Strong Communities Start With Supported Parents
By: Wyatt Welch
Here at Prevent Child Abuse Utah, we have discovered a funny phenomenon amongst our Education Team. A lot of us are “Theatre Kids.” This job seems to also draw appeal to a lot of creatives.
We grew up performing on the stage, dressing up in costumes, and singing our hearts out to anyone who would listen. We often joke that it’s because now our stage is the classroom, and our audience is Utah’s children. There is another aspect to this job that I think also caters to the creatives inside us. As adults of the arts, we care and feel very deeply. We want the world to be a better place. We grew up telling stories about others trying to make change to better their world. Now, here we are, trying to do just that.
One of my biggest joys is when we are able to have overlap between Child Abuse Prevention and Theatre. I am also a youth theatre director in my spare time, and have been lucky to learn from my time here at Prevent Child Abuse Utah on how to add in preventative measures to help keep my theatre students safe. Theatres and dance studios are a vastly different setting than a school. There are different rules, expectations, and requirements. Talking with others who are a part of the Utah Theatre Community, we have noticed “gaps” in prevention. Places where the “normal” of theatre practices are actually windows where children could be hurt.
I was able to meet with the owners of the Ziegfeld Theatre Morgan & Caleb Parry, who asked Prevent Child Abuse Utah to come to their academy, and teach their staff about how to recognize, prevent, and report child abuse. Because the fact is, 1 in 7 children will experience sexual abuse before the age of 18, and 91% of the time, the child is abused by someone the child knows and trusts. This is quite an alarming statistic, and the Parry’s wanted to make sure that their staff were equipped and prepared with how to best care for their academy students.
We were able to hold our training in their academy for about an hour, and had the chance for a discussion between staff members. We talked about how sometimes grooming behaviors often come out of a place of innocent and well intentioned manner. However, though one person can have the best intention at heart, another can be using those same behaviors to hurt the child.
Example: Someone takes a child out for ice cream, and tells them to keep it a secret. No harm caused… right?
What if another adult starts to take the child out for ice cream, makes them keep it a secret, but then progresses with more sexually charged conversations or behaviors?
How would a child know where to draw the line of what’s okay to keep a secret versus what isn’t?
That’s why we encourage all adults to never tell a child to keep something a secret. We can hold on to surprises, but eventually we have to let it go to share it!
So, like we said before, sometimes these grooming behaviors or, “yellow flags,” come from a good place. However, they need to be corrected for the child’s safety. We talked a lot about how if we see behaviors that are going against the academy policy, to address the behavior, set a limit, and move on. Sometimes it takes a minute of feeling uncomfortable, to help benefit the safety of a child. That’s worth it to me, and the Ziegfeld Academy staff agreed.
After the training, the staff told us that they felt much more confident and comfortable with the reporting process as well. In the discussion we talked about how children changing into costumes in theatre is a gap in prevention, and how we can try to minimize that gap. In theatre, you need the stage manager/volunteer help backstage, and sometimes need to go into dressing rooms or there are quick changes that need to happen backstage that don’t allow the privacy of a room. Our answer, though simple, was highly effective: Have the children in base layers. Biking shorts and a tank top. Any child who entered the building would already be wearing their base layers, and would simply throw on their costume over them. Those clothes remained on from the moment they walked into the theatre and until they arrived back at home. The performers were not allowed to change in the building, thus keeping students and staff safe. This simple change solved a big issue that theatres and dance companies have across the state.
We’re so thankful to the Ziegfeld Academy for taking the steps to help keep Utah’s children, especially “theatre kids” safe.
If you or your organization are interested in learning more about how you can get trained in Child Abuse Prevention, please reach out to me, wwelch@pcautah.org, or visit our website educators.pcautah.org.