tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36538161035453359122024-03-05T00:24:15.655-08:00The Primary Prevention of Child Sexual AbuseThis blog discusses primary prevention, a controversial area of prevention that aims to educate and reach would-be sexual abusers so that there are fewer victims of sexual crime. Resources are on the right column, and a full directory of posts is at the bottom of the page. The goal is to prevent child sexual abuse... before it can happen.TNF 13http://www.blogger.com/profile/00234644586674907757noreply@blogger.comBlogger61125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653816103545335912.post-25055035214628415432019-02-11T18:59:00.000-08:002019-02-11T19:33:05.564-08:00Helping Others Understand Pedophilia Effectively<u><b><span style="font-size: large;">Why Be Effective? </span></b></u><br />
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Personally, I think this question answers itself. We have all seen examples of conversations that did not go well at all, and one or both people involved ended up angry or worse. That is not the ideal on a topic we want people to understand, so we need to find the best methods that work, not just for our specific issue - destigmatizing the sexual attraction to children so people treat us like people - but for other related issues as well. <br />
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I am most familiar with the prevention of sexual abuse, which I have found to be an equally stigmatized though not as angering topic for people. Basically, that topic, like pedophilia, is just so disgusting people simply do not want to investigate it or learn new things. They simply do not want to know. <br />
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For reference about what I am about to outline, you can drop by the following links:<br />
<a href="https://www.nsvrc.org/moving-toward-prevention-guide-reframing-sexual-violence">National Sexual Violence Resource Center and Berkley Studies Media Group Report</a><br />
<a href="http://www.bmsg.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/bmsg_raliance_sexual_violence_prevention_messaging_guide.pdf">RALIANCE</a><a href="http://www.bmsg.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/bmsg_raliance_sexual_violence_prevention_messaging_guide.pdf"> and Berkley Studies Media Group Report </a> <br />
<a href="https://www.nsvrc.org/sites/default/files/2015-05/publications_bulletin_10-principles-for-effective-prevention-messaging.pdf">National Sexual Violence Resource Center Guide</a><br />
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<u><b><span style="font-size: large;">Strategy Vs. All The Facts</span></b></u><br />
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The basic reality is, no matter how much we know all of the nuances of our issue, most people do not care about those nuances. We are hurting ourselves by trying to cover all of them. They need to know why they should care about what you have to say. Why should they work past their disgust of the topic to consider your viewpoint? You cannot engage most people by throwing a ton of information at them.<br />
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I think most of us can agree on the following points:<br />
<ol>
<li>Pedophilia is not a mental illness, pedophilic disorder is.</li>
<li>Pedophilia cannot be changed and it is harmful to try.</li>
<li>Pedophilia is the sexual attraction to prepubescent children.</li>
<li>Pedophilia is distinct from hebephilia, ephebophilia, and minor attraction.</li>
<li>Pedophiles are all minor attracted people, but not all minor attracted people are pedophiles.</li>
<li>More therapy needs to be available for pedophiles.</li>
<li>Mandatory reporting and stigma interfere with pedophiles getting help.</li>
<li>Fictional materials do not put pedophiles at risk to harm children without other factors involved.</li>
<li>It is wrong to sexually harm or exploit children. </li>
</ol>
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For many, the best course of action is to stick to a single fact or two and then give them an opportunity to learn more if they so choose, whether it be via link, podcast, video or simply an invitation to communicate further (ie, "Do you have any questions for me?"). Trying to cover every single fact, or even what we might regard as the most important facts, can lose the people we are trying to reach. We do not want to throw too much information at people all at one time.<br />
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For example, the average person probably does not care about the distinction between pedophilia, the sexual attraction, and pedophilic disorder, where someone's behavior or internalized attitudes have become an interference on daily life. To them, pedophiles are someone with a mental disorder.<br />
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While technically incorrect, we could gain a lot of ground by agreeing with them and pointing out that having pedophilia is not a choice, but harming children is a choice. This could be phrased, "Those with pedophilia can indeed have a mental disorder, and because of that, pedophilia is not a choice, harming children is a choice we can choose not to make." <br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><u><b>Picking Our Battles Wisely</b></u></span><br />
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Yes, this is another area where we are simply not doing very well. Many of us interact with people who are never going to change their minds in the vague hope that someone will see the conversation and become convinced. We also have a large amount of hostile individuals who fabricate nonsense in order to discredit, insult, and inspire negative emotion towards us. The thing is, we fall for this nonsense time and time again, believing that their false accusations need to be challenged for the broader public to believe us.<br />
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This is not always true. While this was certainly the case with the false accusation of Ender Wiggin being that fellow from Canada, this is not true each and every time someone accuses one of our number of being a pedophile, child molester, etc. Many of these trolls are best blocked, not argued with, because most rational people will see most of these accusations as a ridiculous ploy to insult rather than civilly engage in conversation. More specific false allegations made outside of the context of normal dialogue, such as the accusation of Ender being <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/justin-coulombe-sentence-sex-offences-1.4907716">Justin Coulombe</a>, should of course be challenged in the strongest terms possible. <br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><u><b>Knowing The Facts</b></u></span><br />
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Yes, we had Ender and then we have me. We know our facts and arguments well. This does not give you an excuse not to learn. If you want to challenge the stigma against pedophilia and educate people about the facts vs. the myths that are out there, then you need to educate yourself about the facts. Deferring to me is fine and wonderful on nuanced topics, but the fact of the matter is, it makes you look less knowledgeable and undermines your credibility.You should also bear in mind that the facts are just a small part of convincing other people, and most people will not be convinced by facts alone, which leads us to...<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><u><b>...Being Genuine And Making Private Outreach A Priority</b></u></span><br />
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Wait, but how do we do that if we are concerned about outing our real identity? Exactly. Social media is not, has not been, and likely never will be a good platform for letting people see pedophiles as human beings with a sexual attraction rather than monsters who abuse kids. Face-to-face communication changes minds a whole lot faster. People are also less inclined to respond how they believe will be popular when approached privately, so rather than publicly shaming journalists for misusing the term "pedophile," a better approach would be to email them privately, if possible.<br />
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We should always be prioritizing what is most effective over what makes us, personally, feel good. At times, this means not insulting people who absolutely deserve it. At times, this means accepting something that is technically incorrect in order to pick our battles wisely. Regardless of the specific situation, we need to ensure we are doing what it takes for people to drop their defenses and listen, not reject what we say out of hand because we are angry at them for being (understandably) "stupid" when 90% of the population is very uneducated about topics we are very familiar with.<br />
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Yes, I know. I am hardly a shining example of this. That is why I want to challenge all of us - myself included - in learning what makes for effective advocacy, doing what works and learning from what does not work, and ensuring that we set ourselves up for success, not just with the critical-thinking types, but with everyone else as well.TNF 13http://www.blogger.com/profile/00234644586674907757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653816103545335912.post-76596944563983524242018-01-25T06:25:00.000-08:002018-01-25T06:25:07.027-08:00To MAPs: A Message About Bears<b><u>The Bears?</u></b><br />
