Rules for protecting your kids
Rules for protecting your kids One in 20 child molesters was rearrested for a sex crime against a child within three years of leaving prison, according to a U.S. Justice Department study that tracked male sex offenders. Activists are working to change laws to require more stringent sentences and better tracking of convicted sex offenders. Here's what you can do to safeguard your children: - Know your neighbors' names and the names of their children, and make sure they know yours. Know your children's friends and their parents. - Teach your children that no one has the right to touch their bodies in ways that hurt, frighten or confuse them, especially if a child is threatened not to tell. Specifically teach about the parts of a child's body that are off limits to help him or her tell the difference between safe and unsafe touching. Tell children they have the right to refuse any kind of touching, sexual or not. - Explain to your children that people in their lives have certain roles: Their music teacher teaches them how to play an instrument, their coach trains them in sports, their neighbor walks the dog with them. Children need to understand the boundaries of those relationships and what's inappropriate. - Ask how your day care center, after-school activity or religious organization scrutinizes volunteers and paid employees. Research shows that children are acquainted with 70 percent to 90 percent of the people who sexually abuse them. - Screen babysitters and other caregivers. Check their references and see if they are in a publicly available sex-offender database. Once you've hired them, drop by unexpectedly to see how the kids are doing. At home, ask your children about their experiences with the caregiver. Adolescents are perpetrators in at least 20 percent of reported sexual abuse cases. - Notice when someone shows your children a great deal of attention or begins giving them gifts, and find out more about that person's relationship with your kids. - Establish rules and supervise computer, cell phone and text-messaging use for your children. Know whom they're communicating with electronically and where they may have access to other electronic devices. This is especially important for teens because of their comfort with and access to electronics; 14-year-olds were the greatest proportion of sexual assault victims reported to authorities. - Keep the lines of communication open. Tell your child you are willing to hear anything the child might want to talk about, no matter how embarrassing or scary the subject might be. Kids generally worry that they're at fault if sexual abuse happens. -- Sources: Bureau of Justice Statistics; National Clearinghouse on Child Abuse and Neglect Information; National Center for Missing & Exploited Children; National Network for Child Care; Parents for Megan's Law; "The Future of Children: Sexual Abuse of Children," a journal jointly published by Princeton University and the Brookings Institution; "Pediatrics," official journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics http://www.dailyrecord.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060307/NEWS01/603070312/1005