That’s the winner right there. Kids who are not isolated or lonely and who know they are loved and supported are the ones who tell you about grooming behavior from the very start. They have adults they trust and are connected to people who are more likely to notice grooming and believe the child who reports inappropriate behavior.
That’s the best tool we have to prevent child sexual abuse.
Boys get molested. I was one of them. Lots of other men you know were likely molested, too. Some of them may not even know because we weren’t taught that boys could be victims of sexual abuse. After all, if our bodies reacted, we must have wanted it somehow.Â
This reasoning is so outdated and harmful. Men who were sexually abused as children deserve to have their stories told. All survivors deserve access to support and resources. It’s the very least we can do.Â
We need more resources and more access to care. Not less.Â
We need care located where people live and work so they can remain part of their communities.Â
We need NIH grants to pay for more mental health research.Â
Our government is in the process of doing the exact opposite while claiming to care about mental health.Â
Anchoring myself in the present moment means focusing on the situation in front of me and doing what I can to improve it. That can mean donating money or time to causes I care about, calling elected representatives, supporting the people around me who are suffering, speaking out where I can, educating where I can, and staying aware of opportunities to do the things I can do.Â
The hope doesn’t lie in one person changing everything; it lies in enough of us doing what we can to make that change.Â
 As Marisa Kabas, who should be credited with bringing all of this to light, points out, the NCMEC website no longer talks about the increased risk of trafficking to LGBTQ+ youth. They can no longer provide resources and education about those risks or information about how to support those kids. They are even expected to dead-name missing trans kids in all announcements.Â
They are leaving LGBTQ+ kids behind. The alternative to doing that was not to have funding to run the only reporting agency for online CSAM, the clearinghouse used by many online services and law enforcement agencies to combat CSAM and trafficking, and the primary source of information about missing children in the US.
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