The first six or seven years of a child are considered very crucial years because during those years a child’s personalities will be shaped and marked for life.

That means, raising a child in a safe and healthy environment can impact the child’s mental, emotional, physical and most importantly sexual health in a positive way. And the opposite can be true if the child grows in a not safe and healthy environment.

So, it is the sole responsibility of parents (mainly, mothers) to protect their children during this informative years which are the first six to seven years of a child’s life. When this awareness is absent among a society, little kids will be victims of sexual crimes, the impact of which follows them through adulthood and further.

In developing countries, or among immigrants who have migrated from developing countries and live in the western world, it is very common to find little girls and boys who had been sexually violated at early age by older men and women. As an immigrant person, working among immigrants who have migrated from Ethiopian and Eritrea, this is the story that I come across often.

We need to fight this!

We first need to be aware of this fact and we, parents, need to be willing to do everything we can to protect our little ones from sexual predators who are among our community and who look like us, our relatives, friends, neighbors and anybody that we may not even think and imagine that they would do such a thing.

Church ministers or “anointed” people are not immune from this.

And those who had been sexually violated as a child should seek help because usually the same people who had been sexually violated by others as a child tend to be the ones who turn around and prey on others or destroy their own lives by all kinds of risky sexual practices. ///