I posted this over on the abused forum, but I thought I would also post here to get some parent's suggestions and opinions.
Hi, I have a 9 year old daughter that has been really upset lately. Finally she was comfortable enough to open up to my sister. I guess what has been happening is when she goes over to her house to play, my daughter's friend will make her take off her clothes. She swears that there hasn't been any touching. "N" (my daughter's friend) makes her pee in a cup, get undressed and take a bath with her and the latest one is get undressed and have sex with a picture of somebody on a magazine. I guess what they did is cut out a picture of somebody in a magazine and tape it to the pillow. She had "sex" with the picture and then made my daughter do it. When my daughter says she doesn't want to do any of these things she will start to hit, slap, kick, and punch her all over her body, and told her that God will strike her with lightning if she didn't do these things and if she told anybody.
And N makes her watch a porn movie that is on her dad's cell phone. I don't know if it's real or just a movie, but still....
I'm not sure what to make of this situtation. The first thing that comes to my mind is N is being abused. I'm not sure how to handle this situation because I don't know for sure what is happening.
I tried to talk with my daughter, but she says it's just too embarrasing and that talking with my sister is the only one that she feels okay to talk with.
I really need help with this. I don't want to go screaming sexual abuse if there actually hasn't been any. It doens't seem normal to me, but is this typical behavior for a child? I do know that my daughter hates the things that she is being made to do. And if something is happening to N ( 9 yrs old) then somebody needs to step in and do something. But I don't want to tear a family apart and report something if there is in fact nothing to report.
So any advice anybody has on this subject would be great!
Thanks
Amanda