Our neighbors had a prowler last night. The mother of the female only household caught the prowler peering through the bedroom window of the teenage daughter. Mother yelled at him and sang out for the help of her neighbors. The prowler stayed. It took several attempts at calling for someone to ring the police before prowler got the hint that his behaviour was unacceptable.

Peeping Tom behavior is voyeurism. It is against the law. It is a form of sexual assault. Sexual abuse occurs on a continuum ranging from non-contact behaviors at one end (voyeurism, showing children pornography, and sexual comments) through to penetration by use of a penis, fingers or an object at the other end.

Many sexual predators escalate in their behaviors. Their excitement increases and their ability to delay their own twisted sexual gratification of a need for power decreases. Let us make no mistake here though. Sexual assault is not about sex. It is about power.

That the prowler was unaffected by being seen last night is a warning bell to me. Is his behavior at point of escalation? Has he been peering through that young girl’s window previously? Is he so unbothered by the threat of Police that he waits until last moment of departure? I do not know; I am not a sexual predator.

What I do know is that I am wild that people do these horrible things to children. Child safety is of the utmost importance to our sustainable future. Every thing that happens to our children affects our collective global future. If threats to child safety are on the rise then we are going to have a next generation of adults who make reactive choices based on their own childhood traumas.

Together we can end the sexual exploitation of our children. Ensuring our own children’s safety is paramount, to reach out and ensure the safety of a least one other child is a humane and socially responsible action. To care costs nothing. To not act protectively will cost us misery in our old age as we watch the unthinking decisions our once children make because they did not live in a world that valued them or their safety.

I will be wandering over to our neighbor today. I will let them know that we will be watching out for them. I will let them know that we care. I will let the girls know that we are a safe house and that if ever they need to run to us that they are not to hesitate. I will not whinge about how our community is not safe. I will instead be proactive in ensuring that other children in our neighborhood know that there are people willing to stand up for their basic human right to live a life free of abuse – including being safe from peeping Toms.

Child protection: serious business. What would you do if you caught someone looking into your daughter's bedroom window?

Saturday, November 25 is the International Day of the Elimination of Violence Against Women. Perpetrators of violence against women, give up. Today is the day of surrender.

White ribbons will today fly across the globe to symbolize that every day men, men like you or your husbands, have taken a pledge to no longer stay silent when they see violence occurring. The men who choose to don a white ribbon on their lapel do so as a personal pledge not to commit, condone or remain silent about violence against women and children.

Go you men. It is about time you found the testicles to stand up and say, “We cannot treat women and children like this.” Granted, some women perpetrate domestic violence against their spouses and many more women perpetrate violence against their children. However, the statistics overwhelmingly support that domestic violence is a gendered crime: a crime perpetrated by men against women and children.

To violence against women, Australia definitely says no. The power of White Ribbon Day has been harnessed by Australian men in an unprecedented act of responsibility, conciliation and empowerment for their own men’s movement. Whether it is our violent convict past, our violent atrocities against our Indigenous peoples or our brutal life of surviving the elements, violence against women and children in Australia has gone on for far too long and it has to stop.

Australia’s favorite daughter, actress Nicole Kidman, is UNIFEM’s Goodwill Ambassador. Her high profile and gentle nature has become the face of non-violent Australia. Her commitment to UNIFEM makes her my new heroine. Thanks Nic, you are a great Aussie woman.

Have a white day everyone: clothes, ribbons, white noise or white goods. May your thoughts today fly to ending violence against women and children. Surrender to your sense of right and wrong. It’s easy, always choose the white thing to do.

A colleague asked me to provide a list of famous and high profile people who are survivors of sexual abuse. The idea is to help remove the toxic shame that a group of Australian Indigenous young women are living with because of what a sexual perpetrator had done to them. By providing newsworthy people as examples, my colleague aims to lessen the isolation and empower her young clients to move on with their lives.

My list contained only a handful of several high profile women and no men:

Oprah Winfrey (the Queen herself).

Maya Angelou (poet extraordinaire).

Kelli McGillis (Top Gun, Witness).

Terry Hatcher (Desperate Housewives).

Debra Byrne (Australian Singer, Young Talent Time).

A Google search did little to assist. Do you know of anyone else? The secrecy and shame of sexual assault needs to be broken. Children are growing up thinking there is something wrong with them. There is no shame in being a survivor. There is, however, shame in being a sexual predator. The more we talk and share, the greater the light will shine on the amazing successes of people affected by sexual abuse and the greater the shadow cast on those who dare to use sex as a tactic of power and control.

If you know of any high profile men or women who have lived with rape or sexual abuse, please leave their name, and a link, so I can pass it to my colleague.

Deputy Chief Magistrate Brian Hine (Brisbane, Queensland, Australia) has shone his spot light right into the eyes of an Indian tourist wanting to migrate to Australia. The tourist is charged, and refused bail, for allegedly sexually assaulting a young mother, walking in a Brisbane park with her children, and (the following day in the same park) a 15-year-old school girl. In addition to the sexual assaults, the 26 year old, male, Indian tourist allegedly pretended to be a police officer.

Magistrate Hine has taken a tough line on predatory sexual behaviour and I congratulate him. The indicators of future sexual risk are prevalent in the Brisbane based tourist’s reported behavior. Until our communities take a strong stand against sexual predators, sexual assaults will continue. To prey sexually on adults is horrific, but to prey on children is despicable, abhorrent and worthy of the most severe penalties.

If the Indian tourist is found guilty, I can only hope that his application for migration to Australia is not considered. Now…where can we send all the resident Australian sex offenders off to should they ever again offend? Oh, hang on, didn’t they send them all to Australia once upon a time? Is that why Australia was called a penal settlement?

Thank you Magistrate Hine. May other’s now follow your precedent.

Psychosocial assessments are an integral part of my job. I frequently receive calls from both practioners and students asking for assessment frameworks, particularly in relation to a family’s capacity to act protectively. Therefore, I offer my preferred model publicly for you to use.

Risk assessment: Capacity to protect is a risk assessment of a parent’s ability to keep their child safe. When assessing risk I use a four score system designed by my psychologist colleague, Nick Rayner. The system contains the elements of, Acknowledgement, Acceptance, Adjustment and Accommodation. The risk will contain measures of low, medium and high-risk areas. Risk factors within each of the four “A” elements will be either static (fixed) or dynamic (change over time).

Acknowledgement includes the parties being able to objectively view their familial patterns from an external viewpoint. If an entity is unable to acknowledge a difficulty within a situational context then this suggests not only a closed system but also an inability to affect the following elements within the four score assessment.