Notice the behaviour of people around children

​​How did you get on with last week’s activities around secrets? We heard that one child clearly told their grandparent that they couldn’t keep a sneaky feed of fish and chips secret from their mum because their household ‘only had surprises not secrets!’. Super cute and great to see children taking on the ‘no secrets’ rule so thoroughly.
Over the next few weeks, we will be looking at the people in children’s lives and how to minimise the risk of sexual abuse from them. A key part of this is to understand what clues might exist that someone is unsafe around kids.
Unfortunately, it is not possible to tell who is a risk to children by just looking at them. It is also not useful to assume someone is safe around children because they are in a position of trust (e.g. father/uncle/mother/grandparent/sibling), as most people who abuse children are known and trusted by the family.
If we want to protect children from sexual abuse, we need to notice WHAT people are doing around children, not WHO they are.
Positive behaviour to look out for in adults and older children include:

• People respect children’s wishes about how they are touched; such as when a child says to stop tickling or play fighting when they have had enough.
• Respecting children’s privacy around bathing and dressing.
• People being open to comments if their behaviour around children causes concern to others.

Concerning behaviour to look out for:

• Insisting on hugging, touching, tickling, wrestling or holding a child even when the child doesn’t want it.
• Talking about the sexuality or body development of a particular child/ teenager in front of the young person.
• Talking about inappropriate sexual behaviour with kids (e.g. talking about children feeling each other up/ pashing), or calling them sexual names, even in a joking way.
• Creating opportunities to be alone with a child where they won’t be interrupted.
• Spending lots of his/her spare time with kids and having little interest in spending time with people their own age.
• Making you feel ‘shut-out’ as a parent or isolating your child.
• Regularly offering to baby-sit for free, or taking children/ teens on overnight outings or holidays alone.
• Buying kids expensive gifts or food for no reason.
• Allowing kids to get away with inappropriate behaviours and having secrets with children.
• Repeatedly intruding on a child’s privacy by ‘accidentally’ walking in on them in the toilet, bathroom, or when getting dressed.
• Insisting on having an older child sleep with him/her.
• Excessive control over a child, like not letting the child be involved in activities outside the home or not allowing kids to make decisions for themselves.
• Visiting children’s chatrooms or downloading child pornography from the internet.
• Wanting their sexual partner to dress as a child or pretend they are a child during sex.

Please note: you don’t have to observe all these behaviours or be 100% sure that abuse is happening in order to seek help. If you know someone who behaves in any of these ways, this person may have a problem. The Safe to Talk Helpline can put you in touch with an organisation who can help.

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