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Yes, the bears. Those of you on Twitter know what I am talking about. The bears are a group of people that have decided to take it upon themselves to harass, report, bully, and intimidate us into silence. Here are but two examples:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVv0hJDhX9r0P7Gew2uvekczbKpSfKjGiIhsVaHxw24T7QTHhydAL88uM5pG-JpsTE6ksjVaWRheLAIcmbm7yjmdrfeDAVkvL0c0PtlrdpNTGBLXog78CpErncD-k-h7hUnzY4DoQzx-8C/s1600/Bears+Jacob.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="653" data-original-width="583" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVv0hJDhX9r0P7Gew2uvekczbKpSfKjGiIhsVaHxw24T7QTHhydAL88uM5pG-JpsTE6ksjVaWRheLAIcmbm7yjmdrfeDAVkvL0c0PtlrdpNTGBLXog78CpErncD-k-h7hUnzY4DoQzx-8C/s400/Bears+Jacob.jpg" width="356" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjU302GivGE_ZPBD9mTGkxf2OIadNekZ0hgmiyzSV2yOt_d7E23myvs53NBE0npqnZN7dcjVM02QvjW3quWoe0PKE07mmW4kDEYuncqPD3-kyDpG1fQfuQYaO_yA-Qe9w0OLQCEBbu4Le1E/s1600/Idiots.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="297" data-original-width="586" height="202" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjU302GivGE_ZPBD9mTGkxf2OIadNekZ0hgmiyzSV2yOt_d7E23myvs53NBE0npqnZN7dcjVM02QvjW3quWoe0PKE07mmW4kDEYuncqPD3-kyDpG1fQfuQYaO_yA-Qe9w0OLQCEBbu4Le1E/s400/Idiots.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
I think these bears are bad news. Not only do they attempt to bully us into silence, they send death threats, and are generally just trolls. They took credit for getting Todd Nickerson suspended, harass people, and clearly bait people to report them.<br />
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<b><u>My Policy On Trolls</u></b><br />
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My policy on trolls is very straightforward: Discuss things <i>just enough</i> to show that they are trolls, and then block them. I have no shame in tweeting at trolls behind a block. Some of the nastier trolls, I refuse to block on principle, so I discuss with them until they get into a state where they will not listen, and then from there they dig their own holes and they end up suspended or locked.<br />
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One of the most basic rules on the internet is:<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Don%27t_feed_the_Troll">DO NOT FEED THE TROLL!</a></span></b><br />
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Why? Because they are like an obnoxious whining puppy dog begging for your food - except trolls clamor for your attention. By not giving them that attention, they will eventually leave you alone. Twitter also has tools to <i style="font-weight: bold;">make</i> people leave you alone.<br />
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<b><u>My Target Audience</u></b><br />
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My target audience is people who will listen to the message that we can prevent child sexual abuse by focusing on the facts so we can form effective interventions before a child is harmed. My target audience are people that can see that pedophilia, and the isolation, depression, and issues it can bring up for pedophiles, is a condition that pedophiles need to be getting support for, be that peer support or professional help. No one can go through life alone, and that is a truth that spans any issue, not just pedophilia.<br />
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In other words, my target audience is people who can use critical thinking skills, not people that use an account on social media to bully people for being different. Those people are simply not worth my time, because for every minute I have to spend dealing with them, it takes away from more useful things I could be doing: Spreading my message that prevention is a good idea, and supporting MAPs is one way to make that happen, directly supporting other MAPs, and taking care of myself so that I am in good place to be advocating and putting myself out there.<br />
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While there is <i>some</i> value in engaging some of the more hostile trolls (as Kamil and Ender readily demonstrated) because it brings the troll's comments up to the people who follow them, increasing visibility, it should always be kept in mind that <i style="font-weight: bold;">the troll is not the target audience</i>. The likelihood that you will convince a troll is next to zero.<br />
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<b><u>If You Really Insiste...</u></b><br />
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If you really feel you must talk to trolls, do not get emotional, ever. Yes, that is a challenge. You must keep firmly in mind that your audience is not the troll, but anyone paying attention to the conversation. Stick to firmly reasoned arguments, do not get baited, and <i style="font-weight: bold;">never</i> allow the troll to get under your skin.<br />
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And for the love of the internet, use the reporting, blocking, and muting tools available to you.TNF 13http://www.blogger.com/profile/00234644586674907757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653816103545335912.post-55682679841238358892017-12-26T14:11:00.001-08:002017-12-26T14:11:18.053-08:00An Introduction To Internet Advocating<u><b>Say What?</b></u><br />
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Advocacy on the internet? Absolutely! There are many, many people who have blogs, and they seek to reach certain audiences. While this post is not intended to help you do your research into how to best reach the audience you want to reach, it <i>can</i> help give you some pointers for how to be a readable, likable, and charismatic presence that people will trust and listen to.<br />
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<b><u>A Word About Names</u></b><br />
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Before you start your advocacy, you need to think long and hard about the name you will use and whether you should be using a pseudonym. Some topics are so controversial, the answer is easy. Some topics, you may need to do some research into who your enemies and rivals will be, and the kind of ethics they will use. Other topics, you are in the clear majority, and you will be fine using your real name.<br />
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While using your real name, or at least, a real-sounding pseudonym like Francis Falkland, can lend you a level of credibility, it can also get you in trouble if other people have a similar name or live in a similar location to someone the name you choose. You will want to do some homework on that front.<br />
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<u><b>A Word About Words</b></u><br />
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To begin with, I need to talk about the words we use. This is especially true for the topics I cover. If I use words that will make people shut down or get emotional, I just lost most of my audience. Pedophilia? No one knows what that really means, and some think it is the abuse of a child.<br />
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So, we need to talk about words. Jargon? Forget it. Leave it out. That means you will need to go back and edit. Let me give you an example of a paragraph with jargon, and a paragraph that says the same thing differently:<br />
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Pedophilia is a subject that no one wants to talk about. It elicits all kinds of reactions from us, and most of them are extremely negative. To discuss this topic, we must put our reactions down and talk about pedophilia.<br />
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That was the jargon version, unedited. So, what would that look like if I rephrased it?<br />
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Minor attraction is a subject that is hard for most people to talk about, because of the emotion and synonyms it brings up. To discuss minor attraction, we need to set some of our beliefs and reactions aside and look at the facts.<br />
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Do you see what I did there?<br />
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<b><u>A Word About Font, Style, Color, And Making Things Easy To Read</u></b><br />
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Do you know what people hate about reading websites? Tiny font, or font that is so colored or styled that it becomes difficult or impossible to read. <span style="color: #fff2cc;">Yellow</span>? Forget it. <span style="color: #9fc5e8;">Light blue</span>?<span style="color: #d9ead3;"> Light green</span>? <span style="font-size: x-small;">Small font</span>? No, leave it alone. Some of those things, I had to learn the hard way.<br />
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For a really easy look at what people like to see for a blog, take a look at my <a href="https://medium.com/@TNF_13/index-of-stories-d96227831e2c">Medium page</a>. While Medium has its limitations as a blog format, it illustrates this point perfectly: People need a slightly larger font. What font face should you use? That depends entirely on the effect you are going for in your audience. Do you want to be seen as an authority and trustworthy on your subject? Times New Roman. I know. That is not my favorite font either. For a more complete analysis of font choices, <a href="https://www.crazyegg.com/blog/psychology-of-fonts-infographic/">see here</a>.<br />
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<b><u>A Word About Platforms</u></b><br />
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Now, we come to the real issue: What platform should you use for advocacy? That depends entirely on what your topic is. Do you cover an issue that comes up often in the news? Then your platform might primarily be Disqus or Livefyre, maybe even Facebook or other plugins that news sites use to let users discuss the news. Do you cover an issue that is controversial? Pick a platform that is friendly to discussing it: Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, Disqus, and others are great choices.<br />
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No matter what you choose to get your word out, you must have a primary platform for your content. Google's Blogger interface is handy, though Wordpress has distinct advantages over Blogger. You may even consider forming a website. No matter what your primary platform is, you will want to make it easy for people to read and use. Think of the easiest websites and blogs you navigate: Why are they easy to navigate?<br />
