Negative Stories in the War on Child Sexual Abuse - Episode VI - Dramatic Escalation

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. 

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.

Reports of Child Sex Abuse Cases Rising in South Carolina

By Karina Bolster, Source: Live 5

CHARLESTON, SC (WCSC) -
Over the last few months there have been several sexual abuse cases in the Lowcountry, many involving teachers and students.

The most recent case December 17, when a North Charleston teacher was arrested after police say he demanded a 13-year-old girl send him naked pictures of herself.

Behavioral and social media professionals say the exposure of these inappropriate relationships are becoming more common.

"It's an age where they're looking for an adult figure to kind of guide them," said Erika Rowell, Director of Programs at Darkness to Light. "So perpetrators will see that vulnerability and take advantage of that situation."

Some people may think the number of cases are increasing, but professionals say the exposure of these relationships means another thing.

"We've actually found that more adults are getting educated to they're able to make reports," Rowell said.

Data from the state's Department of Social Services shows between 2007 and 2012 there was a rise in reported cases in the Tri-County. During the five year stretch, the number of reported cases of sexual abuse per 10,000 children rose by roughly 20.

34,000 adults trained in D2L's Stewards of Children program

Professionals say these numbers suggest prevention training for adults has helped the reporting rates. During those years almost 34,000 adults in the Tri-County completed Darkness to Light's Stewards of Children child sexual abuse prevention training.

"They learn what are the signs of sexual abuse," Rowell said.

Some of those signs may be emotional or behavioral changes. One of the first steps in picking up on these cues is being as open as possible with your kids.

"If their kids are on social media accounts make sure the parents know which accounts their on, what the social media passwords are for each account," said Jenn Steere, Director of Content Marketing for The Modern Connection.

Some kids and parents may think it's an invasion of privacy, but professionals say perpetrators are using modern technology to move forward with inappropriate relationships, especially on social media apps like SnapChat and Facebook.

"Sexual abuse doesn't just happen overnight," Rowell said. "It's something a perpetrator sets up over a period of time through grooming behaviors."

"Make sure that all your information is private so that only your friends and you can interact online," Steere added. "So that if you had that rogue teacher or bus driver that is online and was trying to follow a student that they can't see what you're posting."

Steere adds: don't post anything to the internet

you wouldn't want your parents to see

According to numerous reports there are a number of fake accounts on social media apps, which Steere said has led to extreme inappropriate relationships between minors and adults.

Both Rowell and Steere said understanding what an appropriate relationship looks like between adults and children can help prevent future abuse.

They also add having a procedure in place with how to interact with certain people, like teachers, bus drivers, and coaches can aid in prevention.

"Instead of a front hug, maybe [give them] a side hug; a high five instead of a front hug," Rowell said. "We give very specific examples of how you can change your behavior to be more appropriate."

All teachers and staff in Berkeley, Charleston, and Dorchester County School Districts have taken a training course through Darkness to Light which addresses child sexual abuse.

Rowell adds they have done some training with private charter schools, but not all.

South Carolina passed Erin's Law in June 2014 educating children from a very early age. It's a great program and Stewards of Children compliments it very nicely by educating adults. Now, if we can stop adolescents from viewing pornography...

Are Child Rapists Monsters? Or Just Your Boyfriend?

Preventing child sexual abuse requires acknowledging the problem, advocates say

Erin Beck , Staff Writer, Charleston Gazette-Mail

10-month-old Emmaleigh died of her injuries after police say she was violently sexually assaulted. Benjamin Taylor, 32, of Cottageville, is charged with murder. Advocates say child abuse happens every day, usually by someone known and trusted by the family.

Unfortunately, people who abuse children, including infants, are not “monsters.”

Amanda Adkins, the mother of the 10-month-old baby who Benjamin Taylor allegedly raped in Jackson County last week, probably wouldn’t have let Taylor be around her daughter, Emmaleigh, if Taylor had fur or horns, indicating a more obvious threat. If Taylor was a “monster” — as many have called him in the days since Emmaleigh was assaulted, and then died of her injuries — then he would have never been allowed inside the home and Emmaleigh might be alive today.

But Taylor is a human being. So are the people who have committed lethal infant rapes in other areas throughout the world. So are all the numerous others who live in West Virginia who sexually and physically abuse children.

While the incidents may not elicit the same level of shock and revulsion, children in West Virginia, and everywhere, are sexually and physically abused every day, usually by someone known and trusted by the family.

It will take acknowledging and accepting that uncomfortable fact to learn to prevent similar incidents.

I have to disagree with Erin here. I know what she is saying but these people are monsters, it is just that we don't recognize what a monster is anymore. Society has gotten so desensitized to evil and violence that it looks almost normal to us. There must be signs of extreme narcissism, or a disdain for goodness and innocence, a lack of compassion, or something that signals the difference between a mentally and emotionally healthy person and a monster caught up in perversion and the destruction of innocence.

As most fathers would like their daughters to learn: if your boyfriend is rude or cruel to your waitress, your boyfriend is rude and cruel, and eventually he will be rude and cruel to you. We need to find those kinds of markers that differentiate child molesters from normal people.

