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	Program to Offer Early Alerts on Possible Abusers, Victims By Bishop Robert Vasa Catholic Sentinel September 7, 2007 http://www.sentinel.org/node/8275 Bend — It has been several weeks since the completion of the filming phase of the Healthy Families - Safe Children series. The editor continues to do what editors do and others are pursuing the necessary facets of production, marketing, advertising and distribution. Work is actively being done on the accompanying workbook with the hope that both final DVD and Workbook can be ready within six to eight weeks. I have no idea how realistic this time estimate is but it is our hope that we can begin an active marketing program this fall. The premise of the program is that there are early childhood indicators of propensities to either victim or bullying behaviors. These propensities seem to be tied to the inadequacies of the attachment relationships in the child's life. During early development children establish or fail to establish proper attachment relationships with significant parental figures. A child who develops a secure attachment relationship in an authoritative home is more confident, competent, handles stress better, has a better sense of self, understands the difference between right and wrong, has empathy for others, regulates emotional outbursts more effectively and is much less likely to engage in either victim or bullying behaviors. In some ways it is easy to see why. A child who has a well-developed sense of empathy will not be able to detach from the grief or sadness which bullying behaviors produce. Such a child will avoid being a bully. A child who has a well-developed sense of self and understands the meaning of personal worth and value will understand when he or she is not being properly respected and will know to report this disrespect to proper adults. Such a child will avoid being a victim. By contrast a child who has not developed a secure attachment relationship struggles with self concept, modulation of emotion and impulse control. Children with insecure or ambivalent attachments are much more likely to be vulnerable to victimization and are much more likely, due to their own stress and lack of empathy, to engage in bullying behaviors. With this understanding of the impact of early childhood development on the propensity to be either victim or bully, it makes sense that any strategy aimed at reducing victimization needs to include work related to helping children establish secure attachment relationships. It seems to me that a part of the difficulty with trying to teach children to report aberrant behavior on the part of adults is that a child who lacks a secure attachment relationship, the very child more likely to be abused, will also have greater difficulty recognizing and reporting abuse. The factors which make a child more vulnerable to abuse are the very same factors which inhibit the child from reporting the abuse. If the child has an insecure or ambivalent attachment relationship, he or she has learned from very early childhood that reporting their fears or difficulties to an adult does not produce the desired result. In other words, the child has learned that reporting does no good. Thus, while we can teach this child that he or she needs to report aberrant behavior to a trusted adult, the very concept of a trusted adult is not necessarily on the radar screen of that child. There is no doubt that the abuse of children is a horrible crime but if that abuse and the failure to report it is connected with insecure or ambivalent attachment, then helping that child establish a secure attachment relationship with a caring and loving adult seems to be a much more proactive strategy. It will come as no surprise that 95 percent of the abuse in this country is perpetrated by males but what is shocking is that 39 percent of these males are adolescents. This, too, can be related back to insecure attachment relationships. If, as studies indicate, bullying behavior is one of the outcomes of insecure or ambivalent attachment then we could begin to see that the aggressive behavior of a child becomes the bullying behavior of the schoolboy. This becomes the sexually aggressive behavior of the adolescent and this very quickly escalates to criminal sexual abuse. There is no doubt that adult vigilance is essential in the prevention of child sexual abuse but true prevention would mean an intervention in the life of the child before he escalates to sexual aggressiveness. This is one portion of the goal of Healthy Families - Safe Children. The program is designed for parents and ideally the program will be used in group settings allowing for conversation and discussion of the points brought out in the series. No one would be so naïve as to think that any one program will single-handedly end the horrible scourge of child sexual abuse but I think this program can make a valuable contribution to the discussion. We need to realize that our whole culture has been sex-saturated for decades and that the sexual abuse of children is very much a symptom of the depth of the sexual depravity of our world. The sexual abuse of children is not separate from pornography. It is not separate from abortion. It is not separate from college age promiscuity. It is not entirely separate from artificial contraception. It is not separate from video games or rap music which desensitize users to the dignity of the human person. Any program which desires to reduce the sexualization and sexual victimization of children must involve itself in more than simply identifying and reporting abuse. That identification and reporting will be necessary as long as the cultural factors which systemically lead to abuse continue to be present in our society. The mere identification and reporting of abuse, however, does nothing to curb the formation of vulnerable children and it does nothing to intervene on behalf of a child manifesting troubling behaviors at a very early age. If we are to make inroads in the prevention of abuse we cannot ignore those early childhood factors which predispose children to victim or bullying behaviors. Again, it is my founded hope that the program which we hope to present becomes at least one small portion of the effort needed to truly create a safer environment for children in our society. Contact: bishopvasa@ocp.org.
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