Steps to Protecting Children
- Learn the facts, understand the risks. Realities, not trust, should influence your decisions regarding your child. The greatest risk to our children doesn’t come from strangers, but from our friends and family.
- Minimize opportunity. If you eliminate or reduce the one adult/one child situations, you’ll dramatically lower the risk of sexual abuse.
- Talk about it. Children often keep abuse a secret, but barriers can be broken down by talking openly about it. Understand why children won’t tell.
- Stay alert: Learn the signs. Don’t expect obvious signs when a child is being abused. Not every child is going to show symptoms or may not show right away
- Make a plan. Learn where to go, who to call and how to react. Also think about including other children in the plan. Safe people they can go to if they don’t feel they can go to caregivers.
- Act on suspicion. A child’s well-being is at stake.
- Get involved. Volunteer and financially support organization that fight child sexual abuse.