'Last week, my six-year-old was touched inappropriately by a boy at school. This isn't a one off.'

This story discusses child sexual assault and could be triggering for some readers. 

I am angry.
I am angry.
I am angry.

This has been the drumbeat of my heart and head for the past week. The first beat began in the car back from after-school care, where my daughter disclosed that a boy she knows from kindergarten had touched her inappropriately multiple times and then told her it was their secret. She told me she didn’t want that secret. Both children are six years old.

I am angry.
I am angry.
I am shattered.

I told her she was right to let me know and that I would work with the school to make sure it never happened again. I breathed in deep as the realisation hit that this was not a drill. I have been having conversations with my children since they could talk, spending hundreds of hours collectively on concepts of consent, bodily autonomy, and speaking up whenever uncomfortable. I have used the correct words for body parts to avoid any potential for shame. A foot, an arm, a penis, a vagina… the children know that all body parts can be discussed with respectful curiosity in our house.

Watch: René Michele on child sexual abuse. Story continues below.

I am angry.
I am angry.
I am incandescent.

Where were the conversations for this boy on consent, bodily autonomy, and speaking up when uncomfortable? How does a child of six know to act with such intent towards my daughter’s person, making sure he wasn’t seen and trying to cover it up afterwards by saying it was their secret? These feel like concepts well beyond his age. What secrets may his heart hold to be so knowledgeable of these concepts? What domestic scenes could his eyes have seen to think this was acceptable behaviour?

I am angry.
I am angry.
I am heartbroken.

In the car I flittered between shock and trying to work out the most supportive next step. My instinct told me to keep the conversation going, to not shut it down. She reached for me and I had to reach back in a steady and calm way. I fumbled about for the right tone, the right line to take, between empowering her and not making her feel like this is a big, horrible thing that happened to her. The drill conversations over the years have given way to a real fire. She acted beautifully, just as we had trained, and I realised it was my turn to enact my own emergency plans as the adult, as her mother.

I am angry.
I am angry.
I am hesitant.

I asked questions in the car that day, as gently and as neutrally as possible. Where were his hands? Did he touch you above or beneath your clothes? Was there anyone else around? Did you tell an educator? I mined for information with a view to helping the school to handle the incident but also as a way of gauging the depths of her upset. All the while, my mind raced on into the future - will this incident stick to her like a shadow? Will it morph into that feared big, horrible thing that happened to her when she was six years old - a constant throughline of anxiety in her life? Thankfully, my inner Mamma Bear overrode the internal panic: ‘You did the right thing, you did everything right sweetie. Thank you for sharing, I appreciate it may have been hard for you. You can talk to me about this whenever you need to or whenever you remember something else about today.’

I am angry.
I am angry.
I am overwhelmed.

Over the days that followed the initial conversation, I am dragged into further conversations with the school and the after-school organisation. Heavy conversations, weighed down with the weight of a mandatory reporting system kicked into action by my initial contact. Interim measures are put in place to keep the two children as physically separate as is possible while longer term measures are worked out. How long will any of these measures be in place? Will they one day be forgotten? Will I have to advocate at the start of each year to ensure these two children are not placed in the same class? If this becomes a big, horrible thing for her, how will I manage her having to learn in the same space as the boy that did this to her? The years ahead spread out like a complicated map I am yet able to read because its contours are still being printed. How can I even begin to navigate a map I am unable to read? At around this point, I started to look into how much an extra mortgage and placing her in an all-girls school would cost.

I am angry.
I am angry.
I am triggered.

The word ‘triggered’ is often referred to in the media with the same casual disdain given to ‘woke culture’. I was my daughter’s age when my own big, horrible thing happened to me with a boy known to the family while his brother looked on and laughed. So when my daughter blew the six candles out on her birthday cake, I was already triggered. Since the disclosure, my body has felt under attack as my own shadow roared back into view. I have spent much energy trying to keep it contained and my eye as steadily and objectively on the task at hand. I have dry-retched, looked down absent-mindedly to see my hands squeezing together like two pythons in a fight to the death, and I have cried many private tears. After meeting with the school principal, where I steeled myself to engage in constructive conversation, I physically doubled over as soon as I was out of eyesight - all breath and determination leaving my body. My daughter showed me, unprompted, what the boy did when I was getting her dressed one morning. She has spoken at random about it and cried her own tears. In those moments I have held her tight and kept the lines of conversation open, even when that means I have to suppress the need to throw up. Normalise but never minimise. Be concerned but not overly so. Keep walking that tightrope, let her guide your highwire act - for her sake.

I am angry.
I am angry.
I am angry.

This is not the first time I have had a conversation with the school about the behaviour of boys. Earlier this year, my daughter was approached in the playground by a boy a couple of years older than her. Unprovoked, he pushed her over and kicked her. This pattern continued, despite engaging with the school, with him telling her that she doesn’t belong and should die. My daughter asked why he was doing what he was doing and he said he was bored. When the school spoke directly to him, he returned the next day with his friends as reinforcement. His boredom was her terror. A friend with older children at the school told me she has to continually wash off drawings of cock and balls from her daughter's school bag.

I am left dumbfounded every time. Where do boys learn the ascendency of their wants over the needs of others to basic safety? Where do they learn to treat others as playthings, mere objects for their own amusement? And where does the trajectory head for such boys? At the Federal level, with the release of the new Plan to End Violence against Women and Children, we talk a big game about stopping it at the start. Well, this is the start and I don’t see it being stopped.

I am angry.
I am angry.
I am exhausted.

I know what happened to my daughter is not an aberration. The Personal Safety Survey puts the rate at 12 per cent of girls in Australia who have experienced sexual abuse or violence before the age of 15 years. My daughter and I are now both part of that statistic.

I had a visceral need to prevent this from happening from the moment I found out I was pregnant with a girl. I did my research and put into place everything I could to protect and arm her for the world outside our house. And this protective work was snatched away in an afternoon, in a collection of moments roughly sketched by her recollections. All I can do now is support her and advocate for measures to be put in place to protect her beyond the knowledge I have armed her with. I can only reassure her and hope any shadow cast that day does not extend too far into her life. Only time will tell how successful these endeavours will be.

I am angry.
I am angry.
I am angry.

Enough, Australia. Enough. We need more open conversations about respect, consent and bodily autonomy. We need to provide more space for children to speak up and be believed. We need a fundamental shift from response to prevention, starting with a greater funding emphasis in primary school on respectful relationships and consent education. And we need to stop talking about preventing violence against women and children and start talking about addressing the toxic masculinity that fuels that violence.

Only then can we ever hope to address these intractable cycles we find ourselves stuck in as a nation; the disrespect of women; the celebration of gendered violence among sections of society; the trolling of vocal women online; and the abysmal rate of domestic, family violence. It all comes back to the start, to what we learn as children. So please, let’s stop this at its source.

My daughter, your daughter, and all the daughters of Australia have a right to this – a life free from the long shadows of violence in their lives.

The author of this story is known to Mamamia but has chosen to remain anonymous for privacy reasons. The feature image used is a stock photo.

If this post brings up any issues for you, or if you just feel like you need to speak to someone, please call 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732) – the national sexual assault, domestic and family violence counselling service. It doesn’t matter where you live, they will take your call and, if need be, refer you to a service closer to home.

Feature Image: Getty

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