Sexual violence against children: It is usually not the “strange man”

You could rely on the strange man in the bushes. He was sneaking around at the edge of the playground to choose his victim. Then he pulled candy out of his pocket, promised an unsuspecting child some cute toys, and the trap snapped shut. Hamburg even has its own term for this figure of the “foreign man”: the mitschnacker.

In the public perception, sexual violence against children was traditionally attributed to the chatterbox, commonly referred to as “child molesters”. Pretty much everything about it was wrong. When adults abuse a child, the blame does not rest with the child, and the “strange man” is the rarest of these crimes. The overwhelming majority of perpetrators come from the family and the immediate environment.

In the face of these documented statistics, the government is now getting down to business – to something that is heavily taboo. Family Minister Lisa Paus and Kerstin Claus, the Independent Federal Commissioner for Child Sexual Abuse (UBSKM), are launching a nationwide awareness and activation campaign. Appropriately, the name of the action – “Don’t push the thought away!” – refers to the usual suppression.

Not just a problem in churches or sports clubs

Claus warns against mentally shifting the problem to churches, sports clubs, campsites or the Internet. We know who commits the deeds – hence the taboo, hence the “strange man”, representative of the repressed stranger in ourselves and in our immediate vicinity.

Paus and Claus’s campaign began a day before November 18th, the “8th of November”. European Day for the Protection of Children from Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse”.

The UBSKM office has been drawing attention to the fact that in every school class there are one or two children who experience sexual assault or violence. That’s why the UBSKM podcast is called “One to two”.

Many have suspicions that “something like this” occurs in the private sphere. 90 percent agree in polls. An astonishing 85 percent also declare: “But not at all in my environment!”

With their campaign, the initiators want to help break up this taboo. Not pushing away the thought of action in your personal environment is a well-chosen encouragement. She is flanked by the request to always believe children when they report corresponding experiences and fears, to find out about typical signs of such cases, and to seek support, for example on the help line against sexual abuse, whose number (0800 22 55 530) should simply save each and everyone.

Interest and debate have increased since 2010 when the appalling levels of sex crimes in several educational institutions became known. There is less trivialization, there is better prevention. The time for the current campaign, pointing to the near field, was more than right.

The echo of this drumbeat – how loud, how quiet – will show how willing society is to take responsibility for its children. It is often said that children are “our future”. But children live in the present, and it is their future that is determined by today.

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Source: Tagesspiegel

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