I was reading an article somewhere about a boy who was egged on by his mates to kiss a girl he liked in the playground – he has now been charged with sexual assault. I despair. I truly do. Is this what we have turned out world into – a harmless childhood kiss called sexual assault? When men live in fear of offering a hug to a fellow worker when upset in case they are charged with sexual assault? Don’t get me wrong, there are certain actions that are most definitely NOT okay for either sex to do. However, in some instances – like when the boy kissed the girl, she can turn to him and say ‘please don’t do that again’ and if he goes for another kiss, then that is not OK. If you work with someone and they touch you in a way that makes you uncomfortable say so. Everyone is different and some men may have been brought up to put an arm around a woman’s shoulder to offer comfort, if it makes her uncomfortable then she should say so, you don’t just slap them with a sexual assault charge.
Again, it can be a murky kind of topic but a harmless kiss by kids in the playground is different to someone putting their hand up your dress. I think we as parents need to teach our daughters that it is alright to say ‘don’t do that’ and we teach our sons that when a female says that, then you stop doing it. But I feel we also need to teach our children the difference between sexual assault and someone offering comfort – again, if it makes the person receiving the comfort uncomfortable then they are to say something.
I think it is a very sad world where we have when male teachers aren’t able to offer an innocent child a hug to comfort them for fear of being labelled a pedophile.
What have we done? What have we become that a beautiful caring gesture and the innocence of childhood has been tarnished with parents charging a boy with sexual assault?
We need to teach our children to respect each other but to have fun, to keep their innocence for as long as they can, let them enjoy their childhood, it’s precious and they don’t have it for long.