The words of an abstinent pedophile’s girlfriend

We publish here the touching testimony of one of the thousands of pedophiles’ girlfriends, spouses, companions, who contact us to better understand their loved one and help him cope with his troubles. In a world more and more engorged with cynicism and indifference, it is primordial to remember that love exists and it can conquer the worst obstacles.

 

Hello Latifa,

Thank you for last week phone call and for your time. I had called to gain a better understanding so I could give the best support to my companion suffering because of his pedophile tendencies.

Going through your site and also during my own reflections and researches, it seemed more and more obvious to me that I had to support your work from my standpoint: that of a member of the intimate social circle of a pedophile person.

I will therefore offer my testimony, anonimously at first as my companion isn’t yet ready to perfom what we might call his “coming-out”.

How could he, in a society that doesn’t accept neither different sexualities or deviances, or even mental health issues? In this moralizing, rule-imposing, homophobic, misogynistic, psychophobic (and I’m biting my tongue) environment where there is no place for people outside the norm?

And yet my companion is beyond the norm. Not just because of his tendencies. He is because of his extraordinary intelligence, sensitivity and open mind.

His sexuality is what it is, because it is beyond him.

Did you choose, ladies and gentlemen, your heterosexuality? Did you know that homosexuality isn’t registered in the DSM and so it isn’t considered a pathology anymore?

I know that pedophilia and other paraphilias, on the other hand, are. But what makes my companion sick, his sexuality or the fact he can’t actually live it?

It’s from the impossibility of living this aspect of his sexuality that the suffering emerges. Partly because of the huge emotional and sexual frustration abstinence causes, and also from the sensation of not being able of being himself.

You read correctly: abstinence. For life. As my companion is a pedophile, not a pedosexual. Which means he forbids himself from acting out. He knows, thanks to his afore-mentioned qualities, that children aren’t wired for relationships with adults, and how much those can be destructive to them.

To quote him, he’d rather slit his wrists than act out.

Often a pedophile can truly love children. I know, that irks you. And when he loves them, destroying them would mean destroying himself.

Educate yourself. The more informed you’ll be, the less you’ll harbor prejudice. You will then be more capable to protect and inform your children. With less prejudice, you allow pedophiles to exist without being marginalized and isolated. Existing means being regarded as a human being, with its strength and weakness. It means sharing and finding the resources necessary to get help.

My companion isn’t just a pedophile. That is only a part of his sexuality and his emotional life (yes, he has feelings…). He isn’t a pedosexual. He isn’t a psychopath nor a pervert.

Why is there a hotline for abused childs but not for sexually troubled adults? There aren’t any real structures to support and counsel abstinent pedophiles. All the effort is always only about re-offending.

We wait for the fall of the adult and often of the victim as well, before providing help. To destroy the presumed pervert we created an even more perverse system…

Will we act now or will we wait for more suicides and rapes?

Thank you for reading,

The girlfriend of an abstinent pedophile

A criminal psychologist says pedophilia is a sexual orientation

As you may have read elsewhere on this site, here at the Blue Angel we have often observed that pedophilia (the sexual attraction toward pre-pubescent children) functions as a deviant sexual orientation. Of course, pedosexuality (performing sexual acts with children) isn’t necessarily linked to pedophilia nor indeed to any other orientation, but rather to other issues like incest, hypersexuality, a wish for domination or even merely favorable circumstances. » Read more

A father of three addicted to child pornography

You can read here an e-mail received by Mrs Bennari from the USA. Once again, we see how the lack of structures for support and counseling abandons people who struggle with pedophile desires (in real life or online) to themselves, alone with their pain and their secret. Many won’t be able to resist becoming sex offenders (in real life or virtually) alone.

I’m happy to discover your website and your work.

