Hi Bertie welcome! we are at similar stages, though we are looking to adopt a young child, due to our DS' age. Hope all goes well for you.
Hello Namechange wow how does it feel to have sent it off? Have you had a reply yet?
prumarth I think this is part and parcel of exploring which children would be good matches for you. I think it is important to be aware and honest about what you would be comfortable with and what you wouldn't. Depending on the children's ages, sexual awareness/sexualised behaviour is more or less likely I guess, and I doubt anyone can really put a number on it. I would say don't hesitate to state that you would be uncomfortable with a child who has sexual abuse in his/her past, if that is what you feel. Of course you can never be 100% sure, but you can say no to cases where it is known. Can, and should, if that's what you feel. Don't try to bite more than you can swallow.
I think in adoption there is never certainty, so at the end of the day, you need to be prepared to some extent to take a leap of faith, commit, and then deal with whatever gets thrown at you.
Regarding allegations of sexual abuse, I have gathered from reading books by foster carers that many foster carers are accused of abuse at some point in time, maybe as many as 1/3 (that is NOT one in three children make abuse accusations. Rather, over the course of a 'career' of looking after child after child, sometimes more than 50 different children over the years, one in three carers will have to deal with abuse allegations at some point). That's why, as soon as there is an inkling suspicion of sexual abuse in the background, foster carers should practice 'safer caring' where they have protocols such as you mention, where for example bedtime stories are read in the lounge in the presence of other people rather than 'alone' in the child's room.
However, I think fostering is a bit different to adoption, in that the children will only recently have been removed from their homes, and hence little may be known about their pasts - many children will only open up about abuse after a little while, when they start feeling safe. Whereas once they are placed for adoption, this phase of not knowing tends to have been resolved - if there was sexual abuse, many children will have talked about it at some point during their time in foster care. If the child behaves in a sexualised way, it will have been noticed. So for adopters it is much less likely to have to deal with previously unregistered sexual abuse than it is for foster carers.
And well. If you find yourself to be the one whose child discloses previously unknown sexual abuse to you, or whose child suddenly starts behaving in a sexualised way, then I suppose you grieve for the poor LOs innocence and try to help them in whatever way you can.
Swizzers that is pretty much what I have been thinking. However, I can anticipate two problems with that. The first, with our BC still being so very young, I worry that learning that some children have to be looked after by someone else than their parents - that some parents aren't able to look after their children - will cause him much distress and shake his heretofore unquestioned trust and reliance on us, his own parents. I worry that he might start worrying that we can no longer look after him and that he has to be looked after by someone else. I'm going to think very carefully about how to broach the topic with him, so that he understands that we are looking after this baby because their parents need help, but so that he doesn't start worrying. In a way I would like to spare him this awareness, of families not being able to stay together, until later.
The second, if all we tell our BC is that we are looking after this baby for now, then if/when the placement order comes through, the baby would suddenly morph into 'your new brother/sister' - I worry that our BC would then be totally unprepared for the idea of having a new 'forever' sibling. But I would not want to talk about a new sibling before the placement order comes through, for in case baby goes back to BM.
What do you think about these problems? I'm honestly curious, as still trying to resolve them for myself.