Safe Connections

Scared about sexting? Online predators? Date rape? Child sexual abuse expert Sandy Wurtele s second book on abuse and exploitation explains how children approaching puberty and those in their early teens may be vulnerable, and she provides valuable recommendations for parents and other adults who want to keep kids safe. Ideal for safety curricula in schools and homes, this book also discusses how to ensure your child is not becoming an abuser and how to help adolescents who have been exploited.

Sexual abuse of children was just a dirty little secret when Sandy Wurtele was growing up in small town Nebraska. After a B.A. at the University of Nebraska, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in clinical psychology at the University of Alabama, Wurtele found herself in 1983 teaching at Washington State University, where she found that a behavioral skills training program was more effective in teaching kids about sexual abuse prevention than a film on the subject. Working with elementary schools in two nearby towns, Wurtele began evaluating different ways of teaching school-age children to recognize and resist inappropriate requests. In 1988, she moved to the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, where she offered programs on body safety to parents and children at local preschools and in Head Start classrooms. While at UCCS, Wurtele has also been able to survey hundreds of molesters to determine what childhood experiences can prompt sexually offending behavior and has learned how offenders typically groom children. Wurtele is also author of In Harm's Way: A Parent s Guide to Protecting Young Children from Sexual Abuse, also available from Parenting Press.