I’m from Europe originally, I married with an american woman and I now live in X, USA. I feel involved in the use of child pornography. Despite all the repressive measures in place here and the risk of being caught by the police, I can’t stop even though I tried many times. I don’t have any problems or desires with children in real life, even when I’m alone with them. I see a lot of myself in some testimonies of abstinent pedophiles. And yet I have three children I love and I’m just a good father for them and nothing more. I love and desire my wife, but that doesn’t stop me from diving again in this digital hell, knowing all too well that the children behind the scenes aren’t actors but real victims.

I discovered adult pornography when I was 12, in magazines hidden in my big brother’s bedroom. I watched them rarely at first, but little by little it became like a drug, and after a while, watching and looking for new stuff, I discovered child pornography at 18, and I felt like I was 12 again with my brother’s magazines, with the same arousal and excitement.

When I met my wife, I thougth this need would disappear but I was wrong. I tried to be reasonable and stay clear of websites with children, but I felt stronger urges in that direction. I started sweating heavily during the night, to the point that my wife worried about my health. She was miles away from imagining that I was in real need for a specific help and that if an association like yours had existed already I wouldn’t have gotten to this point of addiction.

Reading your website and all the news articles telling about your work, I found new hope. I’m ready to get help and, if necessary, I will come to France to participate in your dialogue groups. I read that the Blue Angel in the USA isn’t operational yet, do you know when it will open? I think America should develop your work as it perfectly matches the needs of thousands of pedophiles who are abstinent but use child pornography.

I don’t understand why these sites exist, why they are so easily accessible and why the producers and publishers aren’t prosecuted.

Thank you and bravo for what you do, and most of all please continue and transmit this wonderful and admirable work. I also saw that you published a book and I wait for its american release with impatience.

G

Trailer of “Falling Prey”, a movie about abstinent pedophilia

David Guiraud published the trailer of his movie about abstinent pedophilia, “Falling Prey”, written with the help of Mrs Bennari and the Blue Angel Association.

We remind you that this movie was crowdfunded on kickstarter and we give our thanks once more to all of those among you that supported it : )

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The Pariahs of Miami Beach

The Pariahs of Miami Beach

By Philippe Coste, originally published on 10/29/2009 by the Express Magazine (France)

The law of a county in Florida forces pedophiles released from prison to live under a bridge, in a camp with no water and no electricity. A purgatory-slum where these outcasts have practically no chance of reinsertion.

An afro-american man, a mobile phone to his ear and pulling a trolley, walks under the bridge at the Julia Tuttle Causeway. In the space between the bottom of the bridge and the top of its cement base, tents have been put in place. The ground is dirty and the cement covered in graffitis.
A convicted sex offender arrives at his tent camp under the Julia Tuttle causeway bridge in Miami, Florida February 4, 2008. (photos by REUBENS/C.Barria)

Even cops, their worst enemies, advise you to go check it out in the evening, at curfew around 22 hours when the pariahs of America go to sleep in the middle of the bay. You still have to manage to find them under the Julia Tuttle Causeway.

In daytime, at the edge of the huge highway traversing Biscayne Bay, between Miami and the beaches of Miami Beach, thousands of people driving their cars spots the oddly out of place laundry drying near the palm trees. In the evening, despite the neons lights dancing on the far out coastline, the six lanes float on a darkening void. Lacking any bearings, we drive at walking pace so we won’t miss the entry point to a muddy maintenance road that plunges under one of the bridges. It’s there.

» Read more

Preventing a Potential Fall

We publish here the testimony of a young teenager who had contacted us, like many others, because of his child pornography use. He wrote, redacted and completed this text with the help of Mrs Bennari aiming at making his story known to help others in a similar situation.

Hello,

I am 15 as I write this. I’m going to start at the beginning and tell everything that happened during my fall toward child pornography, exactly as it was.

It begun when I was about 11. I was reading a forum on the site of a well-known and very popular video game. Everything was great, until I clicked on some random link. I told myself “No big deal”, but instead of finding more games I ended up staring at homosexual porn. At first I was grossed out by it, but as I kept looking my curiosity took over and I started feeling a sort of fascination. That’s when I started watching pornography and feeling a need for it.