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Whichever platform you use, you do not want to use just one: You will want to use multiple platforms, and be comfortable using them. <div>
<br /><b><u>About Ease-Of-Use And Accessibility</u></b><br />
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When I use other advocacy sites, like Stop It Now!, one of the biggest drawbacks is the ability to easily find the right page to fit your need. Why? Because they categorize their information based on in-text links, not drop-down menus. So, when I formed <a href="https://www.csaprimaryprevention.org/">my website</a>, I settled on a theme that put what I needed to link people to in one simple menu, sometimes with sub-menus.<br />
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Why? Because having to go to that one specific page to find that one specific link is something most people are not willing to do. If they cannot find the information they are looking for, they will give up or go somewhere else. If you want your information to be what they find, then you need to figure out how to make that happen. Is your primary platform showing up in particular searches with specific keywords? Use those keywords in your posts wherever they make sense.<br />
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<b><u>In Short, Be Creative!</u></b><br />
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You do not want to be stubborn and stick to a particular style just because you like it. You need to use what works, and that <i>will</i> push you outside your comfort zone. To do that, you need to be creative and think of things from different angles. You need to think hard about what is working, what is not, and what kind of feedback you are getting. If you are running a blog, you will need to post often to see results, and you will need to plug the blog posts from other platforms. If you are running a website, you need to remember to <i>mention</i> your website on other platforms, or at the very least, list it in your profiles in other platforms. Shamelessly plug, but do not spam.<br />
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That should give you a few tips to getting started on being a successful internet advocate that people pay attention to. Start discussions! Create controversy! Get messy! Just make sure people listen.</div>
TNF 13http://www.blogger.com/profile/00234644586674907757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653816103545335912.post-76150148347364101852017-11-11T17:30:00.000-08:002017-11-11T17:30:24.840-08:00About Roy Moore and Others Accused of Sexual Misconduct<b><u>Roy Who?</u></b><br />
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Roy Moore is a judge in Alabama who is a candidate for a seat in the US Senate representing Alabama. While he won the 2017 election, there was a bombshell revelation that he stands accused of sexually abusing a 14-year-old girl and having sex with several high school students.<br />
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Since the #MeToo campaign several weeks ago, survivors of sexual abuse or harassment have been coming out of the woodwork to share their stories of victimization. This has not only affected Alabama, it is affecting us right here in Minnesota.<br />
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<b><u>Dan Schoen and Tony Cornish</u></b><br />
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Dan Schoen (DFL representative in the Minnesota House) was recently accused of sexual harassment. A day later, a lobbyist came forward to accuse Tony Cornish (GOP representative in the Minnesota House) of sexual harassment. Both Schoen and Cornish are members of the Minnesota House Public Safety Committee. Cornish had been the chair, but the GOP speaker of the Minnesota House has stripped him of his chairmanship.<br />
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The allegations against Cornish will be investigated by an outside firm, according to the most recent information from the Pioneer Press.<br />
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<b><u>Why I Believe the Victims</u></b><br />
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I have seen many questions, accusations, and comments floating around the internet. Some of them are to the effect of, "Give these men due process, they are innocent until proven guilty." Some of them state that the victims may have ulterior motives. Some of them wonder why victims took so long to report the revelations, and why now.<br />
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As an advocate for the prevention of sexual abuse, I have read some research in the way of false allegations. The fact of the matter is, they are quite rare, less than 8% of child sexual abuse cases are false allegations, and of those, they usually originate with adults, not the victims themselves. While I am less familiar with sexual assault as a whole, Quartz did <a href="https://qz.com/980766/the-truth-about-false-rape-accusations/">an excellent piece</a> this past May where they discussed just how prevalent false allegations are.<br />
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In short, I think there is ample evidence for the statistical likelihood that victims in general tell the truth. When it comes to these specific allegations against Moore, Cornish, and Schoen, I believe the victims, because I believe that not doing so does them a disservice, and not only them, but a disservice to all victims of sexual violence.<br />
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It takes an amazing amount of courage to come forward under a pseudonym and say that you were sexually abused, and I have seen many do just that. I am one of that number. It takes even more courage for someone to come forward using their real name, because they are putting their reputation on the line and trusting it to the not-so-trustworthy criminal justice system, which can support their accusation, or spread doubt about the veracity of their claims.<br />
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<b><u>Where Does Due Process Fit In?</u></b><br />
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Where indeed? If we are to believe the victims, how do these accused men get their due process? To answer this, I must ask a very basic question: How many rapists ever face justice? To that end, the Rape Abuse Incest National Network paints a very scary picture: For every 1,000 rapes, only 310 are reported to police, 57 of those reports lead to arrest, 11 are referred to prosecutors, and 7 lead to a felony conviction. In other words, we prosecute less than 6% of rapists.<br />
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Due process means that an accused person has the right to face the allegations before a judge and jury, if they so choose, and defend themselves against the allegations. When most rapists never even reach that point, we have a failure of our system to hold perpetrators accountable. We also have a failure in our society in that we doubt victims when they come forward. If someone is to get their due process, then they first need to be charged with a crime.<br />
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After they are charged with a crime, then we can talk about due process, not before. The statute of limitations in Alabama, where Moore committed his act of violence, still allows him to be charged with the sexual abuse of a child under 16 years old. Moore should absolutely be charged. However, even then, it is extremely unlikely, even if he committed the crime he is accused of, that he will be charged, let alone convicted.<br />
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<b><u>Our Justice System Already Fails at Due Process</u></b><br />
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In case you did not know this, we overlook due process when it comes to certain crimes. Sexual crimes are, "considered especially heinous," and because of this, a myriad of laws have been passed that to the average person, are obviously punitive. These include but are not limited to:<br />
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<ul>
<li>The mandate to register as a sex offender</li>
<li>Notifying the public of where sex offenders live</li>
<li>Restricting where sex offenders can live</li>
<li>Marking the passports of sex offenders</li>
<li>Travel restrictions due to registration status: If an offender visits another state, that state will require them to register in that state after a certain period of time</li>
</ul>
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All of these requirements are not seen as punitive by most legislative bodies, they are treated as preventative measures that are aimed at improving public safety. However, these measures, according to the research, do no such thing, and have been heavily criticized by human rights organizations for - you guessed it - violating a person's due process rights, as well as other basic rights. </div>
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In short, the very fabric of how we treat sexual crimes needs to change, not only in the criminal justice system, but in our everyday lives. When less than 6% of rapists get convicted, we have a systemic failure to hold perpetrators accountable, to believe victims, and to see that justice is served. When we require convicts to jump through extra hoops like the above restrictions after the completion of their sentence, we see a justice system that has become draconian and does not address the realities of what is effective in reducing crime: We see a system that blatantly violates the rights of both perpetrators and victims. </div>
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I believe it is time for that to change. </div>
