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to my great relief. So how do we fight this? A child tries to tell and no one hears. An adult hearing a child tell something that seems innocent needs to notice behavior and emotions of the child reporting. Is the child frightened by telling you? If so, it should be reported. Let the child-trained interviewers find out what the phrase means. At least it might help get more children out of dangerous situations. In another situation, the predator referred to himself as "the PE teacher" and the activity as "physical education". The child's mother noticed her son's great aversion to the school's PE teacher in two separate schools. An innocent PE teacher could have been accused of being a molester because of the predator tactic.
I had my own personal history of having the word "exercise" used. I can imagine when I may have tried to tell my mother, "Daddy made me exercise when you went out". Her response would likely have been, "Exercise is good for you." If abuse is happening in the bathroom, particularly the bathtub or shower, a child may have very scary meanings for "washing hair", shampoo, etc. A commenter on one of my blogs disclosed her little girl, in court, said, "Daddy had a bottle that shampoo came out of" to describe the penis.
Tyler, whom I spoke about above, had terms such as hammer and jackhammer to describe a penis. I taught him the correct terms using anatomically correct dolls. When he told me Franklin put a jackhammer up his butt, he was able to show me with the doll that a jackhammer went with the penis. These terms are strategically designed to prevent the world from ever knowing.
We, as concerned adults about the safety of the children, need to start listening very differently. First we have to learn not to dismiss if a child tries to tell us something in a serious manner that seems unusual. An adult hearing a child tell something that seems innocent or outrageous needs to notice behavior and emotions of the child reporting. Is the child frightened by telling even though the words seem innocent? Children don't typically go out of their way to tell an adult of some inane activity. A good response might be, "When Uncle Joe washed your hair, was it something you liked or was it scary?" That's all you need to know. A professional who works with abused children should take over with regard to disclosure. Report your suspicions of abuse to the appropriate agency in your area.
A further example of the length pedophiles will go to make the child sound unbelievable
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