I watched porn for 4 years without understanding the consequences for a boy my age. I looked for content more and more unusual, new, sensational, up to the more violent images. I told myself there was nothing wrong with it. They were just fantasies, nothing to do with real life.

But as I kept looking for new stuff, I ended up on some child pornography images and I felt again that same thrill I had felt when I discovered porn for the first time. So I started looking for child porn sites which are actually easy to find. I was still mainly addicted to adult porn, but on some rare occasions I looked for child porn. It’s true that I wasn’t worried about those few times. I didn’t take my use of child porn seriously because I still felt a stronger pull toward adult porn.

But little by little I started doing more and deeper searching for child porn. I only found it on two sites. The minors that matched my preferences were between 11 and 17 years old. But I did once get off on the picture of a 4th grader girl (I’m extremely ashamed of that). I even downloaded a picture once, that I deleted immediately after even though the teenage girl in the photo was a nudist. Every time my libido brought me to masturbate to those videos and photos, but once the pleasure was gone I regretted it and felt betrayed by myself.

I totally got that the children “models” were the victims of criminals or unaware of what they were asked to do. I was filled with guilt and shame. I wanted to be a benefactor to people everywhere, and instead here I was.

My friends started calling me “pedophile” as a joke, because I often joked on the subject. But some of my pals thought my jokes went a bit too far and so they asked me: “Do you actually like little kids?”. I told them no, and actually in a sense it’s true as I don’t feel attracted to kids in real life. But that question made me doubt myself anyway. Was I like the men I hear about on the news? Am I like those I disapprove of? Am I a pedophile?

As I became more aware of how bad and wrong what I was doing was, I started searching informations about it online. I found the Blue Angel website and I saw that it was a place where I could find answers to my questions and my anguish, and also ask for advice to stop doing these things I hated.

I called the number on the french site. The president herself, Mrs Latifa Bennari, answered the call and listened to me before asking some questions and chatting with me. All this made me relax and I felt much better. She soothed my conscience pointing out my real life abstinency and congratulating me on my decision to call for help. She did also warn me about the danger I was into with my child porn use: of undermining my adult life and getting caught by the police with potentially devastating consequences.

Today I have decided to be a normal high school student, focused on studying, passionate about video games and with a mind fully opened to the world and everything and everyone in it, including sexuality. Because I have no taboos about telling what happened to me. This doesn’t mean that I won’t warn you about pornography, adult or pedophile: it is bad for young kids. Bad, I get it now, not just for us users but also and most of all for the minors exploited to produce it. I know now that there are many others in the situation I was into that are still too afraid to speak. And others who seeked help in vain for years and in the end found only the cops at their door.

I often ask myself what would have happened to me without the Blue Angel. Talking is often the cure for all evils. It’s also the best way to protect ourselves and others, so let’s do it.

Thank you, Latifa, for freeing me from silence and secrecy.

An opinion and a few words from Latifa Bennari

This testimony from a young man in contact with the Blue Angel shows the incoherence and aberration of most measures concerning pedophilia in place today. Too often they are taken and crafted in response to the high media coverage of a few sensational cases despite the fact that the offenders involved represent only a slim minority of the total pedophile population.

Such measures go against common sense and keep feeding an inadequate legal corpus that can only make an already alarming situation even worse. Written by ministerial staff without any real knowlege of the problem and of its complex ramifications, without consulting with any competent association actually working the field (especially on the subject of child pornography), they keep pushing forward a blind repression policy, showing a critical lack of judgement from our state representatives that can only make us wonder.

This testimony is a perfect example of the reality most users of child pornography live in. It is becoming urgent for society to start looking at this reality without the veil of prejudice that is preventing us from taking adequate measures to counter the potential effects on our population’s mental state of the proliferation of easy-to-access child pornography images (drawings, comics, photos, videos, etc).

This young man’s profile is extremely representative of the majority of virtual pedophiles who slowly and inadvertedly sink into an addiction to child pornography without truly measuring or understanding the seriousness of the consequences both for themselves and for the exploited children.