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<br />TNF 13http://www.blogger.com/profile/00234644586674907757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653816103545335912.post-40009187697648291862017-10-04T18:55:00.002-07:002017-10-04T19:02:10.615-07:00Five Things Sexual Abuse Survivors Must Do BetterSo, recently, <a href="http://stopabusecampaign.org/">Stop Abuse Campaign</a> came out with a featured story, titled, "<a href="http://stopabusecampaign.org/2017/06/16/top-ten-things-you-learn-by-listening-to-survivors-3/">Top Ten Things You Learn by Listening to Survivors.</a>" As a survivor, MAP, and advocate, I have some issues with some of what they share, but I found this particular story informative. It helps me to hear the stories and perspectives of survivors I have never met, because I am an introvert and the support group I attended for many years was a rather small one. This limited my exposure to other survivors, and these days, the most interaction I have with other survivors is through my advocacy.<br />
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<b><u>I Am A Survivor</u></b><br />
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In case you did not know, I myself am a <a href="https://medium.com/@TNF_13/my-experience-with-sexual-abuse-and-pedophilia-2423c8265a17">sexual abuse survivor</a>. I do not talk about it much, because it is not the abuse itself that has affected me overmuch, it was my struggle to find resources for coping with my pedophilia that affected me more. The abuse tweaked my beliefs more than it traumatized me. So, I think what I say here has validity to survivor concerns, as well as ending sexual abuse.<br />
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<b><u>Thing Number One: Learn The Facts And Cite Them Properly</u></b><br />
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The first thing that abuse survivors who advocate seem to have an issue with is letting the facts speak for themselves, as well as stating something as fact and then failing to cite the source for it somewhere in their material, or in a visible enough location that anyone can find it. Sometimes, survivor advocates push policies that have no basis in fact. Other times, they <a href="https://csaprimaryprevention.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-cherry-picked-statistics-of-parents.html">cherry-pick</a> the statistics they cite.<br />
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Sometimes, bad information is to blame, and organizations cite the source properly, but the source turns out to be a bad apple or outdated. In example, for years, Gene Abel was treated as the end-all solution to issues related to pedophilia, and much of his "research" was cited on many sites. To this day, his "research" is cited on <a href="https://www.d2l.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/all_statistics_20150619.pdf">Darkness to Light's statistics page</a> in saying that, "Pedophilic offenders often start offending at an early age, and often have a large number of victims (frequently not family members)". We now know that Gene Abel was <a href="http://www.gainesville.com/opinion/20170104/jean-zeeb-column-misleads-about-sex-offenders">full of garbage</a>, and he has an entire <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Abel">Wikipedia page</a> almost entirely on how he is a quack.<br />
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Other times, popularity takes a role: Sex offender policies have been particularly popular with the public, and so they get pushed more frequently because they have public support, even though there is an utter lack of research supporting the effectiveness of sex offender policies (feel free to do your own homework: "effectiveness of sex offender registration" and "effectiveness of Megan's Law" should help get you started).<br />
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<u><b>Thing Number Two: Include More Perspectives Besides Survivors</b></u><br />
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The fact that I am a MAP in addition to being a survivor colors how I look at preventing sexual abuse. Sometimes, the voices in academia are ignored because they use complicated language and propose ideas that are downright unsettling. However, these are people who have dedicated their lives to figuring out why sex crimes happen so that they can be prevented. It is also important to have voices from the academic world coloring our perspective, because they see the data and trends firsthand and can give us practical solutions we might not otherwise consider.<br />
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I know many stories of people who wrestled with pedophilia, and ended up hurting a child because they did not have <a href="https://www.csaprimaryprevention.org/i-like-kids.html">resources available to them</a>. While that is <i><u>no</u></i> excuse, it means that referring to abusers as pedophiles actually <i>hurts</i> prevention efforts by giving pedophiles the idea that they will inevitably hurt a child (an idea that can not only be severely damaging, but turn into self-fulfilling prophecy).<br />
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Survivors also push for harsher sentencing, despite overwhelming evidence that sex offenders eventually make their way back into our communities, and mostly never commit another crime. The harder we make it to get back into the community, the easier we make it for them to commit another crime because we give them more reasons to give up on a fulfilling life. While it may be difficult for survivors to imagine seeing the perspective of an ex-offender, I think it is necessary because it gives us a face-to-face look at what we can do with the policies we push for.<br />
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<b><u>Thing Number Three: Realize Not All Abused Children React The Same Way</u></b><br />
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This is basic, but each survivor is different. Just because another survivor has a differing view of their abuse, and abuse as a whole, does not make that view less legitimate. Just because someone's abuse seemed less bad than your own or someone else's does not mean that their abuse did not affect them. We should give each other space to hold our own views, and give each other the space to share - or not share - how abuse has affected us.<br />
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As survivors, we must also avoid perpetuating the myth that most victims go on to abuse children, because that is not what the facts say. The research is very clear: Around 50-60% of abusers claim to have been abused, and studies that use polygraph find that only 30-40% of sexual abusers have been sexually abused. We would expect a much higher rate, and more abusers for each victim, if most victims go on to abuse children. Instead, we find that there are more victims for each abuser.<br />
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<b><u>Thing Number Four: Pedophilia Is Not Abuse, Pedophiles Are Not Abusers</u></b><br />
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This may be a nuance distinction for some, but pedophilia is best understood as a sexual attraction to children. It is not synonymous with sexual abuse. Multiple sources attest to this: James Cantor, Elizabeth Letourneau, Michael Seto, and Ian McPhail are just a few of the many researchers that recommend against conflating a sexual attraction with sexual abuse. Likewise, a pedophile is someone with a sexual attraction to children, which has no bearing on whether someone will harm a child. One-third of sexual abusers have pedophilia, the majority do not have pedophilia.<br />
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This wades close to the uncomfortable topic of what motivates sexual abuse, but it is not sexual attraction or sexual pleasure in most cases. In most cases, sexual abuse is motivated by unmet mental health needs in someone who does not have an adequate support system. These unmet needs vary greatly, from having pedophilia and not having the adequate support to face that, to juveniles who have been abused and are acting their abuse out on a younger child.<br />
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If we ignore the motivations of abuse - and yes they are uncomfortable to pay attention to, and no they do not justify sexual abuse in any form - then we can enable abuse to occur by driving people towards the very things that motivate sexual abuse and other crimes. By inferring that someone with a sexual attraction to children is doomed to abuse them, we put them in a worse psychological state that can fuel the very thing we want to avoid: The abuse of a child. As someone who was damaged by that inference, I believe we must end the myth that abusers are pedophiles and pedophiles are abusers.<br />
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<b><u>Thing Number Five: ACE Scores Are Not Just For Victims</u></b><br />
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Yes, you read that correctly. There has been much discussion in survivor and prevention circles around the impact of <a href="http://www.ajpmonline.org/article/S0749-3797(98)00017-8/abstract">ACEs</a>, or <u>A</u>dverse <u>C</u>hildhood <u>E</u>xperiences as it pertains to their frequency in the general public, and the severe harm they can inflict on people. However, what we have been ignoring is just how much ACE scores also correlate to crime. Recently, Jill Levenson and several of her colleagues have been looking at sex offenders and general offenders who have ACEs.<br />
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Their findings firmly establish that we must focus prevention differently. As you view the chart below, bear in mind that the PINK line is the original ACE study, the GRAY line is adult sex offenders, the ORANGE is juvenile sex offenders, and the BLUE is juvenile offenders of any kind.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijbelKwReU2FYOlJYwdsFi8dTVlZC0GOn1rGLIwWCsWqs-yKUDrihBJq6m4C0aSgErt3aMIWBCHFO3RYUXE-KY-YAgsd2Brha07xQSA2WjIS8bIdtaW16q9_mNcBJV7hmiQfU8JpzgKX9v/s1600/ACE+visual.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="477" data-original-width="561" height="544" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijbelKwReU2FYOlJYwdsFi8dTVlZC0GOn1rGLIwWCsWqs-yKUDrihBJq6m4C0aSgErt3aMIWBCHFO3RYUXE-KY-YAgsd2Brha07xQSA2WjIS8bIdtaW16q9_mNcBJV7hmiQfU8JpzgKX9v/s640/ACE+visual.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
