Maspal!

Stop Abuse Before It Starts

By Fran Henry and Mark L. Rosenberg
Tuesday, March 23, 2004; Page A19

Appearing on "Meet the Press" last month, Robert Bennett, one of the chief
authors of a report on the child sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church,
said that "child sexual abuse is a national health problem -- it is a
national crisis." The report noted that since 1950, 4,392 Catholic priests
had sexually abused 10,667 children. But, as Bennett noted, these numbers
are just a small part of the problem, because child sexual abuse is
perpetrated not only by fathers in the church but by fathers and other
people in families across the United States. If we as a nation are serious
about protecting our children, we need a strategy for prevention. We need to
stop child sexual abuse before it happens.

Punishment for the abuser and treatment for the victim are necessary, but
they aren't enough. We ought to learn from what has been done in the area of
drinking and driving. Public health scientists, working with advocates,
fostered a new social norm: that drunk driving, far from being something to
joke about, is unacceptable. People stopped looking the other way when
someone started to get behind the wheel under the influence of alcohol.
They insisted on designated drivers and on taking the keys away. As a society,
we lowered our threshold for destructive behavior of that sort and moved more
quickly to help people with drinking problems -- if possible before they got
into trouble from drinking and driving.

In the same way, we need to be looking for warnings of sexual abuse of
children, and to act on those warnings before the offense is committed.
Stop It Now is an organization that uses marketing techniques to change
attitudes about child sexual abuse. Through its work, we have learned that
people at risk of abuse will come forward for help if it is offered. We have
learned that families need help to identify healthy sexual behavior and the
warning signs of abusive behavior in adults and children. They need help when
they have concerns about sexual behavior toward children but nothing to
report because the system starts working only after there is an identified
victim. When the social norms support seeking help, family members have
courageously come forward with wrenching stories of what has happened and
how it could have been different.

Estimates of the incidence of abuse in the United States range from 100,000
to 500,000 cases a year. Children routinely do not report sexual abuse; 88
percent is not reported to authorities, and only 3 percent of people who
have sexually offended have been convicted. Most such offenses occur in the
homes and neighborhoods of the children. We also know that in intimate
settings, children are even less likely to reveal abuse. Many people still
believe that strangers are the danger to children. But most sexual abuse is
perpetrated by someone a child knows -- a family member, a family friend or
even an older adolescent. Sexual abusers come from all socioeconomic classes
and all racial and ethnic groups.

Why does it happen? Bennett said that within the church "there was such a
fear of bringing scandal to the church that they planted seeds of an even
greater scandal." The same fear keeps one parent from reporting the
destructive behavior of a spouse.

We cannot put the responsibility for reporting and stopping child sexual
abuse on the child. Adults need to be educated about what constitutes sexual
abuse and taught to recognize the warning signs. And we need to make help
available for abusers or potential abusers. In Vermont, abusers began coming
forward to the criminal justice system once they knew help was available.

Prevention of child sexual abuse will not be accomplished overnight. But what
better time than now to start mobilizing the programs we have for children
and families, to educate parents and to change the social norms? It's time
for the church and for the country to move beyond punishment for perpetrators
and therapy for the victims. By starting to focus on prevention we can ensure
that in many instances, the abuse will never occur.

Fran Henry is founder of Stop It Now, a program to prevent sexual abuse of
children. Mark Rosenberg, executive director of the Task Force for Child
Survival and Development, is a former assistant surgeon general and founding
director of the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, a part of
the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Henry will discuss this
piece today at 12:30 p.m. on www.washingtonpost.com.