Helping them quit with an adequate and experienced support is the only way, preventing further use of child pornography and in some cases also any possibility of a real life acting out, even though we hasten to point out that there is no systematic link between using child pornography and acting out on real children, indeed such a jump is quite rare.

On the contrary, the silence, secrecy and fear pedophiles (abstinents, users of child pornography, ex-offenders, etc) are de facto confined into by the indiscriminate aggressiveness of the law and most medias only serve to strengthen their isolation and mental fragility, therefore increasing the potential danger they represent for society and especially for our children.

We have the choice to continue with methods which have been revealed as failures by their results during the last decades, or thinking about developping more effective ones. Today we expect from our representatives of state to acknowledge their failings and learn from past mistakes, putting in place a humane policy of prevention. Enough demagogy, purely electoral speeches and measures, enough senseless and misguided pushing of the principles of precaution and security, the abuse of which shows a complete lack of understanding of the problem at hand.

A Child Pornography Addict Asking for Help

We publish here a very representative example of the calls for help we receive on a daily basis. The author, T, wrote again six months later to show how much the chance of being listened to and guided helped him.

Hello

First off thanks for the cause you fight for with your association.

I followed you for some time I saw you on TV and heard you on the radio a few times, and I read your site.
I admire you for what you did and do.

So I want to be anonymous (I’m very paranoid about this, I’m so afraid my email will be intercepted) so this address is an account I opened just for this and I will not write my name.

Im 27, I’m a man, almost no social life, very few friends and girlfriends, I almost never go out, Im bashful, reserved, low self-esteem, too kind, hardworking, I’m very close to my family and I still live with my mother as loneliness is hard on me.

I’m contacting you because my life is a living hell more and more every day!

Since I was 17 I’m attracted to boys between 7 and 12, and I’m addicted to porn videos, photos and drawings you can see on ill reputed sites online.

I really know that what I do is very bad, that it’s horrible to all those innocent children but I can’t stay away from those images and videos, or I fantasize about them while I’m near a school or in the street.

I don’t know if it’s genetic, my granpa touched little girls, he acted out and my uncle he was a weirdo and he never had a girlfriend in his life.

I often want to say “stop”, I erase everything I have on my computer, I go to dating sites, I try to be normal but it never lasts I crack again I re download and spend sometimes the whole night looking at this porn files on my pc, my tablet or even the smartphone.

I feel terrible everytime I go on those sites, and when I download despite all my anonimity programs I’m never safe. If my family found out it would be horrible! Then my nephew who is 2, what 5 years from now? Will I be able to not do anything to him?

If people knew I couldn’t stand it, Id rather shoot myself in the head. Everyday I live in fear of seeing the cops coming for me, or finding a letter in the box.

I can’t look at myself in a mirror, I’m totally paranoid, I can’t stand myself anymore, I disgust me,I can’t sleep, my work is suffering from it I had enough, I want out, I’m a big addict.
I finally got that hiding from the truth and burying my head in sand didn’t do anything
And still people close to me all love me and tell me I’m full of qualities but they don’t know my dark side.

Please help me Mrs Bennari I don’t want to be this monster anymore, I don’t want to hurt anyone, Id like so much to be like evryone else, to have a healthy life full of love.
I didn’t find on your site an adress of a therapist near me.

So I hope you will answer. Today I wiped my hard drive again. I hope this will be the last time with your help.

Thank you in advance.

T

Responses and Dialogue after a Meeting

Following a support and dialogue group, a participant shares his thoughts. He was a child pornography user and a virtual predator who never sought direct contact with minors:

Dear Latifa

I wanted to say I’m sorry for the grim and harsh tones I had while telling my story during the meeting. I hope I didn’t have a negative impact on the others, victims and pedophiles both. Their stories had really shaken me. I felt dirty in comparison to the hopeless and condemned love of B the scriptwriter. Guilty before M who was exploited as a child to produce photos that I could have watched myself. Cowardly while listening to the two youths who are confronting early their addiction to child pornography. Responsible for showing to S and his mother the aberrations that can happen when you lock yourself up alone with your secrets. I felt the need to throw up my story like the horrific mess I perceive it to be. I put into it the anger and despair I thought I saw in the young woman who sat next to you and who had to leave early.

