First big social decision for my daughters...

The number that gets quoted and sited in all the literature and articles I see is 25%.
or 1 in 4.
That number is the number of women who are sexually assaulted/molested by age 18.

from National Alert Registry

The statistics say that one out of every three to four girls has been sexually assaulted by the age of 18. One boy out of every six will be abused by the age of 18. Although we have some reports and convictions to base these statistics on, they are actually not accurate. So many cases of child molestation go unreported each year, so we really cannot estimate the real numbers. The FBI reports that the National Institute for Mental Health found that only 1% to 10% of victims ever tell that they were abused. Boys report far less than girls.

• The average child molester will molest fifty girls before being caught and convicted.
• A child molester that seeks out boys will molest 150 boys before being caught and convicted and he will commit at least 280 sexual crimes in his lifetime.
• The standard pedophile will commit 117 sexual crimes in their lifetime.
• Most sexual abuse happens between the ages of 7 and 13.
• There are over 491,720 registered sex offenders in the United States.
• 80,000 to 100,000 of the above offenders are missing.
• Molesters known by the family or victim are the most common abusers. The Acquaintance Molestation accounts for 70-90% of reported cases.

I have 5 friends who were sexually assaulted as children. 4 of them were at sleepovers.

Up until today, Chowder and I had tossed around the idea of a No Sleepover policy. It is actually a little hard for me, because I don't normally go extreme in parenting. But 1 in 4? That is way too big of a real risk. And because I can't trust myself to say, "Oh, well, that dad looks nice." or "Gee, her big brother is an honor student." (only to find out that the brother had a friend spend the night, too.) So, rather than getting into an awkward pick and choose which friends we think are safe enough and really quite possibly ending up wrong, and since we won't have double standards for our sons (who are also at risk) we thought it would be best to just eliminate sleepovers all together.

Today, one of Jellybean's new friends invited her for a sleepover. And I said no. I actually said, "No." It was hard at this age because she is only 6 and though we have had the Private Parts talk, it is not something I am ready to put out there just yet. But, I did explain to the mom and she wasn't offended. She said it made sense. And instead we arranged for Jellybean to go over and have dinner, watch a movie, and I will pick her up at 9:30p. A good substitute plan.

I know it will get harder for my kids to accept this rule as they get older and slumber parties become the norm, but we'll just have to deal when we get to that point. Slumber parties can be pretty nasty social experiments all in themselves and many times nothing nice is happening between midnight and 8am. We can always bring them back for breakfast in the morning. I just really feel that God put this in my heart, and that I am protecting at least one of them from something really horrible that could of been in their future.