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Through my work as a psychotherapist with both adult and child survivors of early childhood abuse, it has become apparent that child predators insidiously and calculatedly use a double language. Innocent or preposterous terms are used by the predator while abusing a child or placing a child in an abusive situation. A young child has no language for such acts and so uses words and terms of the abuser.

One of my clients was a pre-school boy in the primary care of his biological mother. The biological father and his wife were concerned about odd behavior when they had custody for the summer. I was asked to meet with "Tyler". During one of our sessions (which were always play therapy), I used the term "time out" for a toy. I set the toy aside on a chair and told it that it was in "time out" for five minutes. Tyler's reaction was atypical behavior. He appeared quite agitated.

During the next session, he announced he wanted to play "time out". I watched as he enacted yelling and strange behaviors with dolls. Since I was unable to understand what he was trying to show me, during the next session I asked him to show me using sand tray (a form of play therapy) what happened when he was in "time out". He was quite verbal at age 5. He explained that "time out" was when he, his mother, the live-in boyfriend, the boyfriend's teenager son, and a toddler half-brother had to be naked. Mommy, the boyfriend, and boyfriend's son, touched him and made him do things he didn't like. He demonstrated with dolls the positions he was made to be in and showed me what the adults did to him, even imitating their voices as they told him to do certain acts.

Child abuse had not been suspected prior to the sand tray disclosure. The biological father and stepmother (now the boy's adoptive mother) confirmed that when they had used the term "time out" with Tyler, he had an extraordinarily terrified response. We realized just how deceptive a tactic that was. When Tyler visited his safe parents, he would tell them his mother or Franklin (mom's boyfriend) had put him in time out. The natural response was "Why? What did you do wrong?" The response served to reinforce messages that Tyler was somehow bad for being in time out and shouldn't tell any more. But he did try to tell. Thank goodness.

I filed a report immediately after the session where "time out" became known and the biological father was able to have emergency custody granted. The judge listened to my testimony and honored the knowledge,

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