I’m becoming aware of all I still have to do to reconcile the two “me”s in myself and to speak of them as a whole. I’ve essentially only described the destructive process I had created and that lead me to become a “cyber rapist” of sorts. I still disgust myself to such a degree that I can’t express it, as it looks too much like self-pity. Despite the kind looks around me, I still have trouble accepting the good in me and letting it grow.

I have to learn to talk about my “day me”, like A does, the me who is the loving father of my two kids. Who has been my mother’s rock for so many years. And also to talk of the beautiful humanity of my wife who, despite the lies and horrors I committed, still tries to build with me and the kids a bright future for all of us.

Participating to the support and dialogue group is very beneficial to me. Listening to me and telling me all of your stories help me mesure my responsibility, question myself, share my emotions. And especially you, Latifa, your smile, your open arms and the love you irradiate really pull me toward a future filled with light.

I hope I didn’t damage the group or the individuals, and I’m very sorry I expressed myself so coldly. Since you gave me a hand up, I have the responsibility during the meetings to do the same for others and pull them up. I hope I didn’t crush anyone with the violence of my words, that’s not what I wanted.

I write all this to you here even though we will talk on the phone tomorrow because I don’t know in how weak a mental state I will be then.

Thank you a billion times for all you bring to us all.

R

Response and support from a participant to the same meeting, a pedophile ex-offender suffering from an inadequate reinsertion after his prison term:

Yours is a poignant testimony, R, and I can tell you that you are a great guy ! It may seem out of place coming from someone who was condemned for breaking the law, but you don’t deserve this suffering. Why do you say that you need to learn how to share? You expressed yourself with great honesty during the group with Latifa and the others, and never in any hurtful way. There are mistakes we may make sometimes in our lives. But a man (and a woman, just to not have all the Feminists on me, even though…) without faults does not exist. A friend of mine, a priest, told me one day while I was in prison: « A man is greater than his actions ». 

First of all you have to become aware of the fact that you have a family who believes in you. A wife and kids. There aren’t two Rs, just one, and even though right now you have to face your errors, this cannot in any way keep you from going on SERENELY with your life. I didn’t feel any violence in your words. I talked about difficult topics myself, but I surely wasn’t there to hurt anyone or to lie to myself.

The groups Latifa organises don’t aim at self-flagellation. They are meetings that might seem to some “self-righteous” people an insult to the politically correct, just like obscurantism has always brought people to burn the witches and heretics of their century… N H wrote to me, while I was in prison: « The justice system cannot afford to understand people, because if it did it would not be able to judge them ». In quoting this thought from Robert Badinter, he wanted to tell me that life is not as simple as we might hope. Circumstances, prejudice, social or religious conventions bring us to believe right what is wrong and viceversa. I was condemned for one of the worst accusations there is, I know where the truth lies. Still, I have to bear that unfair sentence (as it didn’t just condemn me for what I actually did, but also for things I didn’t do) all my life.

Every day I believe I can see the sun coming up again, but the darkness falls again just a few hours later. I’m cold, I tremble and cry. My mistakes brought me in a land without any discernment nor JUSTICE. And there is nothing I can do about it. I know that every time I try to voice the truth, out of the mouths of all the people that believe their judgement was correct will come the word “denial”, like the blade of a modern inquisition.

I still try to go on living, especially, just as you say it yourself, R, thanks to Latifa, to her work, her courage, her determination, her convictions coming from her own suffering she managed to pull through. And as for you, your life isn’t at a close at all. Thanks to your family and your determination, it can work its way to happiness. Paul Boese said that forgiveness doesn’t erase the past, it broadens the future. So yours is now before you, wide open.

