Is anything stopping a family member from reporting abuse?
Prevention advocates say that family members may dismiss their own concerns because they fear making a false accusation. Plus, if the suspect is a breadwinner, his arrest can affect the family’s economic stability. Follow someone receiving treatment, and use the opportunity to report on their family members and CSA survivors, too. Steven Sawyer of Minnesota’s Project Pathfinder led a social marketing campaign aimed at preventing someone from abusing a child. During that project the St. Paul Pioneer Press ran an op-ed feature that profiled an offender’s family member, and a CSA survivor. “Stories like that tell the whole picture and give balance,” Sawyer said. “The offender and the survivor can learn something.” Use specific language. Prevention educators and therapists suspect that the word “predator” may promote the public’s inflated perception of stranger danger — and an assumption that a person’s behavior cannot be managed through specific interventions. Yet CSA often occurs becaus
