You cannot change anything, if you don't change!
What I am most inspired by with the woman and young girls speaking up in the Gymnastic world, is that they are not just looking at the perpetrator; but looking into why the system itself supported HIM over the young child.
I have heard others speak of teaching children to speak up. Like it is the child who will lend the power to end this. Really?
Teaching children good touch bad touch, without the support of the system they live, work, play, learn, and pray in...does nothing.
What are we expecting from wives of child abusers?
From the support staff of coaches?
From the church boards who know and do nothing?
From the preachers who forgive and forget?
Can we teach them?
Can we teach them what is the right way to handle a child's truth?
What is the right way to interact with a man who has been accused?
Can we teach them to put aside their love, their faith, their team, their organization for a child's welfare?
Child sexual abuse is one of the easiest things to do; for the perpetrators know the child matters the least.
The faith comes before the child.
Sport, money and fame, before the child.
Love and security before the child.
Children are last.
Child sexual abuse will not end, until the child matters more.
I have spoken to countless 'concerned' parents who are still within the church, asking me about how to protect their child. They will tell me they know this uncle, or the father-in-law, or family 'friend' who they suspect of abuse; but they don't know how to stop going to family functions and will not leave their faith and church behind.
Imagine?
So, what this tells me, is that their place within the family matters more.
Their faith, matters more.
It is quite simple, and yet standing against child abuse will cost you more than your heart can hold.
To protect a child you have to remove yourself from the circles where predators move.
I have heard mothers say, "They will be vigilant and watch their children", while they continue to move in the same circles of the abusers.
What the child sees is your acceptance of these abusers. You will not be a safe person to tell or to keep them safe.
Adults have to be taught what the affects of abuse looks like, how children change and how their behaviors are signposts.
The adults in my world knew, and it truly is to be abused again, when the so called non-abusing adults do nothing.
Supporting a child, even an adult child, means standing up against family, systems and organizations, and breaking rules and proper etiquette in the chain of power.
It means saying No, and not going or doing what you have always done.
It will be life changing.
You will be giving up your beliefs in certain characters and institutions.
It will blow your mind how the systems are truly working for abusers and not the safety and care of children.
Which is the reason most will not stand with the child.
They don't want their life to change, they can change their minds and beliefs about a system, organization, family member, church, preacher, friend.
You will be called mental and unstable, unloving and unkind. You will be the subject of ridicule and rejection. You will find out that you truly didn't matter. That the idea of family and faith mattered more.
The whole fiber on which you have been taught will seem upside down and backwards AND it is.
I was raised in an environment where children mattered less.
And, this is the perfect place for pedophiles to operate. They too know this. Revel in the ideas that the adults watching will care less.
When I decided to stand by the victims of my father, I didn't know I was going to be a changeling within our family.
I didn't know that what I was doing was so different, that I would be seen as backwards and mentally unstable.
I began to live my life as the child within me mattered and all the children I had influence over; mattered!
You can tell the value of a family, an organization or religious circle, by how much they value children; their lives, their voices, their hearts and souls.
You can tell by who they support and believe.
What they rush to protect and defend.
In my experience, it is never the child.
A child has to matter more.
