Education About Molestation For Children: How Important Is It?

[ritu 1]

One of the most beautiful gifts that the world which has more or less turned ugly, has are children. The childless homes or families can well assert that. As grown up and mature beings on the earth what have we exactly done to treasure this form of blessing,most will answer---- a lot , we have taught them values which make them proper human beings,education(basically formal), to groom them up for the future,loads of love, simply because who wouldn't love a child and of course provide for their material well being.None of us is unaware that the world is full of abusers that can go to the extent of making innocent children their victims. The term is usually known as child molestation and it has become a usual phenomenon indeed. The cases which involve a well known name are brought into focus by the media, but the actual number of such abuse is alarmingly higher. It seems you can't trust anybody with your children. In fact most of the molesters are either acquaintances or close relatives. This kind of evil is present in almost the whole of the world, irrespective of the development rate of the country.However,the matter of worry here is that sometimes the child is too young to understand that it has been molested. There should be some way to equip our children with education about what kind of behaviour molestation exactly is.What I put forward as a topic of discussion is what should be the correct age and manner that children are introduced to education dealing with such a sensitive issue? We can't even afford to wait till the child attains the stage of adolescence for by that time it might already have fallen prey to inhuman intentions nor can it be begun so early that the child fails to grasp the very essence of whatever is being told to it, or worse for everyone the child might have faced the trauma and not willing to speak because of the fear of that monstrous person. Whatever the case the importance of educating the child about molestation does not reduce and has to be delivered to save it from encroaching hands that ruin their childhood.Please share your views regarding this issue and back it up with sound reasons.

[sheepdog 10]

This is an extremely difficult situation. And very difficult to know how to deal with. Not only when to start educating your children, but HOW! Starting too young or going overboard with warnings may be nearly as detrimental as no education. You can cause your child to be fearful of all strangers, and have difficulties dealing with any social gatherings or just being out in th public. A child should not have to grow up in a constant state of fear. I know of one little girl who at 8-9 years of age still hangs behind her mother when meeting with people she doesn't know, which is typical behaviour for a very young child of 2 or 3 years old, but not a girl her age. I know her mother pounded the fear into the little girls head. And I do understand why the mother did it, as there is a relative that is a suspected child molester and the little girls mom feared for her daughter. So I don't really blame the mother, but the daughter now has serious lack of confidence. Yes, some education is definatly needed, but this without a doubt is a very serious issue that should be dealt with with the utmost care. Finding the balance between having a child that understands but is not constantly in fear is going to be a very tricky situation. Odd you bring this subject up. Just a few days ago I heard a story that really made me mad. This involves a somewhat disfunctional family, though one quite typical of todays society. Husband and wife seperate. They have 3 children between them. They get joint custody of the 3 children. One parent gets them for a week, and then the other parent gets them the next week. Husband gets new girlfriend, and moves her AND her 5 children in with them. So every other week they have 8 children. Small house, so the kids are all bunked in together any way they can be fitted in. The new girlfriend has an 11 year old daughter. There is some suspicion that she may be molesting the younger daughter of the ex wife. Nothing proven but the younger child has been acting strange and it is a good possiblity that sexual abuse of some kind is going on. Family services is notified, and they refuse to do ANYTHING, even refuse to investigate, because it is female on female. If it was a male child that suspicions were cast upon, they would investigate. I personally find this deplorable. Abuse of any kind is still abuse, and in this case, I could see how it could actually warp the mind of the younger child more so than in a male/female case.

[Bikerman 2]

Hold on a moment.You are making some alarming assertions here. Can I see some evidence please for this massive increase. What are you basing that statement on?Can I see some evidence that child-molestation is common, whilst we are at it. Maybe I have a particularly sheltered life, but as a teacher/lecturer I've seen no such increase. I see cases, of course, but rarely and the number has never significantly increased.Please provide some proper data to back up these alarming assertions.

[ritu 1]

In India and I am sure around the globe, there have been a lot of cases that have been registered to which you would refer to as data, but there is a good number where the molester would be a family member, as close as the first cousin, or an uncle or the worst of all the father himself, that would be in the cases of the females, now as sheepdog mentioned women also can traumatize their fellow beings, for males as well there have been a lot of situations when they have fallen prey to evil intentions, even some of the residential educational institutions and religious camps have also come under suspicion. The reason why any rise in the cases can't be seen is because adequate reporting is not done, the child is too young to actually identify the wrong done to it or the molester is either a close relative or so powerful that he/she has the power to shatter the structure of the household as a whole.

