Helpful Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

Sensitive, Responsive Care

Sensitive caregivers are emotionally available

Children require sensitive, responsive care in order to develop well. Sensitive care givers are emotionally available to children. They are responsive to children’s cues when, for example, children want to interact with adults or are hungry, lonely, or sad, or when children want a break from interacting with parents. They help children to express their thoughts and feelings and soothe children when children are stressed.

Sensitive adults do not demand more from children than children are able to give.

what parents and other care providers expect from children fits with children’s levels of social, emotional, sexual, and physical development.

Sensitive, responsive parents provide children what they need to learn the skills of everyday living, such as how to let others know what they want and do not want and how to be responsive and sensitive themselves. Not only do parents model these behaviors but they treat children with such care that children internalize these behaviors and value them.

When children experience adversities, their parents and communities help them to cope. Parents and other significant people not only are psychologically and physically available but they show what to do by example. With such care, children become resilient.

Sensitive, responsive teach children and show by example how to deal with everyday problems that come up. They are savvy problem-solvers who seek to understand the issues and consider the consequences of their actions before they act.

Through sensitive, responsive care, children learn to trust themselves, trust

others, and how to figure out who is trustworthy and who is not. Trust is the foundation for healthy development.

Parents Must Cope with Their Own Issues

Research has shown that children can develop well in a wide range of socio-

economic and ethnic settings. It is a myth that poverty automatically means inadequate care. Income is not a predictor of good developmental outcomes for children. Parents who do not have much money can and do provide responsive care that promotes children’s optimal development. Conversely, parents with adequate and high incomes are not automatically sensitive and responsive. The sensitive attunement of parents to their children is the most important factor in healthy child development.

Parents with mental illnesses, chemical dependency issues, and histories of

trauma such as abuse and neglect can parent well as long as they manage the effects of these conditions. Whatever issues parents have, they must deal with them effectively if they are to parent their children adequately. The support and understanding of family and friends, therapy, support groups, self-help groups, psychoeducation, and reading are just some of the ways that parents can manage their own issues.

Parents as Effective Teachers

Infants are dependent upon adults for their survival. Over time, children learn

to walk, talk, feed and dress themselves. Sensitive adults provide support for children’s age-appropriate activities and are effective teachers. They structure tasks so children can learn how to do them. They are respectful of the developing child’s autonomy and allow children to explore and attempt tasks without adult interference, but are ready to help when children need it. They present children with new tasks that challenge children but that children can attain.

Sensitive, responsive care givers provide gentle supervision and guidance. They

set firm, consistent limits so that children can learn how to behave appropriately. They catch children for doing something right and immediately praise them. Penalties are brief and clear. Children feel safe and protected when parents are warm and sensitive, provide clear guidelines, and set clear limits.

Power Over Children

Adults and older children have power over children. Not only are adults bigger and

stronger, they know more and their cognitive skills are more developed than those of children. In addition, social customs and tradition bestow authority on adults and older children. Children understand that they are smaller and weaker and are subject to the authority of others.

When adults are sensitive caregivers, pleasurable contact between adults and

children in the forms of touching, hugging, and kissing are mutually enjoyed but do not become sexual. If children attempt inappropriate touch, responsive, responsible adults gentle tell them not to touch them there and explain that certain parts of the body are private and not to be touched. They also teach children appropriate ways to touch their own bodies and to experience sexual pleasure.

As children develop, they form attachments with persons who are generational

equals while maintaining family ties. As children group up, almost all eventually form intimate relationships that eventually become sexual within the contexts of committed relationships. The sexual respect that sensitive caregivers teach children pay great dividends when children grow up and enter into intimate relationships.

Child Sexual Abuse as Betrayal

Child sexual abuse is a betrayal of the principles of healthy child development.

Perpetrators are insensitive and non-responsive to children. They abuse the power they have over children. They undermine children’s sense of autonomy. They betray children’s trust. This betrayal affects children’s capacities to trust others, including generational equals, and interferes with their capacities to form friendships and intimate relationships.

Children can and do recover from child sexual abuse, but they require

sensitive responsive care to do so. If children have experienced other adversities and no one has helped them to cope with those adversities, children have a much more difficult time learning to cope. Children not only can cope with, adapt to, and overcome the effects of child sexual abuse, but they can thrive. They cannot do this with the care of sensitive, responsive adults.

A Definition of Child Sexual Abuse

Child sexual abuse is an abuse of power, where older, stronger, and more

knowledgeable persons take advantage of children for their own gratification. Perpetrators are focused on themselves and are unconcerned about the welfare of children, or they talk themselves into believing that sexual abuse is good for children and that children want and enjoy it.

Some perpetrators believe sexual abuse involves mutual love and the

Sharing of something special, to the point where they become angry and disgusted when they hear that someone else is sexually abusing children. “String them up!” many say. In their minds, what they are doing is love while what others do is abuse.

Children do not understand sexual behaviors as adults do, and they are developmentally unable to participate as full partners. For instance, one 13 year-old girl believed that her uncle was trying to love her, but she didn’t like what he did. She said, “I didn’t like him the way I like boys.”

Children also do not know that the only person responsible for the abuse is the person who perpetrated it. Unfortunately, a lot of adults do not realize this, and children are at risk to be blamed and stigmatized for being sexually abused. Children often believe that sexual abuse is their fault.

Nothing about children causes sexual abuse. All children are vulnerable.

Those who are sexually abused have the misfortune to be in the presence of perpetrators, and there is no one there to protect them.