Three Context for Childhood Sexual Abuse and Trauma

So quickly, I wanna start by just kind of putting into three categories. What are the three terrains in which children experience childhood sexual trauma or sexual abuse? So the first terrain are going to be sociopathic adults, so they are grownups. Who absolutely understand that what they are doing is wrong, illegal, abusive, hurtful, and do it.

Anyway. These are the folks that we all think about when we think about childhood sexual abuse, because it's so disturbing that this is a reality. So the other thing I want you to think about when you think about this particular category is that we tend to like, to think of these folks as like strange, creepy weirdos with like uneven mustaches on the side of the highway.

But the reality is, is that the people who do the most harm, who have the most victims are usually charming and influential. If you don't know about Larry Nassar, you could look it up. There's a great podcast called believed that where a lot of his victims talk about how the whole process went down. And really the, the whole thing is he was trusted.

He was a, um, the doctor for the us Olympic gymnast team. I believe. Believed is a great podcast to kind of get acquainted with like, who is this person who is this person in this category? They're charming, you know, them, you trust them. They often do really lovely things for you. They are grooming you and grooming your child in order to have access privacy and denial from you.

So that's category one, category two are other children or developmentally delayed. So this group of people has been sexually abused or sexually exposed at a time in their development where they don't understand sexuality. And it is, it is traumatic in their brain and confusing in their brain. And because they have had this trauma, they are trying to process it and they process it through playing it out with others.

It's been normalized for them. Someone else touched their body parts or asked them to touch their body parts engaged in sexual. And now they are trying to figure out, do I do this with other people, like, is this is, was made to feel like a special secret thing. So I want special secret things with my other friends.

These poor souls are not perpetrators in the traditional way that a sociopathic adult is a perpetrator, but they perpetrate the abuse. So your child can be exposed to another child who could be same age and just more understanding of all of this stuff, or could be older and manipulative, but they're being harmed or perpetrated by another child or a disabled adult who a cognitively disabled adult.

And the third category is the. The internet as a predator, it would really, really, really love to expose your children early to pornography because once children are addicted early, it creates lifelong addiction and sexual, um, consumption, right? Keeping these bus big, big businesses full of money, um, which it's also connected to all sorts of horrible things.

So there's that. And. Within the internet are some of this group and this group. So the internet is a space where sexual extortion happens. If you don't know what sexual extortion is, essentially, it is when someone on the internet gets information about your child, your family, your child's in the internet somewhere.

And this person says successes them. I know this, this and this and this about your family. And if you don't give me these pictures or do this action. Et cetera, et cetera, I will have your family harmed. I will show this thing to the world. I will do whatever. So the internet is something we wanna consider as a predator, both in a, it being a venue for other predators.

And it being a space where children can be exposed to deeply explicit sexual material that they are not developmentally. To process. Okay. So we have boom, boom, boom. These three things. So let's go and let's talk really quickly about what are we gonna do about each of these things? So over here, what are we gonna do?

One, we are gonna talk explicitly about sexual abuse with any adult that has access and privacy to our child, daycare providers, teachers, grandmas, grandpas, uncles. Friends. If we are leading our child ever in the care of other grownups, we are going to say to those other grownups, Hey, just wanted you to know I am big on sexual abuse prevention.

So I'm talking actively with my kids about things that are happening to their bodies. Here's some things that you can help me to help prevent them. Sexual abuse wise, you can use correct terms. We use correct terms in our house. My son knows he has penis and testic. My daughters know that they have a VVA that within that VVA, there is a vagina.

There is a cervix, there is a urethra. Everybody knows they have an anus would love for you to use those anatomically correct terms with my kits. So what we're doing is we're signaling to any potential sociopath. I am paying attention. I am not one of the parents who gets queasy and weird about sexual topics and.

Address it or will put my head in the sand. When I notice something weird with my kid, I am one of the parents who's gonna put two and two together and prosecute your butt. Okay. So that's category one category. Well, and I'm gonna go through this at each stage, by the way. So I'm gonna go through each developmental stage, how we're gonna do this.

The second category is around other. So we are going to have an open door policy around other kids, which means that we are going to not let kids play alone with closed doors. There's no reason for them to close the door. Literally none. We are gonna open our doors. And the other thing that we're gonna do is we are going to talk about body safety rules with every kid that is interacting with our child.

And we're gonna review those rules periodically don't forget body safety rules. We're gonna make sure that we don't hit punch, kick. We also don't touch any parts that belong under our bathing suits in our underwear, because those parts can get hurt really easily. They're extra sensitive. So we never, ever, ever touch look at interact anything with those body parts capish CAPSH cap Kapo.

Okay. The third categories, internet we're gonna do limited internet exposure and high parental controls. Your children do not need to be on YouTube.  I know it's addictive. I know it keeps them occupied. And sometimes as a parent, that is very helpful. No YouTube, they do not need to be going down these rabbit holes.

So you wanna think about how can I create controls around the internet to prevent the level exposure my child has, um, social media, reducing, you know, allowing your children to be on social media and to learn a developmental age. I'll tell you right now for me, my, my children won't have their own individual social media accounts until they are 16.

They can play on a family. Where I have access and they have access and we can talk about what's happening and what they're experiencing and what I'm seeing and what's going on when they are in junior high school. So eighth grade, they can start a, a social media, uh, interaction on a family account, high school.

They can have their own private social media account before that. I mean, not high school, 16 years old. So having limits of how we're letting them be exposed in social media. Um, and also. Tablets phones, computers stay in public family spaces. No one needs to be in their bedroom on their phone. Read a book in your bedroom, do a puzzle if you wanna be by yourself, but we keep technology in the public spaces.

It just helps reduce again, not always controlling. We don't have control, but it helps reduce the chances that your child's gonna get down some terrible rabbit hole that it's going to create addiction for them, and then keep them private secretly shamed using. In isolation. All right. So those are our three big categories.

Let's talk about them across developmental stages.