By the way, my best wishes to everyone I met during the group. All suffering, sometimes for reasons completely at the other end of the spectrum, but all managing to turn this unexpected meeting in a moment of exemplary humanism.

Thank you, dear Latifa.

B

Support from one of the victims participating to the group (male).

Dear R,

I didn’t feel any violence or horror in your sharing, I was just proud that we’re part of the same humanity, and thinking that if everyone had the same courage you have in bringing your inner monster out in the open, it would be destroyed since this monstruous part each of us has inside blossoms in the shadows, its natural habitat. So thank you for your beautiful and great courage. Thank you for your capacity to observe your two “me”s at a distance like an enthomologist. That distance shows you are already pulling free of them. You are traversing a valley of solitude, but we are all here, behind the scenes, to support you and help you when you feel you need it.

Victims (or at least victims who pulled or are pulling through) don’t need to hear “censored” speeches that keep them in their suposed frailty. They definitely don’t want to be “handled with care”. It is just the truth, as harsh and grim as it may be, that interests them. The truth, not to mend a prejudice, but for justice. Because I believe everything must be districated to avoid adding evil to evil as Camus said. I believe our true nature lies in solidarity, that we are at once the bricks and the mortar. And that victims who pulled through, just as much as offenders who pulled through, can be the best masons in the world.

Fare well, R, my brother in tears.

M

A Cry for Help

Below is a cry for help like many I receive every day. It shows perfectly the blatant lack of support and counseling for people in this kind of situation I found and denounced in the concerned professionals and institutions of most countries. I’m sharing this particular example with you to make you understand the complexity of the emergencies I deal with on a daily basis.
I’m taking care of this person and so the danger is averted for a while, but how long can I keep on going alone? This man needs to participate to our support and dialogue groups but he doesn’t have the means to travel. I ask to the politicians hiding behind their desks and their speeches, what am I to do?

Mrs Bennari

I have been in psychiatric care for 15 years because of the secondary effects of a sickness nobody can cure. I’m a hephebophile but I never acted out on it… my solution being to lock myself up in my home, laying in bed without being able to sleep. So I go to support centers or centers for social/professional reinsertion, etc… all of this because of issues caused by my real problem: those I’m sexually and romantically attracted to are too young, they will never feel the same way and I can never be with them even if they consent to (I still have trouble wrapping my head around that)…

I have an addiction: I “vent” it thinking back to all those I loved as a teenager without ever telling them. I’m 38, still a virgin, and here I go acting like a post-adolescent obsessed with a first time that will never come.  I’ve recently begun seearching for help and I was directed to a sexologist with whom I’m doing private sessions… he thinks I’m not a threat to young people… but the price is being a prisoner in myself! I’m dying of loneliness, of my idealized fantasies, etc… and the castration I tried for a while with meds just made me feel even worse…

I’ve been thinking about suicide since I was 15… I tried when I was 22 but I was too scared! I don’t want to see death coming. Going to sleep and never waking up: here is the solution. It’s possible in Belgium. That’s why I want to ask for your help and support in my asking for euthanasia, for everyone’s sake.

Thanking you in advance for your response.

Cybercrime Emergency

Share and send to your friends:

Prevent and fight online sexual predation, to the attention of children/teenagers on the web and of their families

Many young teenagers between ages 11 and 16 and/or their distressed parents contacted me all in the same week to ask me what to do against the cyber-predators they had been victims of.

Times have changed and nowadays it’s not just about warning our children against strangers in the streets giving them candy. We are facing a new menace which is even more dangerous, as it doesn’t show its face, or at least it doesn’t expose it publically.

Children and teenagers of this generation use and master at a much better level than their elders the new technologies (smartphone, internet, forums or even dating sites that they visit more and more precociously). They thus become the prey of masked digital hunters who use many different identities and infiltrate all social networks visited by minors (children and teenagers of both genders).

