Listen to your child’s fears

April is National Child Abuse Awareness Month

When I was a kid, my family lived in a big apartment complex – there were probably 9 or 10 huge buildings, with a single road passing through that ended in a large cul-de-sac. This was our playground. We would leave home early in the morning and all the neighbor kids would play outside until it was dark. It was a different sort of time… maybe.

I was around 8 years old, and my brother was closer to 10. Our mother had gone back to work when we both started school. In this complex we had made friends with a family with three children of their own. Their oldest son and my brother were the same age. They had a daughter a little younger than me, and a second son who was about 3 years old.

The mom, CW, would babysit to earn a little extra money. She became my second mom. I can say I truly loved this woman. JW, her husband was a creepy little man that I never liked, NEVER. He worked as a photographer for a defense contractor in the city where we lived. He also did some private photography for extra money… and other things.

JW always annoyed me. I didn’t like being around him and would tell my parents I didn’t like him. He would play with the neighbor kids, picking them up and swinging them in the air. I would run from him, and scream and kick if he caught me.

He also had an old Harley with a sidecar and he would take kids for rides around the complex. Being a kid I wanted to go on these rides, but would always get in the sidecar and not on the seat behind him.

After one ride, I stood on the sidewalk as the other kids climbed off the bike. A second kid, she was maybe 4 at the time, was also in the sidecar and needed help getting out. I watched as this man reached into the sidecar and kiss this baby in a way that I had only seen my dad kiss my mother. We are talking an opened mouth kiss that lasted a good minute. I was dumbfounded and was even more confused when my parents dismissed me when I told them about it later.

‘You didn’t see what you thought you saw.’

JW also had this strange fixation on taking photographs of all the neighborhood girls, the younger the better, dressed up in a grass skirt and bikini top, standing on his bed. It wasn’t a secret, lots of people knew about it. I refused to dress up for him. Again, the adults didn’t seem to find anything wrong with all this.

Fast forward about 15 years. 

Hubs and I had only been married for a year or so, when we came home for a visit. My dad showed me a newspaper article saying that JW had been arrested and charged with child abuse.

The four-year-old in the sidecar had a younger sister, just a infant at the time of the kissing incident. She was a teenager now and had accused JW of sexually assaulting her over a period of years. 

I was pissed. I called both my parents out on it, telling them that I had tried for years to tell them JW was a dangerous man, now all too late. My mother was concerned that he had harmed me somehow. I reminded her how much I had hated him and that no, he never touched me.

At the time he was an elder in the church we had attended for years. As far as I know, some of the children in the church had been his victims too. Several families mortgaged their houses to help pay his legal expenses. I was pissed off. This monster could have raped their children and they were putting up their homes to defend him.

While searching his home, the police found thousands of photos he had taken, dating back decades, of little girls in grass skirts and bikini tops, or less.

I was pissed. No matter how much she denied knowing anything, I believed CW was as guilty as JW. She knew, I know she knew, and never did anything to stop him, to prevent him from assaulting who knows how many children over a 25 year span. I will never forgive her for that betrayal.

He was eventually convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison. Not too long ago I got curious and went looking for him. I checked the National Sexual Offender Registry Web site, trying to find out where he was and if he was out of prison.

After about the third state, I found him. He had been released a year or so earlier and was living thousands of miles from me. His profile included where he lived, his age and a little information about the crime he was convicted of committing. He was in his early 80s, a pathetic old man. I wished that he had died in prison.

The point of all this is that I was not some sort of child savant. Children are naturally intuitive and can pick up on character flaws that adults never see.

When your child comes to you and says ‘Mrs. H down the road scares me,’ or ‘I don’t like it when Uncle D hugs me.’ Take time to talk to them and find out why they feel this way. If they can’t explain it, don’t dismiss it. Go to Mrs. H or Uncle D, tell them they make your child uncomfortable and why, then keep your child away from them.

If they get angry or defensive, there is your red flag. Someone who had nothing to hide would understand your concerns. This is about the welfare and health of your child, don’t be concerned about hurting an adult’s feelings… it is a moot point!

I still wonder today how many children could have been saved the pain of being a pawn for this monster if only one person had believed me all those years ago. Understand, I don’t feel guilty, I’m just angry that no one listened.

    

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