Child Sex Abuse Reports Spike As Country Shelters In Place, Advocates Say
Katja Kircher Via Getty Images
By Alanna Vagianos
Jacksonville Free Press
In March, for the first time, the majority of RAINN’s sexual abuse hotline users were minors.
For most Americans, sheltering in place is a sensible act of self-protection amid the coronavirus pandemic. But home can be a dangerous place for some ― like children in abusive situations.
Children face a heightened risk for sexual abuse during this time, child advocates told HuffPost. Scott Berkowitz, president of the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network, said RAINN has seen an uptick in minors reporting sexual violence in March, the month most shelter-in-place orders were implemented across the country.
“Last month, for the first time ever, a majority of RAINN’s sexual abuse hotline users were minors,” he told HuffPost.
Just over half of the people who called RAINN’s hotline last month who identified their age were under 18. Of those, 67% identified their perpetrator as a family member and, within that group, 79% said they were living with that perpetrator. RAINN’s victim service programs help on average about 25,000 people every month.
Berkowitz said the reason for the increased calls from minors could be that children can’t access the safety net of other adults they usually see outside the home.
“So many minors are now locked at home with their abuser, in the same house,” Berkowitz said. “The safety net that they had ― the parents and teachers and coaches that they would see every day who were likely the first people to notice signs of abuse ― children no longer have contact with those people right now.”
Berkowitz said he suspects the incidences of child sexual abuse will only increase as shelter-in-place orders continue.
An overwhelming majority of sexually abused children ― 93% ― are abused by someone they know and trust. While parents and other adults in the home can be the prime perpetrators, other children in the house ― such as older siblings or cousins ― can also be abusers, Dr. Janet Rosenzweig, executive director at the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children (APSAC), told HuffPost. Over a third of all child sexual abuse cases is committed by another minor.
“By now, people have all heard about the pedophiles that groom children and that’s a very true way to describe adult offenders. But with kids, it’s usually predicated by sexual arousal meeting poor impulse control, and an opportunity,” she said.
Unfortunately, Rosenzweig added, that opportunity comes as many families are confined to their residences: parents may be preoccupied with working from home and siblings or other older children are left to take care of younger ones.
Plagued by a troubling spike in reports, advocates face another problem: being able to contact the children in need. When a child sex abuse complaint is reported, a caseworker normally visits the home and interviews the child and others involved, Berkowitz said. Now, the options to help are significantly reduced, leaving many organizations only able to offer emotional support.
The “best of this worst-case scenario” is being able to contact clients virtually, Rosenzweig said. But this comes with some roadblocks.
In rural areas that don’t have the best broadband connection, children aren’t able to access the internet to get a hold of caseworkers and other educators (if they know to do this at all). If a child is able to access the internet or a phone connection, often they don’t have the privacy to disclose what’s happening. If they are able to find the privacy to report the abuse, the timeline for a caseworker to then physically get to that child before any repercussions take place is very short.
Even if everything goes as it should, Rosenzweig said, finding emergency shelter for the child amid a global pandemic is nearly impossible ― and depends on what child protection services are still available in that area.
APSAC officials, who support the professionals who serve the children and families victimized by this abuse, said they’ve seen a wide variation of child protection services state-by-state, making it harder to implement any effective guidelines right now. The next short-term goal is to ensure that more child protection services and resources are included in the next Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, which likely won’t see congressional action for the next month or so, if at all.
“Additional resources to help vulnerable children and families is our number one ask for the next CARES bill,” Kiersten Stewart, the director of public policy and advocacy for Futures Without Violence, told HuffPost.
“There was a mistaken view that if we just handle job loss and health care that it would solve all of the potential child abuse problems and that’s just not true,” she said. “More still needs to be done and it needs to be done intentionally to support families and children.”
One thing everyone can do to help children right now, Rosenzweig said, is pick up the phone.
“If there is a child or parent you love, call those kids and spend a half an hour on the phone or FaceTime. Give the kids another grown-up to talk to,” she said. “If all of us do that, we’re going to give parents a break and we may find a kid out there that needs our help.”
All countries should be advertising on TV and internet phone numbers or web sites where children can report sexual abuse. We should also be putting out clips aimed at children to teach them good touch and bad touch at a young age. We should also be telling older kids that it is neither normal, nor healthy, nor legal to be having a sexual relationship with an adult or a family member.
Unlike businesses or political parties, children have no voice. They suffer in silence and they get little or no attention from governments. Child sexual abuse is an horrific atrocity at the best of times and is now much worse at the worst of times. Yet they continue to be largely ignored.
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Child-on-child sexual abuse - Just as bad as
adult-on-child sexual abuse
Wajahat Ali Malik
Pakistan Daily Times
Child-on-child sexual abuse is a form of child sexual abuse (CSA) in which a child is sexually abused by one or more other children and in which no adult is directly involved in sexually abusing the child. It also includes a child using physical force, threats, trickery or emotional manipulation to elicit cooperation, and non-coercive situations where a child proposes or starts a sexual act that the victimised child does not understand the nature of and simply goes along with, not comprehending its implications or what the consequences might be.
