As a kid, I was molested by three different people in my life. All of these people knew me and my family. I never told anyone bc I knew it how hard it affected me and telling others, especially my family, would have broken them in similar ways. I hold true to this thought and still have never told anyone besides some few close friends. I understand that this may have allowed for there to be more victims, which hurts me, but I don’t think I would have allowed myself be here today if I had said something.
How can we get children who are victims of child abuse to speak up?
r/AskMen
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I don’t know, was in a similar boat only person I’ve ever told was my wife.
Sorry you had to go through such a harrowing experience as a kid. You are well within your rights to confront these assholes and I feel like you must. It will deter them from causing harm to other kids.
The abusers need to be punished. There needs to be repercussions. Victims spoke out against Diddy and Epstein, and look how far that went. Diddy got off mostly clean, and the Epstein files are consistently being skirted around. Until the abusers actually face the full consequences of their actions, there’s almost no incentive for a victim to speak out.
You are not responsible for the consequences of your abuse being known to your family. Abusers rely on these things to keep their victims silent. Go ahead and speak up. Let the chips fall where they may. And anyone who comes down on you for having spoken upis a piece of shit.
We have to be the change that we want to see in the world. Children today need to see courage from adults. How else can we expect a break that cycle?
Believe them when they speak. And remove the predators from your life.
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It’s going to take a lot more education on the subject being presented to children. Unfortunately a large group of loud mouths insist this “sexualizing children” or some such nonsense making it much harder to do. You can tell kids about inappropriate touching without bringing up sex.
People need to speak to their children about safety from a young age. I’m a victim of CSA and I have established an open line of communication with him since he was a toddler and explained in child friendly the different body parts and what’s private etc. I never felt safe enough to tell the adults in my life, and I didn’t really know there was anything to tell. Those are the two things I am trying to combat in my own parenting.
Assuming you’re a guy like me. I feel like we need to get rid of stigmas like “all men/boys want is sex” and realize males actually can be hurt by inappropriate behavior, too. The whole man up junk does nothing for the mental pain that comes from something so horrible.
I think we need to shine light on it more, so more will realize it happens and needs to be fixed. I’m not sure how, though. I’ve had 7 different experiences, and I honestly think nobody would ever believe them. So, I just buried it and moved on.
I noticed the effects on me, though, but suffer in silence so far 🫤. Meanwhile, hearing how trash men are as a man.
Hope you find closure, my brother 💙
Tell kids from the very beginning of their lives that they have bodily autonomy and can say no to grown ups. And then treat them that way in all aspects of life. Which means respecting their no’s and body language around physical touch especially, but really most anything that isn’t a safety issue.
Talk to kids about their lives and really listen without judging, especially when they’ve done something they aren’t supposed to. Show them know it’s ok to tell the grown ups in their lives big scary things by believing their feelings and responding with compassion when they tell you big scary things. If you want kids to talk to you you have to be able to hear things you might not like and respond with love. Always.
As far as I can tell the only way to get anyone to speak up about abuse is to constantly and consistently tell them that it is okay to do so. I grew up in the 80s and pretty much my whole life in school, all the way through high school, there was messaging everywhere encouraging children to speak up about abuse. Good touch/bad touch, PSAs on television, “After School Specials”, films shown in class…… The list goes on. But I don’t really see this as much nowadays. But even if I did we also have to assure children that if they do come forward we as adults will do everything we can to help them. And that’s the part that was never really done.
So we tell kids it’s okay to ask for help and then show them what that help looks like and maybe, just maybe, they’ll come forward more.
It’s a really hard thing. You don’t want false accusers to get off too easy because they can easily ruin lives of other people. At the same time, you also dont want to make the barrier too difficult for victims because so many of them don’t come forward. For those criminally procesed there is a low conviction rate. It’s just such a horrible thing to manage, whether the accusers are legit or not.
A lot of this can be generalized to both sexes but for the sake of this sub, but are 100% true even if feeble minded asshole adults disagree.
Separate children from religious settings.
Put a fucking stop to this idea that parents have a right to their child if they’re property (because its used to justify abuse and prevent legal action against it).
Give kids of a certain age quality relationship and sex education so they can better identify when they’re being abused and know how to properly report it.
Stop putting pedophiles into the highest offices of the country, like the presidency.
Two things I do:
Ask for permission before touching/picking up. I think, especially from my generation, people expect kids to “give love” (think hugs, sometimes kisses) to family. So in that kind of situation, I stop and ask them “is this okay” first before moving in for a hug. Or if they want to be picked up, “that’s okay with you?”. It’s a little thing but it matters. If they ask me why I tell them it’s their body and they have a right to say no. Also if the parents are telling them to kiss me, I ask them if they’d rather do a fist bump or high five or something like that. Little kids like hitting things (and, boy or girl, doesn’t seem to matter) so that works for them.
I tell them they can say anything around me. I tell them there are people they can’t say certain things around and I’m not one of them. So I give them permission to swear around me. But I tell them that they don’t have to watch or worry about what they say around me. That nothing is off limits.
Seems like a good start. It’s not about getting them to say anything, it’s about giving them a place to say it.
Edit: I’ve found if I ask them if it’s okay to pick them up and they say no and I don’t do it, they’ll typically come back in a relatively short amount of time and ask to be picked up. Not sure if it’s reverse psychology or they know they can trust me, or a combination of the two.
Children need to learn their own bodily autonomy, boundaries, and be able to be vocal about them forcefully, even with their own parents. Teaching assertiveness makes life way harder for parents in a sense, but it’s VITAL for children to learn to speak up for themselves and be persistent. And I mean challenge their parents and argue in a healthy way, about things that bother them. I will never have kids, but I would continuously see a child psychologist to make sure I would teach this properly, age appropriately, and without instilling undue fear.
My sibling and I were viciously emotionally and psychologically abused as children and young adults, and it is a miracle we weren’t targeted by someone who wanted to SA us. Kids like me are spotted by psychos with ill intent because of our meekness and the effects of our existing trauma.
Sometimes as a result of trauma, kids can (especially in CPTSD) lose that connection to their own needs, boundaries, etc.