What Makes Child Sexual Abuse Easier? Gullibility, Secrecy, Opportunity, Second Chances, Disbelief

Most of us prefer to assume the best about a person instead of the worst. That instinct can leave us gullible. When someone carries an air of authority, we tend to grant them expertise on matters they may know nothing about, simply because they act as though they are an expert, or believe they ought to be treated as one.

Then there is the silence. Relatives, friends, and coworkers of an offender often worry that admitting what they know will stain them by association. If they acknowledge the person's history, they fear being shunned alongside him. So they say nothing, and they keep quiet about having a family member or acquaintance with those tendencies.

The more damaging failure is not keeping the secret itself but declining to warn anyone. A person who cannot be trusted alone with a child gets left alone with a child anyway, because the adults around them see no obvious danger. The parent steps out to change clothes. The child is napping. Nothing about the moment seems risky, and that ordinariness is exactly what makes it possible.

Offenders frequently go undetected until they have abused more than one child across multiple incidents. What they do tends to escalate. An act that once satisfied the offender stops being enough over time, and they move toward behavior that is harder to brush off as harmless.

A common self-deception runs through many of these cases. The offender tells himself, and tries to tell others, that he is merely educating the child, preparing them for their sexual future rather than leaving that to some peer later in adolescence or adulthood. It is a rationalization, nothing more.

Offenders are not all men, and they are not all gay. Anyone who touches a child inappropriately, or coaxes a child or teenager into touching them in a way that produces arousal or climax for either party, can inflict mental and emotional damage. The confusion and discomfort that follow are sometimes severe enough to disable a person for years.

Think about what a parent, mother or father, might do that leaves a child with contradictory signals. Kids can feel when something is off. In these situations the adult doing the wrong thing pressures the child to distrust that feeling, to tolerate it, to bury their own doubts and pretend everything is fine.

Standards of right and wrong vary from person to person, yet most responsible adults recognize when an offender's behavior in front of a child, or forced on a child, serves no one's interest but the offender's.

The phrase "for your own good" cuts both ways. Sometimes it covers genuine care, a legitimate reason to make a child do something they dislike. Other times it is cover for abuse. So pay attention when a child steadily avoids a particular person or place, or drags their feet about an activity they cannot explain. That reluctance is worth a second look.

If you are facing a situation involving child sexual abuse, go to people who actually have training and professional experience in it. Keep in mind that expertise is narrow. Even registered nurses specialize; one does not work every ward of the hospital or every corner of community practice. The same holds for anyone you turn to for help here.

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