How to Protect Children from Sexual Abuse: A Pocket Guide for Parents and Families

By Barbara Coffman, M.A.

The unseen patterns of sexual abuse can stay hidden to the inexperienced. To those who have experienced molestation, the signs can appear threatening, well into their adult lives. The voices in their heads and the memories of abuse and intimidation can take over, leaving adult survivors of abuse feeling paralyzed and unable to act.

Whether you experienced childhood sexual abuse or not, you will need some help to be proactive in protecting your children from this terrible crime. There is so much more you, as a parent, can do in addition to teaching your child to say “no.” In this book, you will learn signs to look for before abuse happens; how to communicate with your child to create open dialog; boundaries to draw; and even words to say. You will learn how offenders pick their victims, how to choose safe environments for child care, and more. This is a usable guide for everyday life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barbara Coffman, M.A.
• Release date: Nov 9, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370573172

Barbara Coffman, M.A.

Barbara Coffman has been practicing as a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist for 21 years and has been in the mental health field for 28 years. She has focused on sexual abuse recovery for most of that time. She has given numerous presentations and workshops on sexual abuse recovery and prevention. Currently, Barbara works as a Clinical Director for Anew Day, a non-profit counseling agency in Nevada City, California.

Book preview

HOW TO PROTECT CHILDREN FROM SEXUAL ABUSE

A Pocket Guide for Parents and Families

Barbara Coffman, MA

Copyright ©2017 by Barbara Coffman, MA

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. Please do not participate in or encourage the piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

Disclaimer:

Some names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals.

This book is not intended as a substitute for the medical advice of psychological professionals. The reader should consult a professional in matters relating to his/her well-being and particularly with respect to any behaviors or knowledge of harm to others that may require diagnosis or professional attention.

God in heaven hear my prayer,

Keep me in Thy loving care.

Be my guide in all I do.

Bless all those who love me too.

Amen

This book is dedicated to all the sexual abuse survivors and their families that I have had the privilege to know. Thank you for your courage and strength and for letting me be a part of your lives. May we, together, end this crime against children.

Acknowledgments

I want to thank my friends and coworkers for all the prayers, encouragement and patience so graciously given. Thank you Margaret, Pat, Diana, and the gang at Anew Day. A special thanks to my editors, Lori, Darlene and Camille. I was sure you were going to run out of red ink and tolerance for my mistakes, but you got me to the finish line without colorful verbiage or acts of violence-that I know of.

Blessings to all of you.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter 1: Facts About Sexual Abuse

Chapter 2: Communication

Chapter 3: Boundaries

Chapter 4: Always Know Who Will Be With Your Children

Chapter 5: Characteristics of Abusive Families

Chapter 6: Adults Molested As Children (AMAC)

Chapter 7: Signs to Look for

Chapter 8: Ranges of Behavior

Chapter 9: Conclusion

Suggested Bibliography

INTRODUCTION

It took me a long time to write this book. You might wonder why, considering it is relatively short, but there were many obstacles on the journey of its creation. In addition to the natural tendency for procrastination involved in the writing of any book, I had to confront my own challenges as a sexual abuse survivor. For years I had an inner conflict, as most survivors do. I really wanted-no-knew this was a book that I had to write, but, as a victim of molest, I felt powerless to write it. The first act of a child molester is to take away the victim’s voice and replace it with lies and self-doubt. The lies stay for a long time. Sometimes those voices in my head were subtle just enough to steer me away from my computer or cause chaos in my thinking, so things on the project never seemed to be organized or coming together. Sometimes the lies were so loud with negative beliefs that it was impossible even to look at the screen. You see, that is what happens to many of us who were molested as children. Self-doubt and fear are part of the package. Even if I could make the words come out of my mind and onto paper, I would think they wouldn’t be right, or heard, or worthy of reading.

Despite the fact I am a licensed psychotherapist and I have specialized in helping others recover from sexual abuse, I still find it difficult to find my own voice at times. However, over the 28 years of being in private practice and sexual abuse recovery programs, working with victims, families and offenders , the echo of my own words to those in pain propelled me forward with this project, not to mention the memory of victims and families who worked so hard to reclaim their lives. I also have worked on my own recovery over the years. Sometimes my clients’ journeys overlapped mine. Maybe that is why my professional path took the direction it did. While that may seem obvious to you, the reader, it wasn’t to me at the time. In fact, I didn’t even identify myself as an abuse survivor when I finished graduate school in my thirties! My intention was to work in family therapy, which turned out to be a misguided effort to fix my family, a realization which most therapists have somewhere along the route of their professional journey.

No matter what area psychotherapists choose for specialization, they will come across sexual abuse victims. When I started to encounter several of them and began to get in touch with my own deeper levels of wounding, my professional path became obvious. As you read the chapters ahead you may come to understand what happens to molest victims to make them travel so far into denial. However, the nature of trauma is such that it cannot be buried forever. The trauma of abuse will leak out in one form or another and it did with me. When I realized what I was dealing with in my own body, mind and heart, along with what my clients were experiencing, I started my own recovery, and then launched into more training in the area of childhood abuse. Recovery is never completely finished. I feel there is still more I need to do in my own life, and I can still be triggered by a client’s story. Sometimes, when I think I’ve heard it all and there couldn’t be any new information that would touch my heart deeper than it already has, I hear a story that does just that.

In order to really do the work of sexual abuse recovery, a person has to find his or her voice. There are many ways to do this. Writing is a useful tool. You don’t have to write a book on the subject, but that wouldn’t hurt. It is an interesting way to explore your inner world and find healing. But as you read this book, you will discover that there are other ways to find your voice if writing does not appeal to you. In fact, finding your voice with the significant people in your life matters and is one of the most important steps you can make toward reclaiming your life.

Another part of recovery is to take the courageous step necessary to protect the children of the next generation. That is the purpose of this book – stopping sexual abuse before it happens. This book is based on all the cases I have worked on over the years. I did not work with just victims of molestation, I also worked with the parents, grandparents, siblings and spouses of victims. I also worked with convicted child molesters. As time went on, I began to see common threads woven into the lives and abuse stories of many of my clients. Case after case had similar patterns of behaviors and distorted thoughts. Thus the picture of possible prevention began to take shape. I began to think that if I could save even one child from being molested, it would be worth any amount of anxiety and time sitting in front of a computer.

The book began as a power point presentation, and I was able to present it to many groups and organizations over a period of three or four years.