Children who feel emotionally secure and well-loved are less vulnerable because they are less likely to respond well to a person’s attempts to charm them or coerce them. They are also more likely to tell and be believed if something does happen.
A good relationship with your child reduces the likelihood that someone will choose your child to abuse. A good relationship with a child is:

• Warm and loving
• Respectful
• Empathic (you care about how they feel)
• Open (where people feel they can talk about how they feel)
• Where you’ll be available for them when they feel good, AND when they feel bad.

You can develop a good relationship with your child by:

1. Having fun together
2. Being consistent (not unpredictable) in the way you react
3. Developing a culture of listening to each other
4. Show interest in what your child thinks about things.
5. Showing you care about how they feel (even if you cannot always change it). 

This week, we would like to invite you to think about the quality of your relationship with the kids around you. Consider:

• How do you show you’re available to listen? (e.g. looking at them when they speak, nodding your head).
• How do you show you care about your child’s feelings? (e.g. “Oh honey, I can see you are really upset”)
• How do you handle your own feelings when your child tells you something which upsets you? (e.g. give myself compassion, take a deep breath, think about how I want to react. Tell them I am glad they told me, and keep my voice calm and warm).
•  What fun have you had together this week?

For information about connecting with your child check out Aha Parenting  https://www.ahaparenting.com/Default.aspx?PageID=7652287&A=SearchResult&SearchID=11209610&ObjectID=7652287&ObjectType=1

The best kind of child sexual abuse prevention is the kind that is repeated (not just once), and in a range of different settings (pre-school, home, clubs, extended family). When everyone around a child reinforces the same messages, it can help kids to be safer from sexual abuse.
You don’t have to do this alone. If you are looking for a safe, evaluated pre-school program, you might like to check out our ‘We Can Keep Safe’ Preschool Program  ( https://www.helpauckland.org.nz/help-for-pre-schoolers.html ). It’s designed to run in early childhood settings (kindys, playschools, daycares etc.) and is a fun, interactive way to help keep kids safe from sexual abuse. If you are in the Auckland region, you can ask your centre to consider bringing the programme in.
Earlier this year, one of our presenters was stopped in the supermarket by a grateful mother of a primary school aged child who had done the programme some years ago.
 “The girl had recently been involved in an incident in which a person tried to get her to be sexual with him. The girl got away immediately, and told her parents when she got home that she did that because she knew that she was the boss of her body, a key message from the programme.”
Tune in this Saturday for an overview of what kinds of things can help prevent child sexual abuse.

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In New Zealand, 1 in 3 girls and 1 in 7 boys may experience child sexual abuse before they turn 16. Most of these children are sexually abused by someone they (and their family) know and trust.

While it’s understandable that stats like these can leave people feeling overwhelmed, there is something we can all do to help stop child sexual abuse.

We can:
1. Speak up if we are concerned about a child at risk (e.g. contact Oranga Tamariki 0508 326 459; or HELP Auckland 09 623 1700 if you need to talk it through first)
2. Do something to lessen the likelihood of child sexual abuse happening in the first place.
There are lots of things adults can do to help stop child sexual abuse from ever happening in the first place – and the strategies are simple and easy to follow.
Over the next few months, on Saturday mornings, we’ll be publishing some Facebook and Instagram posts so that everyday people can help prevent child sexual abuse. The activities will be based on our pre-school prevention program ‘We Can Keep Safe’, so they’ll be age appropriate, easy to follow and won’t upset the kids. 
Whether you are a caregiver, grandparent, teacher, Aunty/ Uncle, coach or family friend, there is something we can all do to help kids grow up safe from child sexual abuse. 
Please join us in creating a movement for child safety. Share the posts, talk with people you know, and try the strategies - together we really can make a difference.
Link to statistics page from HELP website https://www.helpauckland.org.nz/sexual-abuse-statistics.html

The survivor of the St Mary's Bay attack has asked HELP to share her press statement through our site, as this statement was not released, as she had hoped for by the media, after the sentencing last week. Through releasing her statement, she hopes that through sharing that her thoughts and feelings about her experience accurately and in her own words, that this may help others. 
 

I initially thought I would write something that would be positive, showing how I did not identify myself as a victim or a survivor but a "Champion", and with a good therapist, avoid PTSD and remain resilient.  
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Yes, what happened to me was horrible.  Yet, I am wary that releasing a statement will be another 'catchy' headline that detracts from deeper societal issues.  I emphasize that the real problem seems to be partner violence.  I do not know if my experience of sexual assault and its aftermath and recovery can help those individuals and their communities.

However, I urge anybody who witnesses or experiences a sexual assault to not remain silent and suffer.  I am grateful for the Auckland Police and for their intense effort to find the stranger who attacked me. Additionally, I am grateful that the bicyclist came along at the right time and heard me.  In hard times, I am appreciative that Steven Pinker wrote these words to remind me of the good humanity can do as well as the way I choose to act for my well-being and others: 
Humans are not innately good (just as they are not innately evil), but they come equipped with motives that can orient them away from violence and toward cooperation and altruism. Empathy (particularly in the sense of sympathetic concern) prompts us to feel the pain of others and to align their interests with our own. Self-control allows us to anticipate the consequences of acting on our impulses and to inhibit them accordingly. The moral sense sanctifies a set of norms and taboos that govern the interactions among people in a culture, sometimes in ways that decrease violence, though often (when the norms are tribal, authoritarian, or puritanical) in ways that increase it. And the faculty of reason allows us to extricate ourselves from our parochial vantage points, to reflect on the ways in which we live our lives, to deduce ways in which we could be better off, and to guide the application of the other better angels of our nature.  (from The Better Angels of Our Nature)
 

Hi, I’m Nic Mason and I recently switched from being a 'once or twice a year' donor to being a regular monthly giver.

Having the power to improve the lives of others is important to me.  It’s a privilege to stand beside HELP every month and give them my consistent financial support.  Its gives me a real feeling of belonging and making a difference.

I found monthly giving simple and easy to track and budget for.  I hardly notice the difference and at the end of the financial year HELP send me an annual receipt to claim back on my tax.


To become a regular giver got to: 
donorbox.org/donate-to-help-auckland-be-part-of-the-solution