Talking About the Unthinkable

The single most effective thing a parent can do doesn’t involve a stranger-danger talk or a checklist. It involves the everyday atmosphere inside your home — whether children feel free to say hard things out loud.

Matt Long, partner at Long & Simmons Law and former prosecutor, described his family’s guiding rule: “Everyone in the home gets to think their thoughts, feel their feelings, and talk about the thoughts they think and the feelings they feel.” That principle, established early and consistently, is foundational.

The prevailing myth is that a child who was abused would come forward immediately. Experts are unanimous: this is almost never true. Understanding the real reasons for silence is essential before you can address them.

The Long & Simmons Law investigation team identified a cluster of overlapping reasons children stay silent:

– Shame and internalized guilt — Children often absorb a false belief that they are broken, bad, or responsible for what happened to them.
– No language for it — Very young children may not have the cognitive or verbal tools to understand or describe what is occurring.
– Love for the abuser — When the offender is a trusted adult, children frequently don’t want to “get them in trouble.” They want the abuse to stop, not the relationship.
– Fear of not being believed — Children anticipate the reaction of disbelief, anger, or blame — and that fear is often accurate based on what they have observed.
– In-plain-sight abuse — When abuse happens with others present (e.g., under a blanket at a family gathering), children reason that “everyone should already know” and feel even more helpless.
– Complexity of the relationship — Abusers often provide genuine care, gifts, and emotional support. Children struggle to reconcile the good and the harm in the same person.

The word “grooming” has become common, but its clinical meaning is specific: it is the systematic erosion of a child’s sexual boundaries, usually over time, to enable abuse and prevent disclosure.

Importantly, grooming targets adults as much as children. Offenders build trust with parents, families, faith communities, and coaches — because that trust is what earns them access and protects them from accusation.

– Being unusually available and helpful to a family — offering rides, childcare, financial support, filling voids.
– Establishing a “special” relationship with a child, marked by preferential treatment, secrets, or gifts.
– Gradually introducing sexual jokes, images, or topics to normalize them before physical contact begins.
– Seeking unsupervised, one-on-one time with a child.
– Using games or distracting group activities as cover for inappropriate contact (“look away” tactics).
– Doing overt acts of abuse in front of others — normalizing it for everyone present.

CSA is not only a psychological event. The Long & Simmons Law investigation team discussed at length how it is also a physical, neurological, and what one described as a spiritual injury — one that reshapes a child’s sense of self, their capacity for trust, and their relationship to their own body.

Children who carry the weight of undisclosed abuse frequently experience digestive problems, chronic pain, increased rates of ADHD diagnoses, anxiety masked as medical complaints, and nervous system dysregulation. These are not “acting out” — they are the body’s honest report of what the mind cannot yet say.

One of the most important points raised by Kristin Long: there is no behavioral profile for a child being abused. One child becomes severely dysregulated. Another becomes the model student — perfectionism as armor, performing wellness to avoid scrutiny.

The Long & Simmons Law team were direct: the most common adult response to a child’s disclosure is the wrong one. Anger, interrogation, visible distress, or expressions of disbelief — even well-intentioned — can shut a child down and cause lasting damage.

How you respond in the first five minutes matters enormously.

– Stay calm. Your reaction is the data the child is using to decide whether to continue.
– Believe them — or at minimum, tell them you believe them. Doubt can wait; connection cannot.
– Do not ask leading questions. Ask open ones: “Tell me more about that.”
– Do not promise to keep it secret. Tell them: “I may need to tell someone who can help keep you safe.”
– Do not confront the alleged abuser yourself — this can endanger the child and compromise investigation.
– Contact a professional: your local child advocacy center, a forensic interviewer, or law enforcement.
– Expect piecemeal disclosure. Children rarely tell everything at once.

The Long & Simmons Law team gave particular attention to faith-based contexts — and the ways religious environments can, unintentionally, deepen the harm of CSA.

Concepts of sin, purity, and bodily shame can become vehicles for a child’s internalized false narrative: this happened to me because I am bad.

Prevention policies are designed for rule-following adults. They don’t stop determined predators. What stops harm — or at minimum, what ends it sooner and heals it better — is a child who knows they have a safe adult to tell.

You cannot guarantee your child’s world is without danger. You can guarantee that when something happens — confusion, a boundary crossed, something that didn’t feel right — they will come to you first.

– RAINN National Sexual Assault Hotline: 1-800-656-4673 | rainn.org
– Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline: 1-800-422-4453
– National Children’s Alliance (find a local CAC): nationalchildrensalliance.org
– Stop It Now! (prevention resources for parents): stopitnow.org
– Darkness to Light (Stewards of Children training): d2l.org