Raising awareness for the need of child protection

Thirty brothers took part in a workshop on child protection in Mar de Plata, Argentina, from Jan. 13 – 16 to become more sensitive to the reality of abuse, the complicated underlying dynamics and to comprehend better the victim’s perspective and understand their silence.  

The psychologist María Paz Ábalos led the seminar, titled “Affectivity and policies to protect and care for children and youth,” with topics such as “sexuality as a dynamic force and in permanent process of humanization.” 

Another issue that was covered was “the process of incest: the seduction phase, phase of sexual abusive interaction, secrets, disclosure, repressive phase, the process of vampirism, pedophilia, the courage to heal: keys for psycho-spiritual accompaniment and protocols in context of prevention policies.” 

According to the Provincial of Cruz del Sur, Br Alberto Aparicio, the workshop aimed at showing the brothers the subsequent need for “words” in the process of their (the victim’s) human growth. 

It also aimed at approaching the world of the perpetrator and of others involved, as well as a looking at prevention policies, child abuse treatment, respective protocol and the approach to potential key accompaniment.   

“In the evaluation, we valued a lot the information we received and becoming aware of the problem,” he told the general house press office on Jan. 21.  

“Big challenges still need to be implemented: an increased awareness level of each of the participating regions and mainly to put ourselves in the place of the victim and not only in an institutional way, since we have had so many mistakes throughout history,” he stated.