Parent's Ignorance And Arrogance Major Causes Of Child Sexual Abuse - Praise Fowowe

Parent’s Ignorance And Arrogance Major Causes Of Child Sexual Abuse – Praise Fowowe

Principal Consultant At Centre For Sex Education And Family Life, Mr. Praise Fowowe, in an interview with our correspondent Bisi Oludare, spoke extensively on child sexual abuse. Excerpts:

What is responsible for child sexual abuse?

A number of factors are responsible and it is not new, it has been here with us forever it is just that the new thing is the advent of social media. The cases of abuse are not the same. Many of the adults we have today were at one point or the other abused but basically because nothing was done, the abusers prey on other vulnerable people.

With the advent of the internet, pornography has become very easy to access and there are loads of pornographic sites, a lot of sites for bizarre sexual practices and pervasions and largest users of the internet are young people

Recently, there is a station on youtube called THE REALNOLLY it is pure pornography and whenever they show any of their movies they get thousands and millions of views. These are Nigerian made movies and you can be sure it is not foreigners that are consuming these contents but Nigerians

The causes of child sexual abuse cannot be narrowed down but a lot of things are responsible. I’ve handled different cases and different things have been responsible.

Can we say the advent of social media is a major cause?

I can’t blame it on social media because social media is not a person but it is just a platform. What becomes of that platform is dependent on the users. Social media is only a magnifier of who you are so without social media people will still do what they want to do. What we see on social media, for example, is a reflection of who we are.

Social media have not changed us, we are the one who has changed social media because there are people who have used social media to make money and do businesses. Whatever you do on social media is your choice and I think social media is only bringing to fore what have been hidden.

Someone who is cheating on his wife and says it is social media that is a big NO. social media is just the magnifier of your strengths and weaknesses

Are the parents doing enough in taking care of their children?

Parents are not doing enough as far as I’m concerned. They are ignorant but are not ready to accept it.

Our organization is running child power challenge but parents are not committed to it. They think their children are okay.

The priorities of the parents are wrong and there is so much arrogance in them. Religion hasn’t helped. We have seen people say by covering a child with the blood of Jesus he becomes immune to child sexual abuse not knowing that the strength of the predator is the fact that your child is ignorant.

They use their ignorance to prey on them and so with this wrong belief of parents, there is little to nothing about what one can do. The level of awareness is very low. The level of exposure is low for parents and our culture and tradition isn’t helping

Are you now saying the religious organizations haven’t helped in any way, what are the churches doing?

Religion isn’t helping, it has affected negatively. I have worked with a lot of churches for free and there is much arrogance about what some Pastors think they know.

A Pastor that doesn’t even know anything about child development will begin to argue with you from the scriptures and children have been abused that were taken to the mountain for deliverance. I tell you, that in itself is abuse.

When we live in an environment where there is no respect for professionalism, that arrogance will create more problems

An average Nigerian listen more to their religious leader than any professional.

In fairness, there are few churches that have embraced child sexuality education, child protection system and we must doff our heart for churches like that who have enlightened Pastors. Few schools have also embraced it.

A lot of churches are not willing to create a budget for children; they rather spend money on things that are not really important, and on excesses. Because we run training, we have taken proposals to churches in many cases and they just tell us the bible is good enough. We hope that someday their eyes will be opened

As an authority in this area, what do you think parents can do especially when Children are not even opening up?

Children will never open up to their parents because the truth is if you have not been talking to your children about sexuality, the child will not open up to you about the abuse.

We say that prevention is better than cure, empowerment is superior to enforcement. So if the parent can humble themselves to get materials that can empower their children against the predator, no child will be sexually abused

I usually take my children and their friends every Friday on sexuality education and I have other parents doing this with us in their houses.

At the end of the day, you cannot blame the church or the government. At the end of the day, your family is a nation. If we each take responsibility for our children and their friends, we will naturally break the back of the predators. It boils down to us

There are professionals that can help. There are quite a number of organizations that can help. Take your child to professionals that can help as against keeping things to yourself or telling your friends.

Parents need to take responsibility for their lives first and their children will be better for it

Children are presently on holiday is there anything for them like a boot camp?

We have quite a number of programmes for children and we have many professionals who can take them.

There are boot camps and child safety systems. Some are online while there are some offline. But if they get in touch with us, we can help.

Are the programmes free or they are budget friendly?

We no longer do free but they are budget friendly. We have done free programmes in the last ten years but things changed due to the attitudes of parents.

We realised these same parents travel out for summer and we are not a church or government but an organization.

I think empowering the parents is more critical because from experience some parents are abused but pretend all is well.

Our programmes are actually affordable, cheap enough for any parent to afford. We have child power which prepares your child from 18years. The class takes place once a week for a year and it is three thousand naira (#3,000) for a month. Some parents still say it is expensive. We train and the fee includes books, they download audios files and all

What will be your general advice to parents and the church?

My advice is simple, you can’t follow your child to everywhere he goes during this holiday, but you need to empower your child against predators because predators are everywhere. Statistics now show that more children molest other children. Empower them, be their friend so that your children can be accountable to you. Whenever you see anything strange, don’t shout rather get help

When a child is empowered it becomes impossible for the predator to molest the child and there are ways to this. We have an age-appropriate education that empowers your child against the predator.

It is now the responsibility of parents to humble themselves and learn what works.

Parent’s Ignorance And Arrogance A Major Cause Of Child Sexual Abuse – Praise Fowowe