Catholic Church Recruits Police Child Protection Officer to Teach Kids to Identify Sex Abusers

By Kim Macdonald
PerthNow
April 1, 2018

https://www.perthnow.com.au/news/perth/catholic-church-recruits-police-child-protection-officer-to-teach-kids-to-identify-sex-abusers-ng-b88792215z

CATHOLIC youngsters are being taught to identify grooming by sex abusers by a child protection veteran who claims most children have no idea when it is happening, even if confronted with pornography.

Andrea Musulin, who worked in the police child protection unit for three decades before being recruited by the Catholic Church to run its Safeguarding program, said most children were uneducated about paedophilia.

In the wake of the Catholic sex abuse scandal, a new guide written by Ms Musulin is being used by the Church to help children identify when they are in unsafe situations.

The book urges children to tell adults when someone looks at obscene images in their presence, plays games involving genitalia, or asks them to keep secrets.

“Historically we have not taught children about sex education and children’s knowledge ... is limited to non-existent,” Ms Musulin said.

“But a six-year-old knows about stealing, and because there is knowledge they have a resistance.

“What we know is when child sex offenders engage children in sexual activity, quite often it will be posed as a game, and before the game — to normalise the behaviour and to normalise the game for the child — they will show them child pornography images. At that point, if we taught children about pictures of private parts they could probably have a better chance of preventing the abuse.”

Figures show an increase in the rate of WA children receiving protection services for sexual and other types of abuse, from 24 per 1000 children in 2012-13 to 25.9 per 1000 in 2016-17.

The Australian Institute of Family Studies said that in 2016 one in four girls and one in six boys experienced some form of sexual abuse before they turned 18.

The Bureau of Criminal Intelligence estimates that 40,000 children are sexually abused each year.

Ms Musulin said parents often failed to see the red flags, even when confronted with evidence. This could be wanting to protect someone or being unable to accept that something so traumatic had happened to their child.