In other words, while generally many people have no or only one ACE and that goes down as you increase the ACE score, the opposite is true for adult sex offenders, juvenile sex offenders, and juvenile offenders in general. Their research shows that 97% of sex offenders have at least one ACE in their background, and many of them have four or more ACEs.<br />
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What this means is not only that sexual abuse must end, but that the key to ending sexual abuse is by caring for youth with ACEs with trauma-informed care, mentoring programs, and community engagement. We must reach them with the resources they need to overcome the trials they faced in childhood, and help them. This is primary prevention at work. While ACEs are a fascinating subject, there is much to be learned about them and their impact on difficult issues like sexual abuse.<br />
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<b><u>We Must Improve So That Sexual Abuse Can End</u></b><br />
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Humanity has done some of its greatest work when we collaborate, network, and work with other human beings of differing perspectives. The issue of child sexual abuse is not simple, and some abuse is indeed (as much as we hate to admit this) inevitable.<br />
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However, if we can put our heads together - the civil rights advocates that state that sex offenders are people too, the abuse survivors who were directly affected by sex crimes, the people who have a sexual attraction to children and want help instead of judgment, the researchers who study sex crimes and policies that might end them, and the policymakers themselves who can guide working policies...<br />
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If we can all come together, look at this issue, and see all of these perspectives and come up with ideas for ending sexual abuse, then we stand a much better chance at making real change happen. As it is, we are bickering among ourselves about who has the best method, and children are paying the price for it. I think we need to stop bickering and put our heads together.TNF 13http://www.blogger.com/profile/00234644586674907757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653816103545335912.post-25523795900344958462017-09-18T19:24:00.000-07:002017-09-18T19:24:02.208-07:00Negativity Towards Pedophiles: A Pedophile's Response to Craig Harper and Ross Bartels<b><u>A Nice Source</u></b><br />
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A <a href="https://nextgenforensic.wordpress.com/2017/03/26/challenging-societal-negativity-towards-paedophiles/">recent post </a>on <a href="https://nextgenforensic.wordpress.com/">nextgenforensic</a>, a blog full of articles from researchers and practitioners about sex offense theory, research, and practice, has me thinking hard about the issue of how we change people's beliefs about pedophiles and pedophilia.<br />
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<b><u>Wait. Why Change Negativity Towards Pedophiles?</u></b><br />
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You see, the average person thinks that a "pedophile" is someone who molests children, and "pedophilia" is synonymous with child sexual abuse. However, when a researcher, pedophile, or advocate hears these words, we know that "pedophile" usually refers to someone who is sexually attracted to children, and "pedophilia" refers to that attraction. There are further distinctions, but I think that is as far as most people are willing to go.<br />
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So we have a nice little hangup between what people familiar with these terms mean to them, and how everyone else understands these terms. Everyone else understands them to refer to behavior and those who have acted in a horrific and heinous way towards a child, where those familiar with the terms know them to refer only to feelings and those with said feelings. Some researchers differentiate between offending and non-offending pedophiles to subtly point to that difference.<br />
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The introduction of Harper and Bartels' article paints a very good picture of why child sexual abuse and pedophilia, as well as child rapists and pedophiles, are two very different things from one another, yet still related.<br />
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<b><u>How To Change Someone's Mind</u></b><br />
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Harper and Bartels point out recent research that points to the idea that minds are not changed based on fact, they are changed when they hear stories of people. They did their own study on how that applies to the stigma against pedophles and pedophilia, and their study found much the same thing: In order to make a bigger dent in changing someone's attitudes towards pedophilia, it is better to tell a short narrative than it is to present facts.<br />
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<b><u>In Short, Tell The Media Stories</u></b><br />
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They conclude that the mainstream media should use first-person narratives to help prevention ideas be more effective. They want the mainstream media to tell the stories of pedophiles who are non-offending and wish to remain so. Two outlets have done so in recent memory: Salon (who subsequently pulled their articles about Todd Nickerson) and the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/item/3216b48d-3195-4f67-8149-54586689ae3c?ns_campaign=bbc-three&ns_mchannel=social&ns_source=twitter&ns_linkname=paedophileshelp">BBC</a>. There was also a bit of a blurb from a guy in Oregon who started ASAP International, but his story had a very fierce reaction to it for a variety of reasons. Namely, there had been accusations years prior from an adopted daughter that the man sexually abused her. The police never filed charges, but it was enough to get people to dismiss his story, unlike Todd Nickerson, who just sparked a lot of conversation all across the internet (I covered Gary Gibson and Todd Nickerson <a href="https://csaprimaryprevention.blogspot.com/2017/01/thoughts-on-gary-gibson-and-todd.html">here</a>).<br />
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<b><u>This Begs The Question...</u></b><br />
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Most, if not all local news outlets, do not cover first-person stories like this unless someone is willing to have their real name in print. Given the amount of negativity that exists towards pedophiles and the very real danger of losing housing, jobs, and relationships, this is not an option for most pedophiles. This same dilemma is the one facing sex offenders who wish to speak out against registration because of its lack of efficacy, but cannot afford to lose what they have built back from having their name dragged into the mud from their actions.<br />
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<b><u>Stories Are Limited</u></b><br />
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I think that stories are a wonderful medium for attracting discussion and ideas. However, stories are very limited: <b>Only those interested in the story will take the time to read or listen to it.</b> Unless we are exposing large groups of people to these stories, without telling them that they will be, stories will only have an impact on those willing to hear them.<br />
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I suggest we come up with other options to test during future research into changing the negativity towards pedophilia. Most people think they already know what a pedophile is: A child molester. I suspect changing that will be similar to changing the myth of stranger danger. So why not apply the same principles?TNF 13http://www.blogger.com/profile/00234644586674907757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653816103545335912.post-33237849855535656362017-09-03T19:26:00.000-07:002017-09-03T19:26:27.858-07:00Victim's Rights, Offender's Rights, And Residency<b><u>Backstory</u></b><br />
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So, a few months ago, <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/22/us/sex-offender-moves-in-next-door-to-victim-trnd/index.html">we found out</a> that a Oklahoma sex offender was living... right next door to the woman he molested when she was a child. Now, Oklahoma is about to enact a new law prohibiting sex offenders from being or living within 1,000 feet of their victim. At face value, this seems wise. When you dig deeper into the story and into the topic as a whole, it is not that simple.<br />
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<b><u>Why Is It Not Simple?</u></b><br />
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When we hear the word, "sex offender," we immediately think of a child molester or a rapist. However, the term is not that simple by itself. It also refers to those convicted of kidnapping charges and first-degree murder, as well as teenagers sexting pictures of themselves to other teenagers... and Romeo-Juliet situations where one consenting partner or the other is underage and the parents do not like the situation. The term "sex offender" encompasses many crimes, both major and minor, some that involve victims and some that do not.<br />
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My "area of expertise" is child sexual abuse- child molestation, which is an admittedly serious crime. However, the situations do not fit the stereotype: A middle-age man molesting a stranger child after kidnapping them. About half of sexual abuse cases are perpetrated by juveniles- other children who are older. I covered the topic of juvenile sex offenders during <a href="https://csaprimaryprevention.blogspot.com/2017/06/moore-center-sex-abuse-symposium-part_2.html">my analysis</a> of the Moore Center Symposium this year. So keeping "sex offenders" away from their "victims" also means keeping friends away from younger friends, siblings apart, and family members living under two different roofs.<br />