 

Talking about how things have deteriorated these days, I would mention that my mother was brought up in a joint family and she is proud enough to have so many people taking care of her security, when I was growing up in my joint family, I could not be equally proud as there had been unpleasant incidents with my older cousins and they were the ones to tell me that a particular member of the family had to be stayed away from. They were there to educate me, but nobody could they find for themselves for their mothers were convinced that no one in the family would ever cause them any harm. I have read about and also heard acquaintances talking about how their children reacted unlike usual when they a saw a person who would try to be over friendly and expressive to the child. If you are looking for data just google the topic and you will find what amount of rise it has actually witnessed.

 

A very recent case that I came across was at my in-laws place, this girl who educated with help from my father-in-law,was familiar with almost all the teachers in his (father-in-law's) school, they had seen her growing up and knew well the story of her mother's struggle. The girl,lets call her T,visited mom-in-law quite often, she also got friendly to me and one fine day I saw her full of sweat and tears, I took her to my room and tried to talk to her, she disclosed that one of the most respected teachers had tried to, I don't know how to put it but I will, molest her. I then talked to her mother who instantly refused to report the incident to dad-in-law. Now, the mother seemed to digest this just like hundreds of other families do. I stress and ask for methods of education because I know how detrimental that can get for a child's health an when most families maintain a hush-hush reaction to this

[sheepdog 10]

I think denile is one of the biggest problems in ferreting out cases of child molestation. Even if there is evidence that it is occuring, it is hard to believe that memebers of your own family who you love and trust could actually be such sick freaks. To most normal human beings, the thought of harming a child is so repulsive that they cannot even begin to fathom how anybody could do such a horrible thing.

[Bikerman 2]

No, sorry, that simply won't do. This is just anecdote - you have seen more reports therefore there are more actual instances. Bad logic. You have seen more reports because it ISN'T swept under the carpet as it was not too long ago. You have seen more reports because there is more reporting, with 24 hour news and a media hungry for stories.No doubt there are still a lot of unreported cases but there always were. You have no basis for your basic assertion that there has been a large increase in child molestation, and without that the rest is just appeal to emotion.

Edited April 30, 2012 by Bikerman (see edit history)

[ritu 1]

That isn't bad logic at all, and anyways logic has hardly anything to do with it, you almost curse the media for being news hungry, but what about the cases that we have found to occur in the society that we are a part of, I even put the example of the structure of my own family, the fact that these incidents have risen alarmingly can be found in many schools and I was a teacher myself who had seen how kids suffer, the earlier structure of the family was not that bad, but nowadays I have come across my friends complaining about such issues but fail to take legal action probably because there are people who I see here are not sensible in accepting the severity of this issue. You seem to be indeed living a "sheltered life" as you yourself mention and therefore too rigid to accept the truth.

[Bikerman 2]

It is terrible logic. Drawing general conclusions from anecdotal evidence is ALWAYS bad logic.

I didn't 'curse' anything or anyone. I simply pointed-out that reporting of child-abuse is much greater now than at any time in history - which is undeniable. The effect is to make some people believe that it is a growing problem. The same is seen with other violent crime. People are convinced that violent crime is increasing when the truth is the opposite - even in the US, the most violent country in the developed world.

 

The coarse scale of this graph makes it difficult to see, but the homicide rate has dropped about 40% in the last 15 years.

 

Exactly the same thing has happened with child abuse - only much MORE so. Child abuse wasn't even discussed when I was younger, let alone reported in the media. In the US it is only 30 years since the law was changed to make reporting of child-abuse mandatory for professionals such as teachers and health workers. Before then child-abuse cases were simply ignored in the main.

 

The 'ealier structure of the family' that you seem to think was 'not that bad' was responsible for uncounted cases of child-abuse.

Where do you want to start?

Victorian times. Close family structure with divorce extremely rare. Child abuse was routine and societally sanctioned. Children worked, and frequently died, in factories and on the land. Sexual abuse was routine and although there are no statistics we know, from contemporary writings, that it was on a much larger scale than today.

Pre-war? As in the Victorian time, children were seen as small adults and treated as such. Child sexual abuse wasn't even a crime, and physical abuse was routine.

 

I can't be bothered trawling for US stats but I see no reason to believe they are radically different in trend to UK stats - which show a steady DECLINE in all forms of child abuse over the last 30 years. The best metric is probably the child-protection register, which lists children thought to be at risk in the home - often because of previous abuse. The summary stats for the decade 1991-2001 can be seen on my website at the link below and they show what I would expect - a fairly steep DECLINE. This trend has continued since, though I cannot make the more current stats available yet as I haven't finished processing them.

http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

 

The only stats I have handy for the US show a similar decrease - over 9% down from 2001-2009.

