Child abuse is an upsetting topic. It’s so painful to think that anyone would take advantage of a child in any way. I wrote a column awhile back for the local newspaper about walking to school with my friend Becca Steinberg. Becca and I passed a man in a parked car who had his penis hanging out. He was sunning himself, pretending to be asleep. Becca and I both noticed his alarmingly naked appendage. We were both profoundly embarrassed.
We never said anything to each other. We never told the school administrators. We never went to the police.
This wasn’t my first experience with an abuser. A few years earlier I had been walking home from school by myself, through the park. Becca’s mom never let her walk through the park but I was the youngest of four children and my parents were more permissive.
Attempted child abuse
“Hello little boy!” A man said to me. Thinking about it now, I realize the man was a young adult, perhaps 25 or 30 years old. But I was only in first or second grade and he seemed very old to me at the time.
“I’m not a boy,” I answered indignantly.
“Prove it,” the man suggested, smiling.
I was too young to understand anything beyond the conversation we were having, which I took literally. I had no idea I was in a dangerous situation and perhaps just a few steps away from becoming a missing child on a milk carton.
“I don’t like trucks,” I ventured.
The man scoffed in a goodnatured way. He knew lots of boys who didn’t like trucks! I’d have to come up with something more convincing.
I don’t remember exactly what happened next but I do remember that all of a sudden I was sitting on a bench pulling down my pants and showing the nice man my privates, pointing in between my legs in triumph.
The definitive proof: I had a vulva! I was not a little boy!
I pulled my pants back up. The man invited me to his car—he had a dime there and he wanted to give it to me. I felt a rush of shame. I realized in that instant that I had done something very very wrong.
No one had ever talked to me about child abuse. No one had ever told me it is not okay to pull down your pants for a stranger. But I had been told several times over that it is not okay to get into a car with a stranger. I knew that was dangerous. I also knew he should not be offering me money. I had done nothing more than prove to him I was a girl and here he was volunteering to give me money. I didn’t want money. I wanted to get away from that bad, bad man.
I ran home as fast as I could, my heart in my throat. But I never told my parents about the man in the park.
Readers respond to my column about child abuse
The local paper got many letters to the editor in response to my column. One was from a reader who was very angry. “Shame on you,” she wrote to the editor in chief in a letter she did not want to be published. She was offended and upset—not by what had happened to an innocent child but by the fact that the column had been published. She argued it wasn’t appropriate to talk about these kinds of issues—child sexual abuse, the victimization of children, poor communication between parents and children—in a family newspaper.
She wanted me to shut up about my experiences. She wanted me to remain silent.
A healthy reaction to learning about child abuse, in my mind, is to work twice as hard to protect children. You hug your kids tighter. You tell the children in your life that they can tell you anything, at any time, even if it’s the middle of the night, even if they think you’ll be angry. You thank the victim who came forward for being brave and honest. You tell her you’re sorry that something like that happened to her. You remind her that you always have a ready shoulder to cry on, if she has more tears to shed.
Unfortunately a more common response to child abuse and sexual assault and other difficult topics that elicit strong emotions is to wish that it will all just go away, to pretend that if we don’t talk about it it doesn’t exist, and to shoot the messenger (“shame on you!”) for making us uncomfortable.
Don’t stay silent about child abuse, or any other injustice
Silence about injustice is never the right answer. Censorship is never the right answer. Silence about child abuse is wrong.
Don’t stay silent.
Don’t be afraid to make people angry.
Don’t be afraid to speak up.
I will continue to write things that make you uncomfortable.
I refuse to be silent.
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Jennifer, I am so sorry this happened to you – the man who victimized you and the woman who told you not to talk about it. Both are wrong. Of course this should be discussed in a family paper and any child old enough to read (and who would be interested in sitting down and reading a newspaper) is old enough to understand what happened and why the perpetrator was sick. I am glad you talk about things that make people uncomfortable. There are so many things that have made people uncomfortable but which needed to be talked about: civil rights, reproductive rights, gay marriage, abuse: that list goes on and on. It’s so important to say things that make people think about these topics and all the uncomfortable topics yet to be broached in our society. Hats off to you!
Thank goodness there are writers like you who are dedicated to telling the truth and do it with such grace and style.
Here’s what bothers me about this. (1) I’m beginning to believe this kind of exploitation and abuse is the rule, NOT the exception. In conversations with friends, almost everyone I know has a story like this to tell. (2) The blatant manipulation of calling you a boy makes me sick. When I was a kid, the common trick was to ask a child to help find a lost pet — appeal to the gullible, “helpful” ones. Do you see how tricking you by calling you a boy is the next stage, knowing you’d protest. I guarantee you that he called boys girls in the same way. Truly, I could vomit. We have to stand up, speak out, and stop rampant predatory risks to children. If that makes people mad or uncomfortable, then so be it.
What a frightening recollection. But you are hopefully helping many by re-living this in your writing.I am so upset to think of the child(ren) who DID go to that truck…
Jennifer,
You again exclaim your brilliance through the bravery of honesty through transparency. Almost kidnapped as a young girl by a predator has brought me to the place that I am at now, where I believe it is our obligation as parents to speak these truths from our experiences to the youngers to prepare them…though we may not have been. I am developing the foundations of a course now for our girls in Ashland that teach awareness & self-defense as preparedness, at GUMBO our new community arts center. Thank you again for shining the light on the obligation of adults to stand up against abuse against our innocent children!
I really think it’s a good writer’s duty to make people uncomfortable — especially when it comes to social issues like this. Excellent and haunting essay.
Amen! We MUST speak up and we must discuss the “bad stuff” that can happen as well. One of my students was being hurt by her grandfather. A friend of hers knew it was wrong and was such a wonderful protector that she insisted that the girl tell me AND came with her so she would not be alone. I am so proud of both of them for speaking up. As an adult I was able to take the steps necessary to allow authorites the chance to protect this child.
Thank you for writing this. I hope I’ve instilled in my kids that it’s ok to talk to us about anything at any time. Yes – Do not stay silent!
Talking with children from an early age about their bodies, touch, and friends, relatives, and strangers is the most powerful thing parents can do to prevent sexual abuse. (Most abuse occurs at the hands of friends and relatives, although of course there is stranger assault as well.) Victims of any age deserve to be believed and to have their experiences validated. Shaming doesn’t prevent abuse, it perpetuates it!
I am afraid paedophiles are everywhere and no child is ‘safe’ from them. I think kids need to be told by their parents and in school that these monsters exist from quite a young age and what to do if approached or sexually abused by one. I know it is a horrible, horrible subject, but these monsters are a fact of life and putting your head in the sand will not make them go away.
I appreciate the way that you put yourself out on the line for all of us. I always look forward to your posts and articles. Thank you for your courageous work. As far as this topic, because sexual abuse is so prevalent, I consider it parental negligence NOT to talk candidly to children about it from an early age. However unsavory it has been for me to warn my daughter at an early age about the possibility that maybe someone close and trusted in our family might one day want to touch her body in private places, I feel more safe for having done so. I told her that it happens and it might be an unexpected and totally trusted person and even if we love him, it’s absolutely not right and it should never happen, and that I was here to protect her and she should tell me right away. I think that talking about it with children is way, way less horrible than having a child cope with sexual abuse on their own in secrecy – which happens soooo often. I’d rather have my daughter aware and protected and slightly, slightly jaded, than unaware and unprotected.