Last month, I received a very lovely rejection letter from a well-respected New York agent who had asked to review the entire proposal for THE WELL-ARMORED CHILD. She liked the book, loved the writing, but told me that she just didn’t think the market for the book was “robust” enough. A story yesterday on CNN.com…Continue reading Think that parents don’t want a “toolkit” book to prevent abuse? Think again
Part One: Young Children and the Sixth Commandment It’s the juicy one: Thou shall not commit adultery. How do you teach the term adultery to young children? There are two ways: There is a guilt and sin-laden method that shames child victims of abuse into a lifetime of silence and self-loathing. It also silences witnesses and whistleblowers…Continue reading We can’t waste this teachable moment: How the teaching of one commandment silenced generations of sex abuse victims and what we can do to change it
The words from panicky parents ring far and wide: “I went to slumber parties all of the time and, you know, nothing bad ever happened. But things are so different now!” “I’ve never let my child spend a night away from me. But she’s nine now, and all of her friends have slumber parties. I…Continue reading My kid has been invited to a slumber party! What do I do?
A breaking story today has kept my phone ringing off the hook: A southern California third grader has been accused of sexually assaulting a classmate numerous times during the past year. School administrators only found out about it when other students at an after-school program reported what they saw. (Kudos to those kids!) Tragic? Yes.…Continue reading When children abuse: A preventable tragedy
One of the chapters of my upcoming book deals with what I call Institutional Rot, that is, why “good” people do and say bad things in the name of the institution and how children are caught in the crossfire. For an institutional culture to have this kind of crisis, the direction—or I should say, misdirection—has…Continue reading In crisis, Francis fails