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There is therapy specifically designed for three goals: Accountability for the perpetrator, healing for the victim, and reunification for both parties. This therapy is called "reunification therapy," and is only used if all parties involved consent. This therapy is very valuable for victims, for offenders, and for communities. It is unclear how often this is used, but roughly 30% of sexual abuse cases involve family-on-family perpetrators and victims.<br />
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<b><u>Why Do We Need To Pause?</u></b><br />
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We <u style="font-style: italic;">must</u> pause to consider the ramifications of creating more onerous requirements on sexual offenders, not only because the issue is not simple, but because of the facts: Most sexual offenders <i>never commit another sexual crime</i>, and most sexual abusers <i>never reoffend once caught</i>. While the concerns of victims are certainly not trivial, there are already systems in place to keep offenders who are causing trouble for their victims away from them. Namely, restraining orders and charges of stalking and harassment.<br />
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<b><u>What Happens Now?</u></b><br />
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Because the coverage that has already swept the nation, and the appalled but uninformed reactions of many people, the proposed law will almost certainly pass, to the <a href="https://narsol.org/2017/08/no-we-dont-need-another-sex-offender-law-to-fight/">dismay of other advocacy groups</a>. I agree in part: We need laws that are based in fact and effective at eliminating crime, not laws that claim to do just that, but cause more burdens on all parties involved.<br />
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This law has the capacity to not only prevent offenders from living in certain areas, it has the capacity to tear families and friends apart. While this law may pass, we must pause in the aftermath to evaluate just what kind of chaos this law is causing once it is implemented, and figure out better alternatives that give weight not only to existing victims, but solutions that are effective in preventing victims from those who have never committed a crime.TNF 13http://www.blogger.com/profile/00234644586674907757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653816103545335912.post-65122333441184644292017-08-29T18:23:00.001-07:002017-08-29T18:23:20.648-07:00Lenore Skenazy: One Family's Experience With Disabilities, Sexual Abuse... And The Sex Offender Registry<u><b>Introduction By TNF 13</b></u><br /><br />You have heard me discuss many times why the sex offender registry does not protect children: It does not address the realities of how sexual crimes happen, particularly child sexual abuse. The following is an article written by Lenore Skenazy of <a href="http://www.freerangekids.com/">Free Range Kids</a>, a parenting site about giving children the freedom to learn responsibility, without being needlessly afraid of crime. Read, as she recounts a story she heard recently...<div style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; color: #555555; font-family: Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1.2em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
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<span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The woman who looked to be about 60 walked up to the podium and spoke in a quiet voice. She was at a St. Louis synagogue that was hosting an evening of presentations about the sex offender registry. I spoke, too. But this mom’s story has haunted me in the weeks since. I asked for a copy of her speech, which is below. She prefers to remain anonymous. – L.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqb857Zoa11q2HvKHQMUIsVjt0CLC3ZU9EY-f5QKTvfsnjVLA8e_CMC7LgbX5WIl9KuooePDzEUVOP2am-nxMtXv_VhfYaOHxtsU1uXX6G_KmuAhY-crcYmiLYPCUvwIjDSyV9sxAAxCHO/s1600/sorrow-use-this-1-475x356.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="356" data-original-width="475" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqb857Zoa11q2HvKHQMUIsVjt0CLC3ZU9EY-f5QKTvfsnjVLA8e_CMC7LgbX5WIl9KuooePDzEUVOP2am-nxMtXv_VhfYaOHxtsU1uXX6G_KmuAhY-crcYmiLYPCUvwIjDSyV9sxAAxCHO/s320/sorrow-use-this-1-475x356.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><em style="background: rgb(248, 248, 248); border: 0px; color: #555555; font-family: Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">A mother whose son loved the Special Olympics grieves for the modestly happy future she’d hoped for her son, now on the Sex Offender Registry.</em></td></tr>
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<strong style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">THE SEX OFFENDER REGISTRY AND THE MENTALLY DISABLED</strong></div>
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I am a mother, advocate and caretaker of a 30 year old young man with <span style="background-color: transparent;">IDD. That is an intellectual and developmental disability, formerly called </span><span style="background-color: transparent;">Mentally Retarded. I am also the co-founder of a national group called </span><a href="http://www.lridd.org/index.html" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #105cb6; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Legal Reform for the Intellectually and Developmentally Disabled.</a></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent;">My son has been on the [sex offender] registry since 2012. But the story really begins on </span><span style="background-color: transparent;">December 5, 1986. A baby boy was born.</span><span style="background-color: transparent;"> </span></div>
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Everything seemed fine. A healthy, happy baby. The first few milestones were met. Crawling, <span style="background-color: transparent;">walking and making cute baby sounds. At age 2 there were very few words. At age 3, </span><span style="background-color: transparent;">no progress was made in speech and the seizures started. Testing began.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent;">In the Spring of 1991 we sat across the desk of the doctor at Childrens’ Memorial </span><span style="background-color: transparent;">Hospital and received the difficult results of all the testing. We were told our son had </span><span style="background-color: transparent;">deficits, cognitively and developmentally. Most importantly, we would need to prepare </span><span style="background-color: transparent;">for Adam’s future because he would need to be cared for for the rest of his life.</span></div>
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This conversation changed the course of our lives. I gave up a career so I could devote <span style="background-color: transparent;">my life to my son’s education and care. The decision was made to not have any more </span><span style="background-color: transparent;">children so we would have the time for both our children and also more resources for </span><span style="background-color: transparent;">their future.</span></div>
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I spent many years learning all about my son’s rights for an education and volunteering <span style="background-color: transparent;">and working in all his schools so I could keep watch. All this was to integrate our son in </span><span style="background-color: transparent;">the community and try to establish a happy life for him.</span></div>
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<strong style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">HIS JOY</strong></div>
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His love was competing in Special Olympics. He played softball, soccer, bocce ball, <span style="background-color: transparent;">bowling and golfing. He swam and competed in power lifting. He has many gold </span><span style="background-color: transparent;">medals that he is so proud of. His social life was spending supervised time with his </span><span style="background-color: transparent;">peers in special recreation activities, such as a movie or a dinner out or a game night. </span><span style="background-color: transparent;">He learned to scuba diving through the Diveheart Organization, who teach diving to the </span><span style="background-color: transparent;">disabled. He was so happy when he did his scuba diving. Due to registry rules </span><span style="background-color: transparent;">and regulations, Adam is no longer able to participate in any of the above.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent;">My son does not date. He will never marry or have children. He will never have a </span><span style="background-color: transparent;">career. His life is with us, his parents. He cannot cook for himself or pay bills or even </span><span style="background-color: transparent;">take a phone call. He has sensory issues. He cannot wear certain fabrics of clothe.</span></div>
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He wet the bed until the age of 16 when he finally gained control. He needs help with <span style="background-color: transparent;">his daily living. He had a small part-time job for 5 years </span><span style="background-color: transparent;">hosting and cleaning tables at a restaurant. He was let go because of his conviction.</span></div>
