UNITED STATES—APRIL is Sexual Assault Awareness Month!

Although I have written about this topic in MANY DIFFERENT WAYS, I have absolutely no problem writing about it again. Adult women have the resources and know how to help themselves If they want to, teenagers are educated in high school, so it’s the sexual assault of children that I want to focus on.

I am hypervigilant and believe that thinking ahead to problems that could be, is the best way to be prepared. For example…

Did you know that raising a pleasantly polite non-questioning girl, seen by others as submissive, makes her a target to deviants who find them easier to manipulate? Learn how to talk to your kids and strengthen their mind against known perpetrator techniques because the Department of Justice and CDC tells us 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 6 boys will be sexually assaulted during childhood and these FACTS prove why we should all be a little more vigilant.

Sexual assault, defined by RAINN.ORG as “sexual contact or behavior that occurs without explicit consent of the victim,” means there will never be rationalizable circumstances because there is no exception that says a child can consent. When these acts are normalized during childhood, the youth is primed and ready for future assaults and what is being studied as polyvictimization!

How you respond if a child tells you about their victimization can make a big difference to both the long term psychological well-being of the child, as well as if there are to be legal ramifications.

When the first person told is a caregiver or family member, their response to the news WILL have an effect on the child’s willingness and ability to tell the story again.

Know what, where, and how to ask if you suspect.

ALWAYS believe the child as it is not your job to make that decision, and in fact you must stay as emotionless as possible. No crying, no yelling. The experts say to stay calm and reassure safety while making sure they do not self-blame.

Get an expert involved the moment your fears are confirmed because interviewing techniques are created specifically to be solid against disqualification by the defendant’s lawyers.

In the end I would like to say something about parents using discretion about whether to report the crime or not.

We need to combat the parents who use the many old excuses for not telling anyone and FORCING the child to coexist with a sexual deviant. Maybe they say they did it to not further traumatize the child. They fear losing the income of the perpetrator, the court proceedings…

Fear shaming the family to the sacrifice of a child’s mental health?

There are a lot of people like me who do not give a crap, we want those parents ARRESTED! There are too many survivors of childhood sexual assault by GENERATIONAL PERPETRATORS, and these children would never have been put in harm’s way had the parent of the previous victim done the right, LEGAL, and MORAL thing.

It is this precise lack of action that proliferates normalization of sexual abuse onto multiple victims. Until it is stopped, there will continue to be sexual assault in our country.

What we have done thus far is not working! Huffington Post’s High Schools Are Failing Girls Who Report Sexual Assault reports that “a number of schools” are under investigation.

Take a BETTER SAFE THAN SORRY stance. Immunize your child against the tactics of sexual predators and if you come into contact with a possible child victim get professionals involved.