When I was 11, I kept a terrible secret from my parents. I feared their reaction if they found out what a neighbor and family friend had done in his home after turning off the lights and saying he loved me. Besides, it took me months to figure it out myself. Even then, I doubt that the term "molestation" had become part of my vocabulary.

My story wouldn't bear mentioning except that it continues to be horribly common. Although studies show a small but steady decline in substantiated child molestations over the past decade, conservative estimates still place the number of children who are sexually abused each year at around 200,000. Only about half of cases are reported, experts believe. And the problem extends into younger age groups than most people realize. In a national survey of adults molested as children, the median age of first abuse was 9 years, with one-fourth being violated before age 8 and nearly 15 percent before age 6.

Scarier still, conventional notions on how to protect kids is wrong. We rush to teach them about "stranger danger," but more than 80 percent of molesters know their victims, according to a study by the University of New Hampshire's Crimes Against Children Research Center. We instruct our children to "Yell and Tell," but such simplistic advice can backfire when youngsters face the typical offender  -- the outwardly caring teacher, coach, friend, or relative who's worked hard to win your child's trust  -- not to mention yours.

"In no other area do we give children the responsibility to stop or change the behavior of the adults in their life," says Elizabeth Ralston, Ph.D., executive director of Dee Norton Lowcountry Children's Advocacy Center, in Charleston, South Carolina. "The result is that often, kids who've been molested feel guilty for not having prevented the abuse and ashamed to tell anyone about what's happened to them."

Even lessons on "good touch/bad touch" can backfire because molestation doesn't always start out feeling "yucky." Nor does it necessarily involve physical contact, as is the case when adults expose children to sexually explicit pictures, talk, and behavior, or when they get them to expose themselves for photographs.

You're probably cringing right about now, but that discomfort is a part of the problem. "It's natural for parents to cling to the myth of the child molester as the dirty old man in the wrinkled raincoat," says Anna Salter, Ph.D., author of Predators: Pedophiles, Rapists, and Other Sex Offenders. "It's disturbing to think that people we know, or even love, could harm our children."

Your first line of defense, then, is to minimize the situations in which your child is left alone with an adult you don't thoroughly know and wholly trust  -- even if it's Grandpa. "This isn't about being paranoid," says Anne Lee, founder of the national child-protection campaign Darkness to Light and a survivor of sexual abuse herself. "Just as we're not being paranoid about the risk of an accident, so we buckle our kids into their car seats or hold their hands crossing the street, it's not paranoid to eliminate one-on-one situations that may put them at risk of abuse." These age-specific guidelines can help you keep your child safe.

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