Lt. D.B. Swiger, who heads the State Police Crimes Against Children unit, has investigated few cases involving strangers.

“They’re among us in society,” he said. “We all want to envision this horrid looking person that hides in the shadows and commits these crimes. The reality is it’s not the case.”

Jim McKay, state coordinator of Prevent Child Abuse West Virginia, noted that states spend a lot of money on sexual predator registries.

“The states that have really strict registries don’t necessarily have safer kids,” he said. “It creates a false sense of security because we think we can look at a map and see where the ‘monsters’ are, when the ‘monsters’ are right in our own homes.”

One in Ten, or much worse

While determining a definitive number is difficult because child abuse is under-reported, Darkness to Light, a well-respected child-abuse prevention organization that also provides training on preventing abuse, reviewed six studies and found that about one in ten children will be sexually abused before they turn 18.

In America the majority of sexually abused children are girls According to D2L: About one in seven girls and one in 25 boys with be sexually abused before they turn 18. However, D2L informed me that "they do not include peer on peer sex abuse in their statistics or the numbers would go way up".

So, in reality, we can conservatively say that about one in 5 girls are sexually abused before they turn 18. Some reputable organizations put that ratio at one in four or even one in three.

We also don’t know exactly how many children are abused on the state level. But child advocacy centers, where children are interviewed about allegations of abuse, served 3,518 new clients in the 2016 fiscal year, according to an annual report. About 35 percent were under the age of 6. As in Emmaleigh’s case, in 99 percent of cases, the alleged perpetrator was someone the child knew.

Of course, strangers rarely have access to children under 6 years of age.

And child maltreatment fatalities, while not as common, are also a regular occurrence in West Virginia. According to the Department of Health and Human Resources, there were 17 in the 2014 federal fiscal year. In Hampshire County in October 2013, an 18-month-old child died due to injuries caused by the mother’s boyfriend, according to summaries of the incidents provided by DHHR spokeswoman Allison Adler.

In Taylor County in October 2013, a father was charged after police said he either threw or shook his 2-month-old child, killing the infant. In Wood County in August 2014, a 2-week-old baby was injured and killed by a live-in boyfriend of the mother.

Notice, 2 of the 3 stories related immediately above involve boyfriends of the mother. In this blog you will find story after story of a mother's boyfriend or a child's step-father raping or sexually abusing a child. Single mothers are not nearly discerning enough when it comes to who they let into their children's lives and many children pay a very high price for their mother's recklessness.

Traci Busch, executive director of the West Virginia Court Appointed Special Advocates Association, understands the outrage and disgust over Emmaleigh’s case.

But she also wishes there was more outrage for the hundreds of children she’s served in her 30 years of experience, and worries that in our selective outrage, we are discounting those children’s experiences.

“It’s such a secret thing,” she said. “Nobody in society really wants to talk about it or think about it. When this comes out in the media, people don’t know how to handle their feelings about what happened. Let’s use our outrage as a community to figure out what we can do to prevent this — what we can do to protect our innocent children.”

‘I think there’s more we can do than call for justice’

Other child-abuse prevention advocates in the state also said they understand the intense emotion this case has evoked. They’re dealing with it themselves.

But they too cautioned against knee-jerk reactions.

As of mid-afternoon Friday, 60,000 people had called for side-stepping the criminal justice process and publicly hanging Taylor. The person who created it, “J.R.” wrote “Maybe if these people were actually afraid of what would happen to them if/when they were caught, they’d be less likely to do such vile things?” By late afternoon Friday, the petition, on the White House website, was closed because it was “in violation of our Terms of Participation.”

Senator Majority Leader Mitch Carmichael, R- Jackson, has also said the Legislature may consider bringing back the death penalty. He did not return a call Friday.

McKay, the head of Prevent Child Abuse West Virginia, noted that research suggests that perpetrators don’t think about what will happen next. According to the National Institute of Justice, there is no proof that the death penalty deters criminals, and increasing the severity of punishment does little to deter crime.

“The evidence is pretty clear that guy is not thinking about getting caught,” McKay said.

Calling for vengeance and putting perpetrators on death row may make people feel safer.

But advocates in West Virginia — who work in the field every day — would prefer to see West Virginians who are outraged by the case to put their energy into more preventative strategies.

“I think if you put all your focus on penalties, you lose focus on what’s actually happening,” said Emily Chittenden-Laird, director of the West Virginia Child Advocacy Network.

Chittenden-Laird said that while instituting the death penalty may seem like justice, it would actually result in making prosecutors less likely to bring cases forward, and juries less likely to convict.

“I think everybody’s immediate reaction is this visceral place where they want accountability and justice,” she said, “and there is no degree to which inflicting anything on this perpetrator would equate justice in this situation, and that’s just the reality we have to sit with. But I think there’s more we can do than call for justice.”

It’s still early in the investigation, and police are releasing only limited information, so it’s unclear what warning signs might have preceded the assault in this case.

Jackson County Sheriff Tony Boggs said he didn’t know of any specific ways Emmaleigh’s case could have been prevented.

“Take care of them and hug them extra,” he said.