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<strong style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">WHAT HAPPENED</strong></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent;">When our nightmare began in 2012, we had a risk assessment done on Adam. The </span><span style="background-color: transparent;">assessment showed that Adam had very little sexual knowledge and had no sexual </span><span style="background-color: transparent;">perversions. He is a polite, compassionate and naive young man who functions at </span><span style="background-color: transparent;">about the age of ten years old.</span><span style="background-color: transparent;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent;"> </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent;">My son cannot distinguish when someone is lying to </span><span style="background-color: transparent;">him. He is extremely susceptible to persuasion. Teachers, aides and </span><span style="background-color: transparent;">psychologist wrote reports fearing that he would someday be taken </span><span style="background-color: transparent;">advantage of.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent;">That someday came in 2012. A 22-year-old neighbor coerced my son to </span><span style="background-color: transparent;">expose himself to an underage female. We also found out that this </span><span style="background-color: transparent;">neighbor had been sexually molesting my son for a period of time. My child </span><span style="background-color: transparent;">was arrested along with his OWN MOLESTER and charged with the same </span><span style="background-color: transparent;">19 felonies. We fought this travesty for a year in court.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent;">Our attorneys feared if we went to trial the prosecutor would manipulate my </span><span style="background-color: transparent;">son into saying whatever he wanted him to say. Years of documents were </span><span style="background-color: transparent;">submitted to the court showing evidence of his disabilities. Medical reports, </span><span style="background-color: transparent;">school reports, psychologists reports, risk assessments, letters from </span><span style="background-color: transparent;">neighbors, friends and family.</span></div>
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<strong style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">THE PLEA</strong></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent;">The prosecutor offered a plea deal. One misdemeanor charge of exploitation of a </span><span style="background-color: transparent;">minor, 2 years probation with an ankle bracelet and ten years on the </span><span style="background-color: transparent;">registry.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent;">Our son could not survive in prison. We took the plea. On the day we </span><span style="background-color: transparent;">accepted the plea, our attorneys whispered in his ear what he had to say to </span><span style="background-color: transparent;">the judge, because he did not understand.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent;">My son was fitted with an ankle bracelet that he was so scared of he slept </span><span style="background-color: transparent;">for 2 years with his leg on a pile of blankets because he was afraid that if </span><span style="background-color: transparent;">he moved it would go off and they would come to get him. My son had to </span><span style="background-color: transparent;">leave our home since the victim lived next door. He is incapable of </span><span style="background-color: transparent;">surviving on his own.</span><span style="background-color: transparent;"> </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent;">My husband moved out with my son so he could care </span><span style="background-color: transparent;">for him. We all had to follow the curfews for 2 years and get him where he </span><span style="background-color: transparent;">needed to be. I cut work hours to take him to probation check in. We have </span><span style="background-color: transparent;">to take him to register. We are responsible for all the rules and regulations </span><span style="background-color: transparent;">because my son is incapable of understanding the requirements.</span></div>
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<strong style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">THE RESULT</strong></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent;">The registry restrictions drag families into fear, instability and emotional </span><span style="background-color: transparent;">distress. For me, it let to a road of anxiety meds, antidepressants, sleeping </span><span style="background-color: transparent;">pills and therapy. My husband now has high blood pressure and </span><span style="background-color: transparent;">depression. My son has health problems, depression and the last 2 </span><span style="background-color: transparent;">psychologist reports done in 2015 and 2016 show his IQ falling.</span></div>
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This is due to isolation and no stimulation. No more Special Olympics. <span style="background-color: transparent;">He was let go from his small part time job cleaning tables. This was the source of his </span><span style="background-color: transparent;">independence. No one will hire him now. He sits at home all day isolated </span><span style="background-color: transparent;">and lonely.</span></div>
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<strong style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">THE FINANCIAL TOLL</strong></div>
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The financial toll on our family has been devastating. We have spent over <span style="background-color: transparent;">$150,000 of our retirement money and money we saved for our son’s future </span><span style="background-color: transparent;">care on attorneys, court costs, probation fees, registration fees and </span><span style="background-color: transparent;">relocating my son and husband. (I have remained in our nearby home for the time being.)</span></div>
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We are a good, law-abiding Christian family brought to our knees by a <span style="background-color: transparent;">system that makes no attempt to look at people as individuals and recognize their needs, their </span><span style="background-color: transparent;">supports and their vulnerabilities.</span></div>
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We recently learned that when the ten years my son received on the <span style="background-color: transparent;">registry are up in 2023, at which time my husband and I will be in our 70s, </span><span style="background-color: transparent;">we will still all be bound by the other rules and regulations for the rest of our </span><span style="background-color: transparent;">lives. Where will my child go when my husband and I are no longer here to </span><span style="background-color: transparent;">care for him? No group home will take him. No nursing home will have </span><span style="background-color: transparent;">him. His sister loves him dearly and will take care of him, BUT…. how will </span><span style="background-color: transparent;">she be able to?</span></div>
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I provided a life for my son so he could receive the support, socialization <span style="background-color: transparent;">and services he needs to survive and flourish for the rest of his life. </span><span style="background-color: transparent;">Instead we all live with in isolation, fear and the stigma that we are “scum of </span><span style="background-color: transparent;">the earth.”</span></div>
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<strong style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“JUSTICE”</strong></div>
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If any of you have or know someone with a special needs child, you all <span style="background-color: transparent;">know that when the child is young everyone – the schools, the community — try to </span><span style="background-color: transparent;">do what they can for the child. When that little special needs child grows </span><span style="background-color: transparent;">up their disabilities don’t go away, but society doesn’t care any more. That </span><span style="background-color: transparent;">person who still has a child’s mind gets thrown aside in the name of </span><span style="background-color: transparent;">the criminal justice system.</span></div>
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This mom ended by asking listeners to work to reverse the laws that turn the intellectually disabled into lifetime pariahs. She also urged us to go to Change.org and sign the petition for <a href="https://www.change.org/p/abolish-the-sex-offender-registry" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #105cb6; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“Abolish the Sex Offender Registry.” </a> And she invited us to visit the <a href="https://www.lridd.org/" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #105cb6; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;">very spare LIRRD site</a> where it says:</div>
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"Currently, the criminal justice system<em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> makes little or no attempt to understand this population or to recognize their unique needs, supports and challenges. Criminal prosecutions of these individuals often lead to disastrous consequences for children and their families without any benefit to the public.</em></div>
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<em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Our goal is to make changes that will save these children from the unnecessary cruelty that the criminal justice system is putting them through. Implementing this goal will require educating legislators, prosecutors and judges about this population and their need to be understood, rather than prosecuted, by the legal system."</em></div>
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Free-Range Kids believes that Adam’s ordeal is not making children any safer. At the same time, people with intellectual disabilities are at grave risk of being branded as “sex offenders” when they are actually innocent in so many senses of the word. These laws must change. – L</div>