 

So far from increasing it is actually decreasing very markedly.

 

You seem to be indeed living a "sheltered life" as you yourself mention and therefore too rigid to accept the truth.

Or perhaps it is that I check my facts before making spurious and emotionally laden claims based on nothing more than anecdote.

 

You say you were a teacher?

Didn't you teach your students to check facts before drawing conclusions? I hope so.

Edited May 3, 2012 by Bikerman (see edit history)

[ritu 1]

Of course, as a teacher, I did try to accomplish what I could do the most, educate the children and possibly keeping a check on the some of the morons who tried to sort of enjoy victimizing the kids.Why I say the trend has got an upward trend, I repeatedly have been stating that it wasn't that insecure for my mom to play out in some acquaintances place or talk to her father's friends, but now that scenario has transformed as my sister who is much younger has faced threats from people who do get violent and it seems there is little that can be done to prevent this other than educating the children. So, what I actually asked for is ways of equipping children with some knowledge that they can identify inappropriate behaviour and at least report it to their parents. I agree the adverse situation has not changed with time, I mean there were cases earlier too, but some odd family views caused restriction, the same oddness still does exist, yet people find it hard to digest as the approach has been far more violent and the cases of occurrence have gone up, I,here rely on what I have witnessed and no logic as I mentioned earlier. Being a teacher, the problems that I found out while explaining the concept to the children was quite a challenge and so emphasise on effective ways of educating them about the matter in question.

[Bikerman 2]

You keep saying that the cases 'of occurance' have gone up. THEY HAVE NOT. They have gone down very significantly. Repeating an untruth does not make it true.

The same goes for 'the approach has been far more violent' - NO IT HASN'T. Violence in ALL forms has decreased significantly over the last few decades.

 

I am quite willing to debate causes and possible strategies, but not based on incorrect assumptions and untrue statements about the background.

[ritu 1]

I post a few links that help you understand better, next time you reply,please include an efficient method of educating the children about abuse.The links are

https://www.scribd.com/document/30272561/Male-Child-Abuse-in-Pilgrim-Sites-in-India-Part-1-2

http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

https://asiancorrespondent.com/2012/03/japan-must-stop-sweeping-child-abuse-under-the-rug/

[Bikerman 2]

Err...just what do you think those links show? Two are about child abuse in India and the other in Japan. They say nothing about INCREASES in child abuse - probably for the very good reason that it HASN'T increased. Plucking links out of the air and making patronising comments about 'understanding' doesn't make your comments true.For your information I am trained in spotting and dealing with Child abuse as well as safeguarding and councelling, but as I said previously I am not going to seriously debate the issue when the whole basis of your assertion is untrue - because that would simply perpetuate the myth that you seem anxious to spread. Adding misinformation to a subject does nothing to address the subject and simply makes it worse.

[ritu 1]

You need to go through the links patiently, you will find details of increase in the Japan's article and also the PDF file which gives you a table to show the increase in the trend till 2005, anyways, Can you suggest the way I was asking for?

[Bikerman 2]

No, you need to read it again."This sharp increase is most probably due to more victims coming forward.."What the Japan artcle shows is an increase in reporting. not an increase in the offence itself. Besides which I was under the impression that you were talking about the US not Japan. Japan is a special case because of the rather particular social structure based which mitigates against public discussion of such matters.The Indian article (pdf) is concerned with a particular issue - sex tourism - and again I fail to see the relevance to the US or other western developed countries.I repeat, I'm not going to spend time seriously discussing an issue which is framed in misleading terms because it only adds to misinformation. I can well imagine meeting someone at a conference and having them say - 'hey, you were in a debate which said that child-abuse was on the increase weren't you? Why did you spread such misinformation? It only makes our job harder'.

Edited May 3, 2012 by Bikerman (see edit history)

[ritu 1]

What I was referring to is actually

Japan’s National Police Agency recognises that violence to children at their parent’s hand is “one of the biggest social problems in recent years” with child abuse reports increasing 40 fold in the last 20 years. In 1990, over 1000 cases were reported compared to over 44,000 in 2009*.

Also

In comparison to countries like the US, these figures are low

and

Japan is generally a safe country with a very low crime rate, thanks to its harsh conviction rate of 99.7 per cent. But, as cases like these two reveal, child abuse is something that, like many of Japan’s social issues, is still swept under the rug.

In case of the PDF, go to pg 22 and you will find . Even I repeat suggest a way to educate the children