All In The Family: Troubling Statistics About Child Molesters

Headline: ALL IN THE FAMILY: TROUBLING STATISTICS ABOUT CHILD MOLESTERS
Reporter: By Gregory Freeman

Publication: ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Last Printed: Tue., Mar. 5, 1996
Section: WAR PAGE, Page: 9B, Edition: FIVE STAR LIFT

NEVER TALK to strangers!"

It's one of the first warnings we give our children, from the minute they start going outside the house by themselves. As parents, we worry about child molesters. We envision them as strangers who might first offer our kids candy or other treats and then grab them and assault them. It's every parent's nightmare.

But now comes a study from the Justice Department that's likely to change the face of the molester in the minds of many. The report - based on the largest survey to date of state prison inmates - indicates that two-thirds of sex offenders in state prisons attacked children, and that a third of those victims were children or stepchildren of their attackers.
According to the department's Bureau of Justice Statistics, three out of four child-molesters committed their crimes either in their own homes or in the children's homes.
The Justice Department study said that more than half the child victims of rape or sexual assault were 12 or younger. And while a third of child molesters had attacked their own children or stepchildren, an additional half were friends, acquaintances or more-distant relatives of their victims. Only one in seven molested a child who was a stranger.

The results are consistent with a report last year by the American Medical Association. That report showed that three-quarters of sexual assaults are committed by a friend, acquaintance or family member. It also showed that 61 percent of all female rape victims are under 18. Child sexual abuse is widespread, the report said.

All of that might be frightening, but it's not surprising, says Greg Echele, executive director of the Family Resource Center here. Its goal is to treat and prevent child abuse. Each year, the center's programs and counselors reach about 6,000 children and adults in St. Louis and in St. Louis, St. Charles, Jefferson and Franklin counties.
"There's nothing there that I would disagree with, " he said. "If you look at abuse in the United States, there are 3.1 million cases of reported child abuse. And all of us know that that's a small number of the kids who are at risk of abuse."
Echele has found locally that a significant percent of children who are sexually abused are abused by people who are not strangers. "In our caseload, those are almost the most common cases we see, where a child is abused by parents or stepparents, " he said.

Child abuse - including child sexual abuse - often takes place in homes where spouse abuse is going on.
   "The abuse isn't just parents losing control of their behavior and taking it out on kids, " Echele said. "It's also parents who are drawn through some twisted form of sexual thinking to turn on their children sexually."
   And when it comes to true pedophiles, he added, "these folks often are not fixable."
   Abusers aren't always parents. "Often they're youngsters, teen-agers experimenting with their own sexuality, who sleep in the same room with a younger child and turn their attentions on that child. The abusers are commonly relatives or acquaintances."

Such cases often cause significant psychological damage to the children who are victims.
   "Some kids become violent if they've been hurt physically or sexually, " Echele said. "They fight everyone around them.
   "If they don't do that, they run. Since most kids can't outrun adults physically, they run emotionally. They stop talking, they pull back, they don't talk to adults. Because they won't do that, they can't function effectively in a classroom."
   The Family Resource Center has a preschool program designed to help youngsters who are bearing the emotional scars of sexual abuse. "Kids are often powerless when it comes to this sort of thing, and we try to work with them to help them, to get them so that they can function."

So what should parents tell their children?
   "You can always teach them that they have the ability to say no, that if something just doesn't feel right or if someone tries to touch them where they don't want to be touched, they can say no, " Echele said.
   "But it's difficult to know what to tell a child to prevent this sort of situation.
   Don't talk to strangers is a damned good rule, but you can't say don't talk to your father and your uncle and your grandpa. It's a difficult issue."

Gregory Freeman's column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Friday ... < deleted >

Daniel Schesch - Webweaver

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