These cyber-predators reach for their goals with seduction, adapting their language to the profile of every child they want to prey upon, borrowing words, ways of expression, pretending to share interests, carefully weaving their web to tighten their grip. This first phase is essential to the cyber-predator, as he or she (though they are generally male) needs to build up trust and entertain the possibility of a secret romance or, depending on the circumstances and the evolution of the exchange, he might apply pressure on his victim through blackmail or threats.

In the second phase, cyber-predators start to skillfully and cunningly ask their victims to show themselves naked (partially or totally) in front of their webcam, generally through communication programs like Skype. Most children end up cracking to the perverse demands of these predators, who can then threaten to publish online the naked pictures or videos they have of them if they don’t pose even more obscenely or even perform degrading sexual acts on camera.

It’s at this point that the victims, some of which may have still believed in good faith that there was affection or even a blossoming love story between them and the cyber-predator, become aware of the dire situation they’re in and fall into a phase of shame and guilt, regretting their actions. Filled with anguish, terrified and ashamed, they worry that the people close to them, and particularly their parents, might somehow “stumble” on those pictures and/or videos.

Sleepless nights and depressing thoughts feed on each other, mantaining the state of mental confusion of the victims, joined by a surge of self-hatred which sometimes causes aggressive behavior, senseless in the eyes of friends and family; whence the need to react promptly and appropriately.

What to do when faced with these situations?

Advice to minors or young adults on the Internet:

  • Never reveal your personal address nor that of your school nor your real name

  • Never take part in sexual relationships online

  • Never accept to get naked in front of a camera or webcam

  • Never share, send nor exchange personal photos/videos online with people you don’t know, especially if you appear in them naked (partially or totally) or in suggestive situations/poses

Advice to victims of cyber-predators:

  • Don’t panic and try to keep a cold head: take the time to assess your situation

  • Record and save most of your conversations/exchanges, even those who seem trivial

  • Don’t give in to blackmail of any type

  • Don’t submit to orders given to you anymore, even if threatened with the publication of your photos or videos

  • Try to not show any fear or hesitation to your persecutor and threaten to tell everything to your parents

  • Don’t be ashamed nor afraid to confide without delay in the people you trust the most, your mother, your father, your siblings… Whatever the relationship you have with them may be, even if you’re at each other’s throat, your parents and your family in general will almost always turn out to be your strongest, most reliable support

  • Know that the sooner you file a complaint, the greater the number of potential victims you will save, some of the more fragile of whom might even have ended up committing suicide

  • Finally, never hesitate to write or otherwise contact me in case of need or emergency, so that I may advice you, guide you and support you in your initiatives (see my contacts at the end of this message)

Advice to parents or people close to victims of cyber-predators:

If your child is involved:

  • Refrain from inflicting a moral judgement on your child/teenager, whatever you discover of him/her or about him/her; don’t forget that he/she is still young and feels ashamed enough already. You would risk setting him/her up against you and lose his/her trust

  • Put yourself in a position where you can listen to him/her and be his/her confidant. Be a role-model as an adult by keeping calm and reasonable

  • Do not give in to anger. It’s useless and can be even counter-productive

  • Show him/her that he/she can count on you to be protected

  • Collect as much information as you can on the cyber-predator and his actions. Don’t put your child to blame if it looks like he or she might have consented by him/herself to unhealthy activities, even anticipating their request: never forget that your child has been manipulated

  • Take your child to the closest police station to file a complaint. The charges will be filed by the authorities of the State depending on the qualification of the acts committed and the particular circumstances of each case

  • Avoid at all costs to inflict any reproach about the facts to your child: he/she suffered enough already

  • Once his/her status as a victim has been recognized, do everything in your power to help your child move past it: little by little, awaken his/her sense of responsibility and awareness of the dangers he/she may be in, gradually making him/her master of his/her actions

A video is in the making with the participation of many victims and their families to spread awareness among the internet community about the risks minors might be exposing themselves to on the web.

The President of the Blue Angel Association,

Mrs Latifa Bennari

contact@ange-bleu.com

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