene to prevent a possibly abusive situation. School counselors typically have a good relationship with a lot of children and can at times be in a position to be able to help if a situation arises. The presentation is typically very well received by school counselors with a lot of follow-up comments and discussions.
One of the challenges I describe in my book is that our systems do not often respond adequately in a preventive situation, which means doing something “before” it happens, not after. If a school counselor detects a possibly abusive situation and reports to the “systems”, it is more likely that the systems will take some preventive action. In other words, a school counselor’s report will likely receive more attention than a report from an ordinary citizen.
School counselors and other school staff can have a key role in detecting and possibly preventing child sexual abuse. In the true story I describe in my book, it was a school counselor who detected possibility of sexual abuse and reported to the authorities, which eventually led to the arrest of the individual responsible for the abuse. That is why I try to make the point that school staff can have a key role and must keep their eyes and ears open for possible red flags.