Yakima Herald reports:

As Yakima Valley parents struggle with news that a popular youth coach faces charges of sexually assaulting one of his players, a mental health counselor said they should maintain communication with their children.

“We should always be involved with our kids in whatever they are doing — school, sports, visiting their little friends. I think it’s better to keep those lines of communication with your children, their friends, than not,” said Mary O’Brien, clinical service manager for the Yakima Valley Farmworkers Clinic’s behavioral services unit in Yakima.

[…] O’Brien said that besides talking to their children, parents should watch for changes in behavior patterns — not talking, eating or sleeping or being unusually sad, for example. Those signs indicate that the child may have been involved in some sort of trauma, including sexual assault.

[…] Counselors also say that victims or parents should not feel any shame associated with sexual assault. [ends]

We need to be aware of the importance of keeping our children fully informed of the incidence of sexual abuse that they can face and how they can communicate with parents when faced with such instances. This is real and should not be discarded as something that happens in foreign lands. Yet, there is no training for parents who need that, in our country.