Author Archives: Megan Bayliss

Was Sexual Violence Awareness Month Successful at Families.com?

As Sexual Violence Awareness Month in Queensland draws to month’s end, so too does my incessant blogging on focused issues of a sexually abusive nature. Despite this culmination of focus, I urge you all to stay vigilant and conscious of predators and their sneaky ways of operating. You may recall in The Grooming Process of a Child Sexual Predator, I highlighted that “Darkness to Light suggests that an average serial perpetrator may abuse 400 children in a lifetime”. This equates to an extremely high number of children at risk of being abused in future. None of us can be lulled … Continue reading →

Birthday Party Anxiety

In my 24 years of parenting I have anecdotally confirmed that many parents suffer from Birthday Party Performance Anxiety. I include myself in the anecodotal research. The thought of throwing a birthday party fills me with fits of condemnation over my housekeeping, cooking and organizational skills. I hate housework, I love cooking when I don’t have to do it or clean up after myself, and I hate having to focus on 27 million screaming children who all want the first prize for a game of “Pin the wart on the witch”. Exaggerating I am, but you get the drift I’m … Continue reading →

Tips to Help Your Child re-Handle a Violent Conflict

Nonviolent Conflict Solving is necessary if we choose to instill peaceful values into our children. Given the degree of anger and violence in society, children may need to know, as early as possible, how to handle disagreements with each other without letting their anger get out of control, and without using violence. As they develop physically and cognitively, children can be helped to use the conflict-solving methods that worked for them in their early childhood days to problem solve around the more complicated problems that appear in adolescence. We’re not violent so why should we teach this to our children? … Continue reading →

Attitudes Portray that Rapists Can’t Control Urges

A recent study of 2000 Victorian (Australia) adults supports that ALMOST two in five people think that men who rape do so because they can’t control their urges. The Violence Against Women Community Attitudes Project also discovered that one in four people believe domestic violence is acceptable as long as the perpetrator genuinely regrets it afterwards. Is it any wonder then that one in five women will experience intimate partner violence in their relationship? Chief Executive Officer of VicHealth, Dr Rob Moodie, sadly stated that the attitudinal figures showed negative attitudes that cause harm to women are still prevalent in … Continue reading →

Outrage at the Raping Comments of an Islamic Cleric

Opposing secular, spiritual and political groups have today joined together in their outrage against the raping comments of an Australian Islamic cleric. In a Ramadan sermon, Sheik Taj al-Din al-Hilaly, reportedly compared “women who wore make-up and dressed immodestly to meat that attracted cats.” The Australian, (Australia’s major national newspaper) quoted the cleric as saying, “If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside on the street, or in the garden or in the park, or in the backyard without a cover, and the cats come and eat it … whose fault is it, the cats or the uncovered … Continue reading →

Topical Whensday: When will you help a child with HIV/AIDS?

Worldwide, 2.7 million children are infected with HIV. According to The Child Health Site, 2,000 children are infected EVERY DAY with the incurable infection. Total world HIV population has now grossed at more than 40 million people. Since the beginning of the HIV epidemic, approximately five million children have died from AIDS worldwide. In 2001, 800,000 children were newly infected with AIDS and 580,000 children died from AIDS. In 2001, more than 6,000 young people worldwide aged 15-24 became infected with HIV every day. That’s about four every minute: 50% of all new HIV infections acquired after infancy. In the … Continue reading →

A Developing Recipe for a Slice of Change

Due to personal reasons, I’ve been up since 1.15 this morning. My morning (work hours) consisted of three interviews with people affected by child sexual assault. I returned to my office to 6 calls waiting for me. Two were from the Criminal Investigation Bureau about historical sexual assault cases I’ve had involvement with over the years, one was from a Child Care Centre wanting some Protective Behavior Training, one was from the tax office (oh cringe – how I didn’t want to ring them back!) and two were from existing clients. Even the tax office was sexual assault related because … Continue reading →

For One in Three Children, the Sun Does Not Shine Every Day.

Many years ago, as a young single mother and her two children happily walked the neighborhood streets, they would practice the Japanese they were all learning. “Ichi, Ni, San, Shi, Go,” they would count together as they reached every fifth house on the street. “One, two, three, four, five.” The little girl had trouble remembering the Japanese word for “five”. Searching for something that had reason, the mother desperately tried to find a way to make “Go” stay in her daughter’s mind. A family committed to ending child abuse, the mother used a figure that had meaning to their social … Continue reading →

The NET worth of a sexual predator.

Sexual predators defraud where ever and when ever they can. Like trolls prettied up as princes, they permeate every part of society and pick their targets from where ever they can access them: including the internet. They know no class or gender bounds; they instead pick anyone who falls for their fraudulent and cowardly manipulation. Their net casts over us all, yes, even those members on families.com. Be careful, be warned, be vigilant of whom you share personal information with. I have already had a dubious contact through families.com. It was dealt with, the person banned immediately, and there has … Continue reading →

Disclosures of Sexual Assaults often lead to Dissociation

When somebody makes a public disclosure of a previously private abuse they are indeed extremely brave. A multitude of fears run through their mind and body: will I be believed, will I be blamed, will I be in trouble. These faulty cognitions are the result of societal constraints of allowing people to tell the truth and the powerful dynamic of control that predators use against a victim, even many, many years following the abuse. Following a disclosure, a victim frequently feels re-victimized and they are hypersensitive to other’s reactions. When support networks say nothing, it can leave the victim second-guessing … Continue reading →