3-Risks Have to be Managed

Risks have to be managed

So how could a parent protect their child and still allow them a normal, active life enjoying family relationships and taking part in children's activities? By taking the same approach as they do to other risks in a child's life, for example risks from fire, water and on the roads.

In these situations parents know that it is impossible to remove all risks, but what they can do is educate their child to recognise the risk and keep it to the absolute minimum. Using the same approach, parents can educate themselves and their children to recognise and understand high risk situations with people and to avoid them.

Does education for protection have to destroy children's innocence?

One of the reasons parents don't talk to their children about risk of sexual abuse is their fear that they will destroy the child's innocence. Well, that is an important worry but let's just think about it for a moment.

If a parent keeps a child ignorant of risk from other people, is the child safer or more at risk of being abused? If a parent doesn't educate children to protect themselves, the first a child might learn of sexual abuse could be from an abuser.

The reality is that abusive people will know which children are likely to resist and tell a parent and which children are easy to manipulate into secrecy. Abusive people try to minimise the risk they will be detected and so are more likely to avoid well-informed and assertive children and to abuse naive and vulnerable children.

Remember that an abusive person would probably not abuse a child in circumstances where he or she is likely to be discovered easily but they may take risks such as abusing a child while other people are in another part of the building or close by. This is possible because abused children are easily manipulated into compliance and silence.

Charles Fortt