For years I labored under the illusion that child sexual abuse was rare and that the victims could find help, even if their parents were indifferent or the abusers.

Wrong and wrong.

More than half of all children are victims of sexual assault before they reach the age of 18.

Most if not all of us have known and/or been groomed by a sexual predator.

And yet…

The pressure to not talk about the known sexual predators among us is so strong that I frequently write posts and then refrain from publishing them.

I am an old woman and a mouthy one at that, but I have been told explicitly to shut up and shunned implicitly for speaking out against child sexual abuse.

The pressuring is convincing and effacing.

Imagine what it would do to a child.