Review, Stopping and Preventing Child Abuse, Part 5: More Ways to Prevent Abuse and Resources to Fight It With

Not everyone has time to read such long posts as the recent one about stopping child abuse. If someone is suspicious and feels a need to double check the information that made roused their suspicions about a person or situation, the post is not really "reference friendly either". Therefore, I am reposting the information in bits so people can get to it easier.

More Ways to Prevent Abuse:
Whether you suspect abuse or not, let kids in your life know you'll listen, and talk to them often. Acknowledge them. Pedophiles actively seek and are quick to pick up on a child who feels they have no one to talk to or has unmet emotional needs. They use these needs to get close and to win their trust and affection. Abusers do not exclusively pick on the already abused or kids who are lonely or bullied or feel they have no one to talk to, but those kids are easier to make connections to because they are needy. Children who have trusted adults and know they can talk to their parents are more likely to tell when they have been given things they shouldn't have, or offered opportunities to do what they aren't allowed to do. Pedophiles do those things (see above"How ot spot an abuser> "The rules do not apply to me") in order to find out who will tell. This is how they sort of thin the herd of kids they gather around themselves, and decide who to victimize. You may have heard they single out their victims, these are common ways they do so. (DO NOT blame yourself if you were victimized, after being given forbidden things you wanted and not telling, Do not blame kids/teens if this happens to them. This is never their fault).

Report abuse to the law if a child reports it to you. Even with the steps they take to "screen" victims and eliminate kids who are likely to tell, the average convicted child molester is told-on 5 times before any legal action is taken. Five times! That is just not right. If authorities were consistently notified the first time a child reports abuse, the other four who would eventually tell, plus all the ones who would not tell, might not be abused at all. The number of kids being abused could go down by at least 80%, based on that number! If you are told about abuse by a child, it is your responsibility to report it to authorities and/or to parents if a child tells you this. It may be illegal not to, depending where you live.
Here is the child abuse hotline's website if you need more information. https://www.childhelp.org/hotline/This is the number: 1-800 -4-A-CHILD that is 1-800-422-4453. That applies to Americans only, or course. If you do not know your countries hotline number (or if there is one) you should probably look that up, unless you truly neither have kids, nor know or ever see any.

Be careful at fairs, amusement parks and water parks, and other crowded, noisy places. One convicted pedophile interviewed for this research said he'd loved water parks. He got a lot of video plus a lot of "accidental" touching in the wave pool. He said they were some of the best places to go, for a pedophile. Beware, do not let kids go about unsupervised in crowded public places, and keep them very close to you in water parks. Stay right by them and be very watchful - be their bodyguard - if you do go into the wave-pool, but ideally you should probably avoid it.

Never let children go tot the public bathrooms by themselves, no matter how upset they get. This author experienced the consequences of that mistake first-hand, many years ago, and in a church the family only visited once.
While most instances of sexual abuse/assault are committed by someone the victim knows [also true of the sexual assault of adults], usually trust is built and a relationship developed with the parents, whether it is at a church or another social event/hub. That is still not 100% of cases. Asmall percntage of those who abuse children are doing so out of hate, not attraction, and it more like the common motivations for sexual assault of adults - control, dominance, perhaps cruelty. This type of act may also involve physical abuse and/or murder. This type of person may take kids by force from a mall or store, or assault them in the bathroom, They are indeed out there, and we all need to be aware.
 All churches are still located in this fallen world and have fallen people in it of every possible sort, just like the rest of this planet. The doors are open to the public, anyone can open them and enter. Do not take chances with your kids.

Check the state police website for a list/map of the local registered sex offenders and become aware of convicted abusers in your area. Warn you family and others about them.

Thank you for reading. Please put what you'v learned here into practice

Godspeed.

~Mother Star.