Update! My in laws’ neighbor touched my daughter

Update:

I called x’s mom, she told me this is highly unlikely and she will talk to her husband and be in touch.

We will call the neighbor “x”. My daughter is 6 this week. We always talk about not keeping secrets and coming to me and talking to me whenever something doesn’t feel right and we try to keep our relationship casual with boundaries, it’s clear I’m an authority figure but I want her comfortable coming to me. It has always been our priority from the start.

However!!! We were having a convo about not keeping secrets and if anyone ever tells her to keep secrets she should tell us, just as a reminder conversation… and she was like “x told me to keep a secret and said we have a secret little game that is just for us and nobody can know it. I told you when she told me that, but I didn’t tell you everything.” And I was like ok tell me the rest. And she said “she had my pants down and touched my vulva and looked at it and I felt wrong so I pulled my pants up and came upstairs to find you. I didn’t tell you everything because I didn’t want to make you upset with me.” X is 8 years old and should know better. She knew what she was doing.

I told my daughter “it is so important that we are open with each other about things like this. I am not upset with you and you did nothing wrong. Nothing you did made her do that, she did that on her own and it was completely not your fault. But that is not okay that she did it, and you know you felt that it was wrong. You know you didn’t like it. I love you and it’s my job to protect you so thank you for telling me.”

What else do I do at this point? She seems totally fine and is ok with my rule that she can’t play with this girl anymore. I don’t want to mess up and skip a crucial step in helping her through this and have her be traumatized in the future… I never had anything close to this happen to me growing up so I need help and opinions

Editing to remain anonymous: will counseling make it a bigger deal to her than it potentially has been? That’s my concern with counseling. She truly seems completely fine

I’m going to talk to X’s parents. Should I tell my daughter I’m doing this to make sure she knows I’m fighting for her and to make sure I have the story straight first?

Beem: I agree with you there are two little girls across the street from her that she plays with. I was going to tell their parents and talk to x’s parents.