Protecting the Gift: Keeping Children and Teenagers Safe (and Parents Sane) by Gavin De Becker

Author:Gavin De Becker
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780307833693
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2013-05-15T07:00:00+00:00

The Protection Process

1. Detect evidence that sexual abuse has occurred;

2. Detect evidence that it’s likely to occur;

3. Make careful, slow choices about the people you include in your child’s life—and fast choices about the ones you exclude from your child’s life;

4. Teach your child about touch, the body, boundaries, communication, assertiveness, and sovereignty over the body.

2. Detect evidence that it’s likely to occur:

Most of the strategies used by predators who are strangers (discussed in Chapter 4) apply again here, except that with sexual abuse we are usually discussing someone a child already knows. It’s easier to understand the workings of child sexual abuse by substituting a less objectionable crime, say, fraud. Wisconsin’s assistant attorney general, Gregory Posner-Weber, who specializes in prosecuting crimes against children, does this with profound simplicity:

You’re a thief—a con artist. You recently met an elderly widow with a good-sized bank account. Your own financial engine is running on fumes. You decide to take her money.

So you befriend her. You run small errands for her. You buy her gifts. You listen to her stories and comfort her when she feels lonely. You put your arm around her and tell her you understand her problems. You spend time with her each day. You tell her she’s special. You gain her trust. Her natural suspicion disappears.

Only then does the conversation shift to money. You describe a tremendous investment opportunity. You offer her a chance to share in this special event. If she’s curious, you play on her curiosity. You answer her questions and downplay her fears.

And your work pays off. She trusts you. She signs the check.

Three minutes after her bank opens, you’re in the wind, cash in hand and ready to target your next victim.

But what if you’re a child molester—a predator? What if the object of your desire isn’t the widow’s bank account, but her six-year-old grandson? What steps will you take to get what you want?

Not much will change. And there, in two hundred words or less, is most of what you need to know about how it works. Just as with the lonely old woman, the child predator targets someone he perceives as vulnerable. And he is perceptive; almost certainly the product of abuse himself, he recognizes the child who feels unloved or unpopular. The attention he pays to the child first buys him access, later trust.

Posner-Weber describes the power of the sympathetic ear:

Your parents don’t understand or respect you? I do. Other kids make fun of you? I know what that’s like—it was the same for me when I was your age. They don’t trust you at home? Boy, I know what that’s like. But I trust you. I care for you more than anybody else. I love you. I’m here for you.

These brilliant manipulators exploit the needs of their victims. The bored and lonely ten-year-old who leaves his empty home to wander around may find himself lured into the house of the highly attentive and generous neighborhood pedophile.

At some point, the sexual predator introduces secrecy.

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