Season 2: Episode 5 - Empowering Children to Recognize Abuse

As an author, parent and social worker, Meghan Hurley Backofen knows that abusers rely on secrecy to perpetrate their crimes.  That's why she works to empower children to recognize and report abuse—including through her children's book Who's the Boss Of This Body?, and podcast 10 Tips for Sexual Abuse Prevention. In this episode, Meghan explains that it is always the responsibility of adults to protect children from abuse. Yet, she says, part of that responsibility includes teaching the knowledge, skills, and even vocabulary that kids need to seek help, should they ever need it. 

--------- EPISODE CHAPTERS WITH SHORT KEY POINTS ---------

(0:00:01) - Understanding Child Sexual Abuse 
Meghan Hurley Backofen shares how she came to the work of child sexual abuse prevention, and explains why empowering children to speak up is such an important aspect of the work. 

(0:04:34) - Practical Steps for Empowering Children
Meghan shares the importance of break myths, teaching children to protect themselves, and emphasizing honesty and bodily autonomy. We also discuss some of the challenges of balancing bodily autonomy with legitimate requirements of being a parent. 

(0:11:43) - The Role of Organizations in Education and Empowerment
We talk about the role of organizations and youth programming staff in empowering children and educating the community. Meghan shares her vision for how we can all help children to recognize their own agency over their bodies.

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Transcript

0:00:01 - Speaker 1
Sexual abuse thrives in secrecy and the fact that we don't talk about it. You know all of this culture of silence. Well, that's how perpetrators went. 

0:00:12 - Speaker 2
Welcome you all to season two, episode five of Staffing Safety Society. I'm Kevin Trapani. 

0:00:18 - Speaker 3
And I'm Paige Bagwell. 

0:00:20 - Speaker 2
There is no redwoods if not for fighting against child sexual abuse. We started the company to stop kids from being sexually abused. It's just as clear as that. We have focused on what I would call kind of institutional prevention, training and setting standards protocols. I'm grateful for the and proud of the work that we've done, but there's a lot more to this equation. What happens outside the walls of our organizations is just as important, and we think we have a role to play in promoting safety everywhere. That's really what today's conversation is about, and so, paige, I'd be grateful if you'd introduce our guests today. 

0:00:53 - Speaker 3
Be happy too. We are so happy to have Megan Hurley back. Often. She has been the sexual abuse treatment provider for the Garfield County Department of Child Welfare since 2004. She has provided therapy to sexual abuse victims and their families for over 20 years and has been dedicated in prevention efforts in her community since 2010. And she's written a children's book. Who's the Boss of this Body? I'm a little bit of a fan girling today. This is a book we have given to every single one of our staff members and it is something I have handed directly to family and friends over the years to say this is the book you need to have. You can get it on Amazon. English and Spanish versions. Highly recommend it, and we are so excited to have Megan with us. I'm excited to be here. So let's dive right in. Kevin, you want to? Yeah, so, Megan, let's start with like, how did you come to this work? 

0:01:37 - Speaker 1
I actually started out doing my social work as a backpacking guide, so I can really relate to a lot of the work you do with youth serving organizations and really appreciate those relationships that you can develop with children, adolescents, when you're in this position of spending time together having fun. I ended up going from that into a residential treatment center to serve children that were really struggling with criminal behavior, honestly, but children that get committed in the detention system at least the girls that I was working with were all sexually abused. That's a statistic that pretty much carries through that a lot of juveniles that are currently incarcerated have a history of child sexual abuse. Others that kind of are a response to that end up getting them in a lot of trouble sometimes. I went into it because it sounded like fun to take these little criminal delinquent children out backpacking to change their ways and instead I found myself working with sexual abuse victims. That was over 20 years ago and I am just really honored with how much I've learned from all of these survivors. 

0:02:50 - Speaker 2
We're speaking to you today from Colorado, which is your home. And so when folks think about the hiking, backpacking stuff. You're out in beautiful country with these kids who have really had a tough journey. Obviously they were victimized and they were working through that and responding sometimes in tough and destructive ways. But did they have a sense of how they could have protected themselves, what was happening to them? 