Taylor did post jokes that demeaned women on Facebook, which might have set off some sort of red flag about his values. It could hardly predict infant rape, although McKay noted “our collective inaction in response to those types of jokes and comments” could be part of the problem.

Exactly! And yet the child's mother, and most mothers, would not be deterred by that red flag. Our expectations of people in our lives is at such an all-time low that we hardly ever consider a person's character anymore before allowing them unsupervised access to our children. It's a sorry state our society has fallen into, and, as always, it's our children who pay the price for our carelessness.

But there are ways that we can prevent child abuse, according to advocates. The work will just take more time than the seconds it takes to sign a petition.

‘We all have a role in preventing in child sexual abuse’

Police and advocates provided a variety of strategies for preventing abuse. Swiger encouraged parents to be vigilant, and take children at their word. Advocates also provided additional strategies, including: ensuring children feel safe and unafraid to talk about sensitive subjects, reporting suspicions, becoming educated on the signs, providing support to new or stressed-out parents, and volunteering for community programs that support children.

The first step, they said, is accepting the possibility that it could happen to your children, and someone you know could be the perpetrator. Boyfriends of single mothers are also frequent perpetrators.

In an email, Les Nichols, who develops child protection programs within youth-serving organizations, and spent 22 years as a youth safety expert for the Boys and Girls Clubs of America, pointed to a book, “Identifying Child Molesters,” by Dr. Carla Van Dam.

He said the author notes that “child sexual abuse is so horrible to the public, that we would have eliminated it from our society years ago if it were not for the four obstacles we, ourselves, present,” including:

 People must accept that people they often trust and respect are capable of being a child molester,

 People must be willing to learn about the patterns of child molesters, which are very predictable,

 People must be willing to learn to intervene in some way to prevent things from going any further, and

 Someone must connect the dots so that a molester doesn’t keep going from victim to victim.

“All of us are angry and horrified at what happened to Baby Adkins,” McKay said. “As a father, I can only imagine how much pain their family is suffering right now. But this case highlights the importance of our efforts to keep children safe.”

He advised everyone, not just parents, to look into the Darkness to Light child abuse prevention training, and said that local trainings are also being planned.

“One thing we have learned in recent years is that communities are prepared to come together in response to crisis,” he said. “We need to come together in response to this crisis, just as we did during the flood or at other times. We all have a role in preventing in child sexual abuse and as a state we can, and must, prevent this kind of abuse from occurring.

Major NGOs Partner with TLC to Raise Profile of Child Sex Abuse in US

Darkness to Light, Rainn partner with TLC to raise 

child sex abuse awareness

CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCIV) — Charleston-based Darkness to Light is partnering with the TLC television network and the group RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network) in a national campaign to prevent child sexual abuse.

The three organizations announced their joint efforts in a press release Thursday. Their goal is to raise awareness and create a national dialogue on child sexual abuse. They hope to increase awareness and educate the public on ways to prevent it.

The announcement comes alongside TLC’s move Thursday to cancel one of its top-rated shows, 19 Kids and Counting, two months after one of the show’s stars, Josh Duggar, admitted to molesting young girls when he was a teenager.

"We cannot emphasize enough how impressive it is that TLC is using their platform to reach millions of Americans in addressing the stigma that child sexual abuse is," Kendall Sherry with Darkness to Light said Friday. "The partnership between TLC, RAINN and Darkness to Light has the potential to change on a national scale how people think about, talk about and react to child sexual abuse."

Dr. Lyndon Haviland, Board of Directors member, interim president and CEO for Darkness to Light said D2L is looking forward to partnering with TLC "to bring child sexual abuse out of secrecy and into the forefront."

Haviland called child sexual abuse a "public health crisis ... affecting (more than) one in 10 children nationwide."

"We applaud (TLC) for the courage to begin a national dialogue about what all adults can do to protect children,” Haviland said.

Darkness to Light (D2L) is a nonprofit organization founded in Charleston in 2000. D2L’s full statement on the new partnership is available here.

TLC said the following in its statement:

“Over these past weeks, TLC has consulted regularly with leading victims' rights and advocacy organizations in the U.S., including RAINN and Darkness to Light, to discuss how to use this moment to address the issue and make a positive impact. Unfortunately, child sexual abuse is not an isolated issue; it affects many children and families around the world. To that end, we are partnering with both organizations on a multi-platform campaign to raise awareness and educate parents and families about the issue.

TLC said in the release it is in the process of producing a one-hour documentary on the issue of child sexual abuse that will feature members of the Duggar family and others that have been affected by abuse. See TLC’s full statement here.

Katherine Hull Fliflet, Vice President of Communications for RAINN, said the following in that organization’s statement Thursday:

“We are pleased to be partnering with TLC to fight child sexual abuse, and appreciate its efforts to spur a national dialogue about this issue. … As this multi-platform campaign moves ahead, we look forward to working closely with TLC and our partners at Darkness to Light. … Together, we believe we can help families that have been affected by this terrible crime and make sure that parents and others have the knowledge and tools they need to help keep kids safe.”

RAINN is the nation's largest anti-sexual violence organization, providing support to survivors through various means. Its full statement on the partnership can be found here.