Child’s Play

Transcript 

Helloooo girls and gays!

My name is Arna and in this episode, I plan to give your mind an orgasm from learning about key concepts surrounding the profound sexual abuse endured by countless children all over the globe.Yea orgasm and abuse usually don’t pair well together…I realize this now… buttt as a sexual abuse survivor, I can say that.

Right?

*Crickets*

Okay, but all jokes aside, as a survivor of incest, I do often find myself thinking of the immense controversy surrounding the ethics of aiding abusers themselves.

No, I’m not talking about aiding abusers to harm more children in the world, but rather help transform their lives instead of ruining another being’s life. 

I hope you’ll join me in exploring this highly polarizing topic having a blank slate state of mind. After we discuss the actual ethicalities of what it means to be attracted to children, I will take you guys on an adventure regarding child sexual abuse, in adjacency with incest. 

…Yea that didn’t sound too right either.. But this is my podcast, and we discuss whatever the fuck is going on in my incest infected brain… 

On we go! 

I feel like sexual assault is much more talked about in current day compared to say I don’t know, 50, 40, 30, 20 year’s ago? With the aid of the internet, learning about sexual abuse has become more accessible than ever. Atleast in my experience, I’ve heard about a million times the agonizing statistics regarding sexual abuse.

Classic examples like:

82% of all victims under 18 are female (RAINN.,n.d.)

1 in four girls and 1 in 6 boys are sexually assaulted before adulthood (Sexual Abuse Prevention Network., n.d.)

More than 90% of abusers are people children know, love and trust (Dad, mom, family friend, yada, yada, yada) (Sexual Abuse Prevention Network., n.d.)

You know the deal..

You unfortunately know the deal.

This isn’t new knowledge. (at least to me)

With that being said, it is surprising that I have never heard of the preventive method of listening to abusers and asking them about what THEY need in order to stop abusing.

How we can help THEM be heard and seen.

Not until I searched the archives, far and wide, and stumbled across “STOP IT NOW!”

Before we go into the goodness, let me give you guys a quick rundown of what this organization even is about.

Stop it now founded in 1992, by the one and only Fran Henry is a major national and local public health campaign that aims to stop child sexual abuse by encouraging abusers and potential abusers to seek help and by giving all adults the information they need to protect children effectively. 

To give credit where credit is due…

Fran Henry founded this organization after experiencing sexual abuse herself as a child. Her intent is that we find different angles to look at the public health crisis that sexual abuse is. Her intent reached millions and has finally reached me (Stop It Now!, n.d.)

Stop It Now introduced me to the belief that we as a society will often find the black and white of each controversy, no matter the topic, and in doing so, we subconsciously and sometimes consciously are only looking for comfort for ourselves. 

For example, I think it has become much more known that perpetrators are not the evil villains the media may often portray them to be.

Abusers will never look how you might expect them to look. Again relatives, coaches, teachers, etc. 

However, even more intangible, children can be perpetrators too and they can look innocent, naive, and it may be hard to comprehend that a child, let alone your own child, has the capability to assault. 

Despite this, it is essential to not only swallow but accept this fact. 

As Stop It Now claims, it is sometimes easiest to pretend like your child is quote on quote normal rather than a presumed monster society will perceive them to be, if the child does not conceal their thoughts. 

The thought of child perpetrators of sexual violence is much too often dismissed and/or denied. It is important to be able to talk to your children about this behavior rather than ignore it for your own alleviation. It is important for your child to talk to you about this behavior rather than hiding it from you and continuing on (Johnson T. C. 1988.)

Our children need to feel comfortable enough with the adults in their lives to tell them if they are worried about something they are feeling. It’s weird to grasp, I know. I imagine finding child porn that my teen son watches, and I’ll be stunned, and probably lose my appetite for the month…but still, stunned. However, my responsibility as a parent must be to provide support for my child before the assertion of judgement. 

Self reports made by parents to Stop It Now’s anonymous hotline literally read, “It would be easier telling someone that my child is a murderer than telling someone my child is a rapist” (Stop It Now!, n.d.)

It is easier to hate a random stranger who commits sexual assault rather than to hate a loved one for committing incest. 

If a stranger were to commit rape, they are seen as unsavable, basically devil ridden. But when a loved one commits rape, it is most often ignored to protect the infamous good image. In order to address a problem as immense as sexual assault and as disturbing as incest, we must resist the urge to see in black and white, and seek out the varying shades of grey. 

Transition music

In a campaign promoting Stop It Now, the main hook was a past abuser by the name of Jeff R. quotes,“Two years ago, I would have been turned on by this picture.”

The picture this abuser is talking about is of two toddlers smiling in sunshine. 

Yes it’s gross and questionable and..gross . But we must be able to bite the bullet that is our discomfort and allow for abusers or potential abusers to get help before they act on their thoughts and inflict sexual harm to vulnerable groups (Stop It Now!, n.d.)

Conclusion: This has been a taboo topic for centuries and finally it is 2024, and we have shed some light, even a little, on the fact that one in 6 children experience some sort of sexual harassment (Jespersen et al., 2009.)

However, even the most enlightened might find this new approach of preventing sexual assault, difficult to digest. 

It should never be the responsibility of the child to report any sort of assault in any case.

It is an adults job to educate themselves on the signs of sexual abuse happening plainly in front of their own eyes. 

It is an adult’s job to put aside their roles society provides and put the child at risk first. 

If you suspect your child is being molested by your “loving husband” of 20 years, it is your responsibility to protect your child, not your not so loving husband. 

It is not your responsibility to protect the perpetrator of your child.

Do not pretend you cannot see, when the curtains have long been taken down, the veil lifted. 

Although I acknowledge all of the above statements as I did think of them on my own free will of thought, I will still go on to say that it is also the recovering perpetrators or soon to be perpetrators responsibility to go get help, before they commit yet another crime adding to the drastic statistics we currently have. 

In order for abusers and potential abusers to get the help they need, they must feel comfortable seeking said help. As controversial as my next sentence is going to be, I strongly suggest you think about it for a minute. Pause my beautiful voice, it’s okay, I grant you permission. 

We must put our own solace aside, and not ostracize the idea that one can be attracted to children, in order to make abusers feel comfortable, in hopes that our children will feel more comfortable. This needs to be applied for child perpetrators as well, or really any single human with the potential to sexually violate. 

Welp, this is the end guys. I hope y’all learned something and didn’t  get too offended in this episode. I’ll see you all in the next one, so stay tuned gays and girls. And remember, don’t go raping anyone, pretty please. Instead go to www.stopitnow.org and get some help, you sicko (Stop It Now!, n.d.)