Not everyone is a predator—but anyone can be a predator. It’s a tough reality to accept, but as a parent you must accept it in order to keep your child safe.

This article is not about panic-mongering, however. It’s not about teaching you to look at every person with suspicion. So stop watching the news. Stop cruising the Internet. Get off the Megan’s Law websites and sex offender registries. Take a deep breath. The fact that you are reading this book puts you in the top percentage of empowered and educated parents. Your child is already safer.

Chances are that your child will not be sexually abused by an adult in a position of power. But chances are that your child knows someone who already has been abused. And chances are that the person came from the most unlikely of places. That’s the key takeaway for this chapter: Most predators come from the places we least expect.

Learn about what Jamberry has to offer. All orders for this event need to be placed no later than Nov. 20th. I, Viola Sullins, will be donating my full commission from this event to Dreamcatchers for Abused Children. To order visit www.ViolaSullins.jamberry.com

As reported by both the American Association of Universities and the White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault, with few exceptions, educators and school administrators are falling short in the struggle to make our campuses safe places for women and men alike. An recent investigation by the Pulitzer Prize winning Center for Public Integrity concluded, “Students found ‘responsible’ for sexual assaults on campus often face little or no punishment from school judicial systems, while their victims’ lives are frequently turned upside down.”

MISSOURI – Town chiefs from a small Missouri suburb have rallied to support a pedophile father-of-seven despite him confessing to abusing a young girl 300 times. Darren Paden, 52, from Dearborn, was jailed for 50 years on Friday after he admitted a string of sex attacks on the girl, starting when she was just five years old. But residents in Dearborn, which has a population of 500, have refused to accept his appalling crime despite his confession, pleading with the judge to be lenient and shunning his victim in the street. Paden, a former volunteer firefighting chief and member of the Air National Guard, was first accused of the crimes after his victim went to police three years ago. Now 18, the girl told officers that Paden abused her over the course of a decade, watching pornographic films with her, and forcing them to perform sex acts on one another. According to prosecutors, Paden told his victim that the abuse was ‘our little secret’.

A court has heard horrific details of how a ‘deviant’ Christian pastor and father-of-two drugged and rubbed his genitals on a teenage girl as she laid naked, blindfolded and in tears on a bed – as her father is alleged to have watched on. David Volmer, 41, from Perth’s northern suburbs, was sentenced to 10-and-a-half years prison on Thursday after pleading guilty to 12 offences against a minor including sexual penetration of a child, and stupefying with intent to commit an indictable offence. In a statement of facts read by the prosecution and not disputed by Volmer, the West Australian District Court heard the pastor’s crimes against the girl – who was aged 12 and 13 at the time – occurred after the victim’s father replied to an advertisement Volmer put on Craiglist promoting his ‘sexual massage services’.

TEXAS – A mother in north Texas is facing a capital murder charge for allegedly killing her one-day-old baby girl that she was ‘trying to keep from crying.’ According to the Weatherford Police Department, a man called Tuesday requesting a welfare check at the home of his estranged, pregnant wife. He said Ashley Nicole Blades, 22, contacted him via text to tell him that she’d given birth, but the baby had died. Once officers arrived to Blades’ home, she told them in an interview that the infant was in the trunk of her car, a silver Ford Focus.

ENGLAND/WALES – There has been a 60% increase in child sexual abuse reported to the police over the past four years, according to official figures which make public for the first time the scale of the problem in England and Wales. A House of Commons library analysis based on freedom of information releases by individual forces shows that the number of offences of child sexual abuse reported to the police has soared from 5,557 cases in 2011 to 8,892 last year. Child sexual abuse includes grooming, facilitating abuse and child rape.

DALLAS — A Northeast Dallas community is trying to understand the unthinkable – a mother accused of poisoning her young son. Paw Eh, 31, faces an attempted capital murder charge. On Saturday, police got a 911 call to the Newport Landing apartments from a relative of Eh. First responders rushed a 4-year-old boy to the hospital in critical condition. Dallas police say Eh forced her son to ingest poison. Police also say she tried, unsuccessfully, to force her 7-year-old and 12-year-old to do the same.

Pakistan has taken a step towards punishing the sexual abuse of girls with life imprisonment or even death after an influential parliamentary committee voted to amend current laws. The National Assembly’s standing committee approved the proposal by lawmaker Shaista Perveiz Malik on Tuesday, according to a statement on parliament’s website. “After detailed discussions, the committee unanimously passed the bill,” it said. The amendment only appears to address the sexual abuse of girls aged under 14, not boys. Under the existing penal code, the punishment for rape ranges from a minimum of ten years’ incarceration to the death penalty, but it does not specify the victim’s age or gender.

Five students were stabbed Wednesday at the University of California, Merced, and the suspect was fatally shot by police, the school said. “Update: 5 students stabbed; 2 sent out via medical helicopter; 3 treated on campus. All conscious.” the school tweeted. The school later tweeted that the suspect had been killed by officers at the scene. The campus was closed and classes were canceled for the day. The stabbing attack took place in front of a classroom, officials said.

New data show that up to 18 arrest warrants are issued across the Bay State every day after court-ordered GPS monitors are cut off, smashed or somehow trigger an alarm — a disturbing trend that has one sheriff questioning the use of the bracelets. “The GPS only tells you where they’re not — not where they are. If they cut the bracelet off, they’re likely off into the sunset doing who knows what,” said Bristol County Sheriff Thomas Hodgson. “I’m concerned about the risks … and all the ways people can get these off.”

HELENA – A 56-year-old man was given four life sentences in prison for raping a young girl. Dewayne Louis Lamb was sentenced Thursday by District Judge Jeffrey Sherlock. Charging documents state Lamb began touching the victim when she was 12. Prosecutors said that over time the sexual contact progressed until he raped the girl. The victim told investigators that she had intercourse with Lamb multiple times in many states and in many counties in Montana.

LIMA, PERU – A secretive Roman Catholic society with chapters across South America and in the U.S. has revealed under pressure that a Vatican investigator is looking into allegations that its founder sexually molested young recruits. The scandal at the Peru-based Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, or Sodalitium for Human Life, has close parallels to other recent cases of charismatic Catholic leaders in Latin America being accused of sex abuse — as well as the church dragging its feet on investigating claims and trying to keep scandals quiet.

A mother that allegedly sent explicit photos of her two-year-old daughter to a 30-year-old man so he could sell them online has been arrested and had her child placed in emergency protective care. The South Australian woman, 24, was charged with two counts of conspiracy and one count of possessing child exploitation material. Police also arrested the man, from Canberra, after executing a search warrant at his Flynn residence and allegedly finding child exploitation material and evidence of communication with the woman. Police allege that the man is accused of ‘attempting to sell the child abuse material and other sexual services online.’