0:03:12 - Speaker 1
I don't think that they did until they got in trouble and were kind of forced into mental health treatment, that it was even something that was mentionable before I was working with that population and when I was just doing the backpacking guiding stuff. I'm sure that after five years and however many trips that I worked with sexual abuse victims but it was unmentionable, it was never, ever a topic that was allowed to be discussed. And I think that that's what I really see your organization doing, making this unmentionable thing mentionable. I mean, I look back on those years and I wish that I had just had the language or the skills to just create an environment that would have allowed for disclosures, because I'm sure some of those kids came in and out of that program and returned to a sexually abusive environment without being able to talk about it just because there was a wallop. 

0:04:13 - Speaker 3
Obviously, you've been doing this work for 20 plus years and so you've seen abuse prevention and the education even change, the victims being told it's your responsibility to call this out when something happens. Talk to us a little bit about the adult's responsibility to keep kids safe and the difference between responsibility and the empowerment part of this story and this narrative. 

0:04:34 - Speaker 1
I think it's a really interesting parallel process. I mean, first of all, we have these organizations that we want to educate the people serving youth on how to acknowledge that sexual abuse exists, that it does exist within these organizations and there needs to be this understanding of not being afraid to respond, to acknowledge it, boundary violations, to be able to call that out at the time that you see it and know how to respond. It all starts with that education to the providers to know there are going to be people that want to sexually abuse children, that this is their dream job because they have great access to children. That myth that a sexual offender is this really creepy monster and not somebody that looks normal and really goes out of their way to be the funnest person around and the kids adore him. We have to break down those myths. We don't want to ever blame a child for keeping a secret about sexual abuse, but we've gone to this extreme of taking full responsibility, almost to the point of leaving children ignorant Like it's our job, don't worry about it, when in fact, I think children need that same parallel process. They need to understand that sexual abuse exists. 

A lot of times it's people that they know and love that actually do it. It's not a stranger. A lot of the kids that I've worked with that's what I hear from them. At the time that the sexual abuse happened, they had no idea what was going on. They didn't know what this was. It was so overwhelming and confusing, and the fact that it was coming from their uncle or their brother or their best friend's dad was totally not in line with this myth of the stranger. They're ill-informed and then they don't know how to respond and they don't know what they need to do about it. That is the main messaging I want to get out to people is that children need to know what this is and they need to know how to respond. 

0:06:38 - Speaker 2
When we got started, people used to say don't call it sexual abuse prevention. Let's just drop the word sexual and just talk about abuse prevention. We're stuck by our guns to say you got to name it. And once you name it it becomes easier to talk about it. In the interest of preserving the innocence of children, we've kept them ignorant. It's the predator that helps them to see what is supposedly normal behavior, and they're not hearing anything from our side. 

0:07:00 - Speaker 1
Exactly Because if you're not educating your child, guess who is totally willing to step up and answer those questions? 

0:07:09 - Speaker 3
And teaching that child that this is normal. And so let's talk a little bit about the boss of my body. I've given the book out because I just think it's that important. Talk a little bit about how you balance in that book. Like I need you to take a shower and I'm your mom and get in the shower. You kind of dance with that a little bit because it's reality. So how do you teach children? But also, you know, parent children in that message. 

0:07:35 - Speaker 2
I'll admit to being the dad of a boy here. I'm very, very interested in the answer to this question. 

0:07:42 - Speaker 1
It's a tricky question I've been doing. This class called the top 10 things that parents can do to prevent child sexual abuse, and one of the most common questions that came out of that was what are some book recommendations to help facilitate this conversation and didn't feel like there was one book that could do everything that I was looking for, and so then I decided, well, I might as well just write my own. 

0:08:06 - Speaker 2
And so there were. By the way, you just tossed that off. There's so many people that don't find the book they want and they don't decide to do it themselves. 

