Dear A - A letter to a childhood playmate

If it isn't clear, my mom loved kids. She loved helping kids. There were always other kids around - whether it was ones she was keeping out of a broken foster care system or ones she was tutoring or whatever else. Mom was only able to have one biological child before a miscarriage and then cancer robbed her of her ability to have more . . . but she mothered countless children over the course of her life. I played with all kinds of kids, from my own friends to abuse victims to those living in complete poverty. This post is about one of the children she tutored, from an affluent family. I can't even remember his last name, and I don't think I could say this to him even if I did find him again, so I'm writing it here.

Dear A, 

It has been two decades since you were coming to my house for tutoring. I liked it when you came over because after you got done with your lessons, we could play until your dad picked you up. Usually we would play in the backyard or the barn or my dad would take us up to the back field to run around. And we'd talk. We'd talk about normal kid stuff . . . but sometimes, you would say not so normal stuff. 

You would talk about how much you loved sex. You talked about how you wanted to make a sex club where everybody had sex. You talked about your penis a lot. You never did anything inappropriate towards me, and you never said anything inappropriate about me. And I just said 'okay, then I'll build a club for people who don't want that next door and you can come visit me because I don't want to do that, it's for grownups.' And then we'd draw pictures of our clubhouses. You would draw your sex club and I would draw my no-sex club. The few times I mentioned you at school, a couple kids would talk about how you tried to get them to have sex with you or went to your house and saw you naked in bed with somebody. 

You were no older than five or six.

I didn't understand back then. I just thought you were weird. I thought maybe you walked in on your parents or something and it got stuck in your head or you didn't know what it really was. I was a little older than you and I knew the mechanics of how babies were made and I didn't see why anyone would want that or care about it. 

 I didn't understand that you were a walking red flag for childhood sexual abuse. I didn't know. I was only about eight years old or so. And I'm sorry. As an adult I both understand that there was no way I could have known what was going on. Yet still, I've carried the guilt for years. It was weird. I should have said something to somebody. Even saying as simply as 'All he talks about is how much he loves sex' and my mom would have been all over that situation. I didn't, though. And I'm sorry. I don't know what happened to you after you did well in tutoring and didn't need to come over anymore. I know your family still lived local. I don't know who was abusing you, and I don't know if it ever stopped. I'm just so, so sorry. 

Wherever you are, I hope that you've found help in dealing with whatever it was that happened to you. I hope you're living a happy life, and I hope you break the cycle of abuse going forward. 

Denise

As parents, we try to help our children understand body boundaries and what is or isn't appropriate for other people to do to them. We warn them about inappropriate touching and people acting badly and when to tell an adult. Looking back on this situation, what it's taught me is that perhaps I shouldn't only be teaching my children what is okay and not okay for other people to do to them. Maybe I should also be teaching them to tell an adult when other children act in a way that means they might be abused. Something as simple as 'If you know somebody who talks about sex a lot or says that somebody is touching them, you need to tell me/a teacher/guidance counselor/adult, in case somebody is hurting them.' 

Kids might not express any signs of abuse in front of adults, but they might in front of other kids. "A" loved my mom, but obviously never let on around her that something was going on - and if I'd known better, I or any of the other kids who saw this behavior could have told our parents and maybe helped him not be subjected to years of sexual abuse at the hands of god knows who. None of us should feel bad as adults because we simply didn't know better, of course - even though I know I do. I just hope that wherever he is, he's found help.

Thoughts? Have you talked with your children (or will talk to future children) about signs of abuse in other children? What did you/will you say?

If you need assistance in dealing with sexual abuse in your family or in your past, contact the RAINN network: http://www.rainn.org/