The topic of this video is what to do if your child has been sexually abused. Now, if you’re watching this video, you probably have had some type of issue with your child, uh, coming across either a Predator or sexual abuser. And I’m sorry this is a very serious conversation and I hope that no child experiences the trauma of sexual abuse.
But it happens now in my 20 years of practicing law, I do also criminal defense and, uh, injury work and premises liability claims. I’ve seen it all and there are evil people out there. Uh, so these types of situations happen. So this video is set up in a manner so that it’ll at least give you some steps to take if in fact your child, God forbid, has been sexually abused. So first always report it to the police. If your child has told you that someone has touched them, whether it’s another child, whether it’s a teacher or a supervisor, or even a relative, have it reported to the police. Let the police do their job, investigate it and make a decision whether a crime has been committed. Don’t do it on your own. Don’t go out and confront the person, let the police handle it. They have experienced most of the police departments, especially in Pinellas County, in Saint Petersburg, they have specialized sex abuse, uh, divisions of law enforcement.
They know what they’re doing because after the, the incident has been reported to law enforcement and you then opens up perhaps two arenas, a first would be a criminal arena where the perpetrator would be punished. And in that arena it is possible for you to recover restitution on behalf of your child to repay whatever type of medical expenses when we’ve had to have the child checked out at hospital or even counseling. So you’ve got the, the criminal restitution. And then what I would handle a, if retained to handle a sexual abuse case is the civil case, the civil claims against perhaps the business the person was working at the daycare center. Um, whatever the case may be, uh, that is then a civil claim for compensation. Now when I am retained by a family whose child has been abused, there are one of the next steps is to send them off for some type of psychological counseling. Most of the time, I guess practically every time a child needs to speak to someone, whether they’ve experienced a PTSD or any type of anxiety or other psychological effects of the abuse, they need to get checked out. And there are treatment facilities here in Saint Petersburg in particular, that specialize in treating victims, especially child victims of sexual abuse. So we do know the right facilities to the children to, uh, and these facilities have historically obtained, um, you know, very good results and working with the children. So hopefully this situation did not occur and you were simply watching this video for informational purposes, but if an abuse did occur, hopefully this video would have given you some guidance as to your next steps.
*The above has been transcribed by a third party service and has not been checked for accuracy.
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