0:08:13 - Speaker 3
I'm just going to write it so good on you. 

0:08:15 - Speaker 2
That's awesome. 

0:08:17 - Speaker 1
The main things that I wanted a child to come out of reading that book knowing were, first of all, that sexual abuse exists, that sometimes there are other kids or adults that they want to do something really weird and they want to look at her touch, or ask a child to look at her touch private parts, and if anyone ever does that, they're breaking a rule, because that was the number one thing I was finding my clients had never heard. The second thing I wanted kids to know was that they are the boss of their body and they are in charge and no one has the right to look at or touch their body in a way that makes them uncomfortable. And then the third thing was that secrets are not safe, and so that's basically getting into how to respond. So that second piece, the boss of their body, is the most controversial that I get the most pushback from with parents when I teach the class, what am I supposed to do when they won't eat their broccoli? And that's actually in the book. We need to be really creative, and especially in youth serving organizations, in establishing rules, norms and consequences. 

The bottom line is that if your child refuses to take a shower, I hope that they will be able to take a shower. I hope that you're not a parent that is going to strip them down and drag the eight year old child into the shower and start forcing them in the shower. It's not how we want to do things. That's just not good parenting. It might look a little different when they're two. They're not going to be as clever and probably not as traumatized as being forced into getting their hair washed. 

The older that the child gets and the more that they're giving pushback. Well, I'm the boss of my body. I don't want to take a shower. Then I guess you're not watching any television, or I guess you don't get to do this or that, because that's what we were going to do tonight and you're not taking a shower. You don't want to eat your broccoli. I'm not going to force feed it to you, but I am going to say that you don't get any dessert. Be creative Now getting a two year old in the car seat. As soon as they're cognitively able, you have a three or a four year old. They're pushing back and I debauched on my body. I don't want to be in my car seat. 

0:10:16 - Speaker 2
That was really good, that was very, very good. 

0:10:19 - Speaker 3
We've heard that Kevin and I both have heard that exact word. 

0:10:21 - Speaker 1
I mean, this is where your parenting is really challenged. You know it's like well, I'm the boss of my car. These are the rules of the car. You can put yourself in the car seat. If you want to buckle it yourself, you can, Okay, but this is what we have to do right now. 

0:10:35 - Speaker 3
You're the boss of your body from other kids too. We talk a lot about peer to peer. That's just as important as a part of that book and training and just the conversation with parents is you're the boss of your body for everybody, not just other adults. 

0:10:47 - Speaker 2
I really like, Megan, how you've couched kind of I'm the boss of the car or whatever in you know what. You're also responsible for your own nutrition or your own hygiene. This is a long way from because I said so. I'm not sure when in history that was successful, but it sure as heck isn't now. I want to ask you to flip a little bit back to the institutional side of this. Now right, Because we've got a lot of kids in our care and our listeners are largely youth workers, and so let's talk a little bit about how this informs the professional environment. We're not saying that youth professionals responsible teaching parents how to parent, but parents will question our protocols and practices, bathrooming approaches and those kinds of things. So how would you help a youth worker to engage with a parent about the kind of protections that we put in place for youth programs? 

0:11:35 - Speaker 1
I don't ever want this messaging to kids to be this kind of like awkward sit down conversation. It's more of just these constant opportunities within normal interactions. If there is an opportunity that somebody is violating a boundary in the bathroom and goofing off, that's your opportunity to remind them that sometimes this problem exists. You know, I understand you're just goofing off and splashing the water and stuff, but I want you to remember that sometimes people want to do something kind of weird and they want to look at or touch a kid's private parts. That might have not been what you were intending. It could look like that and it could make somebody really uncomfortable and if somebody does that, they're breaking a rule. So that's why I'm calling it out. 

0:12:23 - Speaker 2
Right, so in the moment. 

