How will you feel if your five year old daughter told you that your brother played with her female genital parts?
It sounds deplorable right? Yet it's the people we are familiar with that commit this deplorable act to our children. Most mothers prefer to claim ignorance than to pay attention to this menace in our immediate environment.
The menace we are talking about is called pedophilia. What exactly is pedophilia?
Culled from Psychology Today, "Pedophilia is an ongoing sexual attraction to pre-pubertal children. It is considered a paraphilia, a condition in which a person's sexual arousal and gratification depend on fantasizing about and engaging in sexual behavior that is atypical and extreme. Pedophilia is defined as recurrent and intense sexually arousing fantasies, sexual urges, or behaviors involving sexual activity with a prepubescent child or children—generally age 13 years or younger—over a period of at least six months. Pedophiles are more often men and can be attracted to either or both sexes. How well they relate to adults of the same or opposite sex varies."
Pedophilia is a cause for concern especially in our homes. There are news around the world of fathers or uncles molesting daughters or nieces and when this occurrences are investigated you will notice a pattern. The children always report some kind of uncomfortable "touching" from a familiar person they are supposed to be comfortable with especially to their mothers. But the mothers silence them in a manner that will not encourage further confidance from the child.
According to Journal of medical ethics, pedophilia and child sexual abuse are two different things but the main issue is that both of them are directed to children (prebuscent or teens) under aged to engage in any sexual activity. Pedophiles can start subtly by showing children inappropriate sexual images
How do you know that your child is going through sexual abuse from a pedophile?
Detecting sexual abuse signs could help you protect your child better from the predators in human form.
Some signs from your child include:
1. Self conscious about undressing to bathe.
2. Resuming childish behavior like thumb sucking.
3. Excessive fear of being left alone.
4. Too much talk about sexual Know the child is not supposed to know.
5. Bruising of the genital area.
Signs that shows an adult is abusing a child.
1. Defying boundaries set by parents and seeing it as nothing.
2. Touching the child carelessly and not counting it as important.
3. Not trying to be an adult to a child.
4. Unusual interest in the child's Development.
5. Give a child unnecessary gifts.
All these and more should make parents and guardians to be more careful. Pedophiles exist and they ruin the sexual of a child in the future.
-Victoria Ukpaka
