Sharing – Peer-on-Peer Abuse: What can be done when kids hurt kids?

I write somewhat often about the truth and my displeasure at groups who try and use child abuse stories to focus on either misleading or completely fabricated information they are sharing. There are those who disagree with me, and think that any story that raises awareness of child abuse is a positive. They point to conspiracy theories about mole people, elitists drinking the blood of children, or even celebrities who aren’t really dead and say, “Well so long as people are paying attention to child abuse”. Or, maybe they don’t share made-up stories but overly focus on one particular type of abuse at the expense of other, much more common, forms of abuse. Sometimes, yes, they even make movies about them.

As I’ve said elsewhere, we’ve raised entire generations to be afraid of creepy-looking men in mall parking lots, but forget to warn them about the people they already know, when we know that somewhere around 90% of sexual child abuse is at the hands of someone the child, and family, already knows.

This article from Childhelp also reminds us of something else we too often forget to warn them about. Each other. We’ve been so busy telling them what to look for in strangers that maybe we’ve forgotten about kids being bullied and physically attacked by their peers, sexually assaulted by older children, and subject to teen dating violence. Perhaps it would help to understand the effects:

“The immediate and long-term impact of peer abuse overlaps with many of the impacts of abuse perpetrated by adults. Adults have an important role to prevent abuse among children and help children know they can reach out for help to stop abuse and find support.”

There’s no real difference. I should know. I was sexually abused by an older minor. There was no creepy old man, only an older and bigger kid who threatened me. Someone in my own family. Mall parking lots, school, and our neighborhood park weren’t the places where I was not safe, my family was.

And I had no way to tell anyone because I wasn’t taught about that being child abuse. Only strange men in white vans offering candy were to be avoided. That was child abuse. Whatever was happening in my family wasn’t to be discussed with anyone. It wasn’t, and it went on for years.

Maybe we should do better with understanding the ways kids abuse other kids and talking openly about it. The link below can help.

https://www.childhelp.org/peer-on-peer-abuse-what-can-be-done-when-kids-hurt-kids/