‘Maybe it’s not unexpected, maybe it’s natural. It is something that happens in the animal world’.

That’s what my friends said to me, the couple turning to each other and nodding in agreement, when speaking of my child’s sexual assaults.

I was chatting with them in a café, hoping for a quiet moment to myself, only weeks after the discovery that two young teens had been taking turns sexually assaulting my four year old.

Their causal indifference shocked me. I was still too stunned by the attack on our youngest to be able to rally my rage in response.

But I was disgusted. I could barely look at them. It’s natural? This is what you really think?

What else do we do like animals? Do we eat poop like dogs? Do we protect our young from being eaten by the males, like lionesses? What is this garbage?

Do these people not know anyone who was assaulted as a child? Do they not know anyone who can tell them how badly that abuse hurt them and how long its effects lingered?

But maybe they knew. Maybe they were all too aware and then made the choice to believe that the sexual abuse of children was just one of the hard realities one had to expect in human society.

I don’t want to live in a society where we are more afraid of saying the wrong thing than protecting a child. But instead of prioritizing the protection of children we do the opposite.

We seem, as a society, to be in silent agreement that the topic is best avoided. And when we do talk about pedophiles it is as a humorous aside.

It is an awful subject and no one wants to think about it, I understand that. I know this blog will get few readers.

But it is a terrible crime. The crime of sexual assault against children causes harm for life. The majority of victims go on to have health troubles, mental issues, depression and self esteem issues.

When an adult breaks into the private sphere of a child’s world, abusing the child’s body and mind, he breaks the protective skin that has been protecting the child’s ego so well.

The child victim often feels as if they have been corrupted; they may feel dirty. It makes them feel sad and alone, and it is particularly corrosive to the child’s spirit if no one believes them.

The child who has been sexually attacked will forever be jealous of any innocent children who were not introduced to adult depravity.

That is what my son tells me and he knows because he was preyed upon by identical twin teens, ‘friends’ of the family, when he was only four years old.

The psychological wound is deep and ragged, prone to infection. If it festers, unwatched and unacknowledged, the infection can even lead to a poisoning of the whole body.

It takes real mental and emotional work to turn these wounds into healthy, fully healed scars. I know many adults who carry these scars and they work really hard to rise above the damage that was caused by the cruel sexual predator.

What I don’t want to think about is the innocent children who are currently being scarred.

I know they are out there, jumping in their skin when a familiar footstep is heard, slipping under a table, crying out in fear at an unexpected noise. Today, tonight, tomorrow, there are children quietly receiving the pain and stoically altering the way they seem themselves.

They are aging too fast, learning how to mask and make do, joke and smile, being brave while feeling broken inside. They live in fear of their predator. They never know when they are safe.

Why can’t we make any inroads on this crime? Why is it so pervasive, hidden within families and communities?

When it happens within a family, we often protect the predator and question the victim. Even when the crime is acknowledged the predators are infrequently charged.

When our family went to court for our child we were criticized by many in our community for ‘making a fuss’. But my son tells me that the fact that we believed him and took action helped him immeasurably. It reduced his feelings of powerless and gave him his childhood back, to some degree.

Most importantly, if we do not identify the criminal and treat the action as if it is a crime then the perpetrator will be free to attack the next child.

Alice Munro’s second husband, Gerald Fremlin, was known for his attraction to little children, his ‘fiddling’, his perversion. And no one did or said anything about it.

Andrea Skinner, Alice’s third daughter who recently wrote about her abuse at the hands of Gerald Fremlin, was even sent back to ‘summer’ with Munro and Fremlin after his behaviour had been revealed.

Her mother knew, her father knew, everyone in their circle knew that her step dad was a predator who had crept into her bed when she was nine years old and she was still expected to spend time with him.

Everyone knew and no one did anything. And we do know that Gerald Fremlin went on to hurt more young girls because one such woman has already come forward.

How is it possible that Gerald Fremlin has a perfectly respectable obituary after causing such pain and destruction throughout his life?

Alice Munro is not free of this either; she aided, she abetted, she knew better and she did nothing. She wrote her troubles away and deserted her own children.

And my friends from the café? They are still friends of mine but over the years since that conversation in the café something has come to light. They do have a dark secret, in fact they do.

There is a moldy spot in their family history that threatens to darken the whole family and destroy their upstanding reputation in the community.

They come from a family with a ‘black sheep’. From now on when you hear about a family that has one member that has been ostracized and rejected, take note. The excommunication says more about the family than the individual.

Oh, how the family worried about this member of the family; she was troubled, distant, unconnected. She had left the area, she had become detached from the family. She was left out of gatherings, even obituaries.

During my many years in this community I had got the impression that she was not an entirely safe mother. I didn’t know anything about her, really. I only formed a blurry picture of her through silences and innuendo.

I never knew her, until recently. As it turns out she has a story to tell. Was she groomed by a trusted male? Yes. Did she end up performing sexual acts as a child? Yes. That is her story. Did anyone believe her? Not entirely. Not enough.

Because, as we all know, these things happen. They are natural acts and it is not possible (it seems) to stop them from happening. We are animals.

But also, maybe it didn’t happen. Maybe she is a liar because, you know, we have already established that she is unreliable, unpredictable and a rebel, unlike the accused, a sensible buttoned down type.

So she was erased. But she has fought back and survived. She fought her way out of the depth of darkness that was created by being molested and then told it was her fault.

She struggled with her self esteem but she broke away and created a good life for herself. She is healthy and has a loving partner and loving children.

But there are places she doesn’t go and people she doesn’t visit. Her own family, her own village, the places she played as a child, the people she visited as a child.

And the man who hurt her lives comfortably in that space, in his home, in his village and within his lies.