Children who are sexually victimised by other minors show largely the same problems as children victimised by adults, including anxiety disorders, depression, drug abuse, suicide, eating disorders, post- traumatic stress disorder, sleep disorders, and difficulty trusting peers in the context of relationships.
Under the international law, there is no uniform definition of child sexual abuse. The International Rescue Committee and UNICEF define CSA by compiling various definitions of CSA as “Child sexual abuse is any form of sexual activity with a child by an adult or by another child who has power over the child.”
It is possible for a child to be sexually abused by another child. CSA often involves body contact. This could include sexual kissing, touching, and oral, anal or vaginal sex. But all kinds of sexual abuse do not involve body contact. Forcing a child to witness rape and/or other acts of sexual violence, forcing children to watch pornography, or show their private parts, showing a child private parts (flashing), verbally pressuring a child for sex, and exploiting children as prostitutes or for pornography are also acts of sexual abuse.
It is, in my humble opinion, a grave injustice to those victims of child-on-child sexual abuse that the main provider of CSA statistics in the USA, do not include child-on-child statistics in their determination that 1-in-10 children are sexually abused.
I was told a few years ago by the person who generated the stats for one of those organizations, that they do not include them or the stats would go way up. Why, really, are they not included? As the writer of this article says, the consequences for the victims are nearly identical.
I was told a few years ago by the person who generated the stats for one of those organizations, that they do not include them or the stats would go way up. Why, really, are they not included? As the writer of this article says, the consequences for the victims are nearly identical.
There is an epidemic of child sexual abuse all over the world that makes the coronavirus seem rather minor. Not as many people die from child sexual abuse as COVID-19 right now, but many do die and it's has been a steady stream for centuries if not millennia. Most COVID-19 survivors recover fully or almost fully. Most CSA survivors don't ever recover fully. A few do with some considerable help, but that is only available to a very small minority.
D2L.org (Darkness to Light) uses 1-10 stats including 1-in-7 girls and 1-in-15 boys.
RAINN uses stats that are even lower; 1-9 for girls, and 1-53 for boys.
According to the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children (APSAC), over a third of all child sexual abuse cases is committed by another minor. That would put the number of girls in the range of 1-5 or 1-6, which is still considerably higher than CDC and other reputable sites.
By leaving the child-on-child statistics out, they are not really reflecting the enormity of this issue and just how injurious it is to a generation of children. Or, for that matter, to every generation of children.
Both sites restrict their numbers to the USA, which is almost certainly better than many countries where there is much poverty. But I wish they would tell the whole truth. I wish they would state emphatically that this is the biggest and worst atrocity in the history of mankind, not just a widespread problem.
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The sham of ‘rehabilitation’: Many child sex trafficking victims are pushed back into abuse
The ‘rehabilitation’ which happens at the shelter homes are often either ineffective, or just a sham.
TNM Staff Follow @thenewsminute
This article is a part of Meri Suno, a campaign to give voice to survivors of trafficking. The campaign is led by members of the Indian Leadership Forum Against Trafficking, a survivor-led organisation formed to combat trafficking. Visit ILFAT.org to know more.
Priya (name changed) was just a child when she was trafficked for sex from her home in West Bengal. Her trafficker was a friendly neighbour who lived just next door. After years of abuse, Priya thought her woes would end when she was rescued. But as the assault of the pimps and customers ended, the assault of the system began. She had to run from pillar to post with an application for financial and livelihood support. Returning to her hometown was a terrifying thought for Priya, as going back home only meant a higher risk of being dragged back into sex work. Added to it was the stigma she would face from society.
All Priya wanted was some support from the government to find herself a home, and start afresh. But that didn’t happen. Soon, the organisation that was helping her found out that she had gone back into sex work – she was now working at a ‘massage parlour’.
Priya’s story is not an outlier, it is representative of the thousands of such cases where women, often trafficked into sex trade as children, are rescued from their traffickers only to end up returning to a life of abuse – because they just do not have any other option. The ‘rehabilitation’ which happens at the shelter homes are often either ineffective, or just a sham.
This happens all over the world. Sometimes it is a choice as the victims find it so much easier to prostitute themselves than to try and make an honest living.
The Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act (ITPA) states that a survivor of sex trafficking is to be placed in a protective home for rehabilitation with adequate services, in cases where reuniting them with the family is not in the woman’s best interests. Currently, in most cases, survivors are institutionalised in shelter homes. These are often heavily guarded and curb the freedom of the survivors.
Survivors of human trafficking, especially those trafficked at a young age are often conditioned into thinking that what happened to them is their fault. In addition to that, the society looks down upon survivors, especially those who were sexually exploited.
Moreover, being institutionalised means that survivors are unable to have agency over their own lives, and cannot take care of themselves.
There is more to this story on The News Minute.
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