Princess Olufemi-Kayode

This week, we shall go further into the discussion of who is responsibility for protecting children.

One female adult survivor said in group counseling, “As a child victim, I felt unprotected and vulnerable. I felt I had parents and also don’t have them. They were not significant.” Another, male adult survivor said, “I hated my parents. Particularly my mum… sobs…sobs…She was the most blind.

She could not see. She was home most times when I was being sexually abused.”

I could go on and on about different reports that are indicators to the feelings of these survivors when they were children. The feeling of helplessness and hopelessness!

A couple of weeks back we established that adults have the sole responsibility of protecting children against Child Sexual Abuse.

This week, I shall be sharing a contribution on same topic on ways adults can rise up to this responsibility sent in by Ms. Adeola Francesca Abiola, a Snr. Programme Officer with Media Concern Initiative.

• Responses can be sent by email, Vanguard Postal Address or SMS to 0802 333 1036.

Channels through which parents can prevent sexual abuse

The first way in which adults can prevent child sexual abuse is by using appropriate names for body parts with children.

As simple as this might sound, so many adults find it difficult to tell their children the names of their sexual organs. Some would rather use names such as pepe, John Thomas and so on instead of telling a boy that his sexual organ is called penis. For the girls bum bum is used as a covering word for both the buttocks and the vagina.

The argument for this is that most adults would feel it is vulgar or would corrupt a child if they knew what the proper names of the body parts were called. However would we rather leave a child to find out the names and functions of these organs through an abusive situation rather than from parents and guardians who they love and respect.

An experience that shows that ignorance or misinformation can expose them or make them vulnerable to abuse was something I encountered in whilst in secondary school.

One of my classmates was sharing an experience. Her mother had warned her sternly never to allow a man ‘sleep on top of her’. Ok, she thought no man will sleep on me till I am old enough. One day a neighbor called her asked them to go into his bedroom. He tried to lie on top of her and she refused saying her mother had told her that no man was allowed to sleep on her.

Well I won’t want you to disobey your mother, so instead I’ll allow you to be on top. That was how she was abused and this continued. This could have being prevented if the mother had explained to her what and what it was that was not supposed to happen to her.

Identifying the use of each part of the body has become important in the prevention of CSA. Even if sexual abuse does occur a child that has been adequately informed is more likely to report the abuse than a child who is not.