High-profile cases of sexual abuse of children at respected places—the Horace Mann School, Joe Paterno’s locker room at Penn State, the offices of revered pediatrician Melvin Levine, the cloisters of the Catholic Church—serve to illustrate that abuse is very hard to anticipate. “We delude ourselves in to thinking that certain situations are without danger,” says…
We teach our young children all sorts of ways to keep themselves safe. We teach them to watch the hot stove, we teach them to look both ways before they cross the street. But, more often than not, body safety is not taught until much older — until sometimes, it is too late. Research conducted…
There are many signs that a child may be the victim of childhood sexual abuse, and it depends on the age of that child. So in younger children, you’re looking for a failure to thrive. In infants, blood in diapers or unexplained bruises are oftentimes a sign that something may not be right, and as…
Garrett’s* life was ruled by fear. It hadn’t always been that way, but then Garrett’s parents got divorced when he was 4. A few months later, he was sexually abused by a caregiver. Things spiraled downward for several years after that. When Garrett first came in for treatment, he was about to enter middle school. His…