0:12:24 - Speaker 1
In the moment it's just looking for opportunities, and especially at camp environments. You know there's a lot of opportunities, I'm sure, with like changing and bathrooming, and you know there's constant opportunity to remind people that look, you know it's just, it's not okay to be in a space where you might look at or touch a person's private parts or have somebody look at or touch yours. You know that's called sexual abuse and it's a problem that happens to a lot of kids and the only way we're ever going to make it stop happening is by talking about it. Here's your opportunity within the youth serving organizations to say we're going to use caution here because there's always that risk, because sexual abuse is really prevalent. So we want our kids to know that no one ever has the right to look at or touch anyone's private parts. So that's why we make kids sit in the backseat when they're being transported or whatever the circumstance is. 

0:13:13 - Speaker 2
Megan, like what you're suggesting you told me, if I got this right, parents are responsible for their kids' safety. The counselor is responsible for the safety of the kids in the program. There's no missing that responsibility. But what you're hoping is that the parents and the youth program staff are empowering the kids by making them aware of what those rules are. You want that to happen both in the institutional setting, where in the moment that's the language they're using, the reminding kids and that kind of stuff, and the parents are doing that as well. So it's happening both at home and in the program. 

0:13:44 - Speaker 1
Absolutely. They're letting children know that sexual abuse exists. We're aware of it and we're mindful of it and taking precaution. How to respond is that secrets are not safe. It's really important, because sexual abuse thrives in secrecy and the fact that we don't talk about it. All of this culture of silence well, that's how perpetrators went. Any time that somebody is uncomfortable using an anatomically correct name for a body part, perpetrators went. They look for kids that don't know the language of what to call their body parts. That's something that they seek out. That is a win for them. When they see a child that's so uncomfortable they can't even say the word penis. Well then, that's going to be really easy, because how is he ever going to tell us that something happened? 

0:14:33 - Speaker 2
A form of secrecy. 

0:14:34 - Speaker 3
It's, like you said, repetitive, you know, every day or so. As they're learning, they're hearing it from home. That's when it sticks. That's when they get comfortable in saying I'm the boss of my body. Whatever this is is not I'm not comfortable with. 

0:14:45 - Speaker 2
Amazing conversation and your work is really powerful. What did we not ask you that we should have? How'd you like to close your remarks today? 

0:14:53 - Speaker 1
I'm really proud of my podcast. It's on iTunes and Spotify and it's just called 10 Tips for Sexual Abuse Prevention. I have an Instagram page with my name, megan Backhoff-In, or if you just put sexual abuse prevention into Instagram, it should come up a lot of opportunity to get educated, and so don't be afraid to. 

0:15:12 - Speaker 2
Paige. How about your final thoughts? 

0:15:14 - Speaker 3
Yeah, I mean, this has been a wonderful conversation. We really could carry this one on for a long time. And one of the things she said is you know, if you don't teach the norm, someone else will. 

0:15:23 - Speaker 2
You know, if somebody came and knocked on the door and said, hey, listen, I spent some private time with your child, you'd say what are you crazy? 

0:15:28 - Speaker 3
Yeah. 

0:15:28 - Speaker 2
But they have total access and so many other media platforms and we kind of let it happen without establishing our own norms. We want to be empowering the kids who are in our programs and so we've got to talk to parents about this, because, if we can line those two things up, it's spoken about in the home, it's spoken about in the program. Now we've got a bunch of kids who are much more aware and they're much tougher targets for predators. Let me read us out. Staffing safety society is created by the Redwoods Group. It's produced by Stephen Dosshert, melanie Young, paige Bagwell, piper Kessler and me. If you like the show, tell a friend or leave us. A review means a lot to us. If you have a topic suggestion or any kind of feedback, we'd love to hear it. Click on the link in the show notes or send an email to communityatredwoodsgroupcom Again, communityatredwoodsgroupcom and we'll get back to you. Staffing safety society is recorded weekly in North Carolina. 

0:16:18 - Speaker 3
I'm Kevin Trapani and I'm Paige Bagwell. 

0:16:20 - Speaker 2
Thanks y'all for listening. 

0:16:21 - Speaker 3
Take care.