Breaking the Silence on Child Sexual Abuse
Breaking the Silence on Child Sexual Abuse: How Mainstream Media can influence the masses and help prevent child sexual abuse
• Introduction
• Statistics
• What does child sexual abuse (CSA) mean
• How common is child sexual abuse
• The consequences of child sexual abuse
• Breaking the Silence on child sexual abuse
• How mainstream media can help in the prevention of child sexual abuse
• 7 Steps in the Healing Process
• Conclusion
Introduction
Child sexual abuse (CSA) is a hot topic these days on the Oprah Winfrey show. Over the past twenty years, Ms. Winfrey, a sex abuse survivor, has used her television platform to be a voice for victims and survivors throughout the world. Ms. Winfrey originally broke barriers simply by sharing her personal story and by doing so allowed others to proceed forward in sharing their stories. In the last six months, Ms. Winfrey has interviewed child molesters and rapists, giving insight to parents on what to look for and how to protect their children. More men have come forward expressing their stories of childhood sexual abuse at the hands of mother, caretakers, etc.
Ms. Winfrey has interviewed celebrities such as McKenzie Phillips who spoke candidly about her incestuous relationship with her father. This topic stirred up a lot of controversy in mainstream media but the backlash was unforgiving, unsympathetic and placed blame on the victim. Once people began speaking in favor of Phillips and advocacy groups and psychologists came forward the flaming controversy quickly burnt out.
In mainstream media CSA is a cool to non-existent topic. It has been considered a taboo subject for decades and in 2010 victims are still afraid to speak out for many reasons. The top two reasons are the stigma of shame and fear of the abuser. It is difficult to address due to the sensitivity of the topic, as well as the near-invisibility of its victims. Many of our leaders from police to judges are ignorant, misinformed or not
• Introduction
• Statistics
• What does child sexual abuse (CSA) mean
• How common is child sexual abuse
• The consequences of child sexual abuse
• Breaking the Silence on child sexual abuse
• How mainstream media can help in the prevention of child sexual abuse
• 7 Steps in the Healing Process
• Conclusion
Introduction
Child sexual abuse (CSA) is a hot topic these days on the Oprah Winfrey show. Over the past twenty years, Ms. Winfrey, a sex abuse survivor, has used her television platform to be a voice for victims and survivors throughout the world. Ms. Winfrey originally broke barriers simply by sharing her personal story and by doing so allowed others to proceed forward in sharing their stories. In the last six months, Ms. Winfrey has interviewed child molesters and rapists, giving insight to parents on what to look for and how to protect their children. More men have come forward expressing their stories of childhood sexual abuse at the hands of mother, caretakers, etc.
Ms. Winfrey has interviewed celebrities such as McKenzie Phillips who spoke candidly about her incestuous relationship with her father. This topic stirred up a lot of controversy in mainstream media but the backlash was unforgiving, unsympathetic and placed blame on the victim. Once people began speaking in favor of Phillips and advocacy groups and psychologists came forward the flaming controversy quickly burnt out.
In mainstream media CSA is a cool to non-existent topic. It has been considered a taboo subject for decades and in 2010 victims are still afraid to speak out for many reasons. The top two reasons are the stigma of shame and fear of the abuser. It is difficult to address due to the sensitivity of the topic, as well as the near-invisibility of its victims. Many of our leaders from police to judges are ignorant, misinformed or not
Citations: www.stopcsa.org Stop the Silence: Stop Child Sexual Abuse, Inc. Retrieved on April 19, 2010 www.darkness2light.org/7Steps/7steps.asp Retrieved on April 22, 2010 Additional Resources www.jimhopper.com www.childhelp.org