Protecting God's Child sexual abuse awareness

I'm considerably a new mom, I'm learning as I go. This year J. our older daughter turned three so my husband and I decided to send her to a part-time program (Pre-k) in a nearby Catholic School, I've been overwhelmed by the experience and suffering from separation anxiety. Once I read the school handbook and knew that they require 100% volunteer participation from parents, I was the first to sign up for their program Virtus. With all the new information they throw at you in the first week of school, I haven't had the chance to read more about Virtus and thought it is a kind of orientation to the school, activities, rules, etc.... And boy, I was wrong!

The training session is about Protecting God’s Children from sexual abuse. The session starts by showing us a video that utterly shocked me. In the video they show sex predators, victims, and parents of victims. As I start watching, my tears started rolling down my cheeks, I could hardly see the screen but my tears didn’t prevent me from hearing how the sex offenders did what they did and how the victims explained the trauma. As I was shrinking in my chair I looked around me and everyone in the room (I would say 120 people) were either sobbing, shaking their head, disgusted, some expressed anger and muttered “please God protect our children”.

After the video ended there was silence. We started group discussion, it was very hard to focus as we all shared our shock about what we just saw in the video. I realized how vulnerable our children are and how uniformed I am, beliving many myths about sexual abuse. We were given questions and we answered them, shared our thoughts and the instructor announced that it was time for a break.

All of a sudden the world around me vanished and all what I could think of is how to protect my children. My priorities suddenly shifted and my brain went into defense mode. I prayed for God to protect my children and said in Arabic “Ya Rab Wahyatek dool awladak ahmeehom” (Please dear God protect my children they are your children.)

As disturbing as this is I feel compelled to share a few points with any parent who would visit my blog. Please feel free to visit Virtus' site to learn more about this topic and become aware and informed.

How big is the problem?

At least one in five girls and one in twenty boys are sexually abused in their childhood

500 thousand cases of sexual abused children are reported each year in the US ( please consider unreported ones)

Myths

Most sex offenders are NOT homosexuals, most sex offenders are mainly heterosexual.

Most Children are not lying when they mention sex abuse only 5% are lying.

Catholic priests don’t sexually abuse children because of their vow of celibacy, they abuse them for the same exact reason others do.

Sex offenders doesn’t look like criminals, in most cases they are normal looking people.

Sex offenders can be as young as 10 years old.

Sex offenders can be your neighbor, babysitter, teacher, priest, friend, relative, they are no strangers to our children.

Some confessions of Sex Offenders

“ He was five I was ten and he looked up to me and I trick him, I lure him, force him to take off his clothes and rape him”

“I would make sure I work around children, I volunteer everywhere, schools, skating rings, pizza places, I study my victim for months and calculate every move and make sure I get him/her even if it takes several months”

“I will dismiss my class early and keep her with me, I will be very nice to her parents and manipulate and intimidate her to never open her mouth with lies about me.”

“I use toys, fancy clothes, to bribe my best friends son to stay with me as long as I can keep him, I throw pornography magazines for him to view and then rape him/her”

“I’ve been doing this for 26 years”

Testimony of abused children

"I just didn't wanna' go on living. I just…I hated myself. I blamed myself I just… I just thought it was unbearable, the pain was just unbearable".

"I felt dirty, I lost my manhood, I wanted to kill myself at the age of 15"

"he always wanted me to take a bath. And…and then he'd start. And I couldn't move. You know, I'd try to scream or do something. I just couldn't do anything, you know?
And so what I did was I'd try to distract myself by looking at different things like, uh, the…the faucet in the bathtub, or, you know, little cracks on the walls. I just look at the cracks in the walls or I'd look behind…
try to imagine what's behind the cracks in the walls just to get my mind off of it…just to get my mind out of my body for a minute. And then he'd leave. And then I'd go to bed— shivering— and, uh, I'd try to fall asleep just to forget about it all, but I couldn't."

"I thought that everyone that looked at me knew that my manhood was gone. I felt… dirty, used, disgusted..."

How do we protect our children?

Control, Control, Control, be in control of your children schedule, children they play with , families of the children they play with, and more importantly who they spend time with alone.

Listen to your children, if your child comes home and doesn’t want to attend his English class, hates his teacher, always fails in this class and you notice a change in behavior, talk to your child and don’t force them to excel in school and play the power game.

Don’t drop off your child to any activity without accompanying them, stay until the teacher shows up.

Love your children, pray with them and for them, make them your friends and be available to them.

There is a way to protect our children, educate yourself, be aware, prevent sexual abuse before it happens.