TNF 13http://www.blogger.com/profile/00234644586674907757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653816103545335912.post-12113191118122783842017-08-18T14:50:00.003-07:002017-08-18T14:55:53.666-07:00On Hate And Sex Abuse Prevention<b><u>Emotional Topic</u></b><br />
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You probably do not need me to tell you this, but the topic of sexual abuse, particularly prevention, is controversial and emotional for many people. This is because solutions often fly in the face of our deepest beliefs, and the facts challenge established stereotypes about how sexual abuse happens- and why. When our beliefs are challenged in that manner, we cannot help but become emotional. </div>
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Much of this emotion, of course, is directed at abusers. I recently put it out there that <a href="https://medium.com/p/the-boy-who-was-abused-96ce4edaa2b">I was sexually abused as a child</a>. I also recently put it out there that <a href="https://medium.com/pedophiles-about-pedophilia/why-pedophilia-and-pedophiles-are-not-a-risk-to-children-4d00a935dd39">I have a sexual attraction to children</a>, and I wrote about why that does not immediately make me a risk to children. Those two statements bring up emotion, and they are controversial. </div>
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<b><u>As For Me...</u></b></div>
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...I do not hate my abusers. Maybe because my first step towards accepting my childhood and how it shaped me was a step of understanding. I wanted to know <i>why</i> people sexually abuse children. What drives that kind of behavior? How could someone possibly justify it? I believe, as a Christian and as a critical thinker, that I am more than justified in hating what was done to me and the effects it had. However, I do not believe I am justified in hating <i>the people who abused me</i>. Why? </div>
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Because frankly, their evil actions were a handful of acts in an otherwise ordinary set of interactions. While they may be indicative of the thinking of those people at the time, the abusive actions did not represent the entire person. I do not believe that at least two of my abusers meant their actions as abuse, even if that is the effect their actions had on me. </div>
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<b><u>Cycle Of Hatred</u></b></div>
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Here in America, and indeed throughout world history, there is an ongoing cycle of hatred that still exists today. In the last two centuries, it was black people and women. Three and four centuries ago, it was black people and indigenous people, in North America and South America. Before that, it was religious warring. </div>
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Hate has been an ongoing part of what it means to be human, and it is noble humans who seek to overcome that hatred and move on from it to love, accept, and include other humans who might be different from them. </div>
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<b><u>Hate Is Not Just About Race</u></b></div>
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The kind of hate we have seen in the last week is not about race. It is about our beliefs, and our entitlement to those beliefs. We resent anyone who challenges how we think about a subject, and we believe that we should have the right to hold the opinions and views that we do, and express them. However, this gets messy when other humans with those same rights but differing beliefs tell us we are wrong. Harsh words are exchanged, and violence all too easily ensues. </div>
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Racism is just one expression of how this operates. Another expression is the making of laws: Laws that deal harshly with criminals are almost always the result of empathizing more with the victim than the perpetrator. This is as it should be, and the perpetrator of a crime should be held accountable and make some form of restitution. However, sometimes the laws we have created do not aid in preventing future crimes, and make it harder for criminals to have the means to provide restitution for what they did. </div>
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<b><u>Sex Offender Laws Do Not Follow Standard Justice</u></b></div>
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Yes, I am talking about sex offender laws. I do not believe that they are fair. Yes, I used the word fair. Every other criminal, even murderers, have a fixed sentence that they have to complete. In some cases, that is a life sentence, but once that sentence is complete, we consider justice to be served. While we may feel the sentence does not fit what we think happened, we have a system where a judge looking at as much information as possible determines that sentence. Even in this system, there are miscarriages of justice and the facts do not fit what is being sentenced. </div>
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Sex offender laws ignore that. They visit and re-visit the offender's crime against them, often for their entire life. They must register. They must not live X distance from a school or park. They must notify their neighbors of something they did years ago. Their sentence does not have an ending. Some argue that the effects of child sexual abuse are lifelong. I disagree. I am just as worthy of healing and moving on as the people who abused me. </div>
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<b><u>Hate Against Sex Offenders Is No Different Than Racism</u></b></div>
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Yes, I just went there. If you hate someone because of the color of their skin, it is the same as hating someone for committing a particular kind of crime: You are judging <i>the person</i> (not their personality, their behavior, or a <i>part </i>of the person) for one single observable fact that you can see, and basing your opinion of that entire person on that one single fact. </div>
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You are assuming to know based on one individual fact about the person that they are worthy of hatred. Regardless of what that one fact is, this hatred defies logic, defies the fact that the other person is human, and is no different than the systematic dehumanization that was practiced by the Nazis during WWII. When you take a human being of any kind and revoke their "humanity" card for one reason, without getting to know the person, you are doing exactly what Hitler did: Judging for yourself that the person is no longer human. </div>
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<b><u>Hate Impedes Prevention</u></b></div>
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The hatred of sex offenders and our endless desire for revenge <i>must</i> be separated from our hatred of sexual offenses and our endless desire for sexual assault and exploitation to cease in all its forms. If we want to prevent crime, we must understand the facts, and form policy accordingly. We must be level-headed about the policies we form, otherwise we fall prey to the same hate that we condemn in White Nationalist groups.</div>
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You cannot change the genetic makeup of another human being by believing they are not, any more than you can change the color of your hair by thinking about it. </div>
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If we are to condemn racism because it treats others differently based on their different appearance, then we must condemn hatred in all its forms: Including the hatred of sex offenders.</div>
TNF 13http://www.blogger.com/profile/00234644586674907757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653816103545335912.post-32203455456409192462017-07-22T19:08:00.000-07:002017-07-22T19:08:16.837-07:00Major Wins On Three Fronts<b><u>Not Often...</u></b><br />
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It is not often that I get to report good news in the fight to prevent child sexual abuse... before it can happen. However, there is great news out of Alabama, Pennsylvania, and California that are well-worth celebrating, in addition to the recent win in North Carolina at the Supreme Court of the United States.<br />
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<b><u>Alabama</u></b><br />
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A <a href="https://www.annistonstar.com/free/as-some-states-reconsider-sex-offender-registries-an-alabama-resident/article_d8f12a3c-699a-11e7-a777-d71fa6cbf90b.html">case in Alabama</a> is currently before the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals, and the argument is that Alabama has violated the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_post_facto_law#United_States">ex posto facto</a> clause of the United States Constitution. In other words, Alabama has violated the United States Constitution by enacting retroactive punishment for a crime committed over 30 years ago. This case is significant and related to a win in Pennsylvania, which is why this case is already being considered a win.<br />
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<b><u>Pennsylvania</u></b><br />
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A <a href="http://www.post-gazette.com/news/state/2017/07/21/Pennsylvania-Supreme-Court-rules-sex-offender-registration-punitive/stories/201707200196">case recently decided</a> by the PA Supreme Court involved a man forced to register for a crime committed in 2007 before the registration requirement applicable to his situation was enacted in 2012. The PA Supreme Court decided that the case violated the same ex posto facto clause and retroactively applied <i>punishment</i> - yes, punishment - for a crime. This is essential, because until now, the sex offender registry has been considered preventative, not punitive according to most state and federal legislation. The ruling in PA makes it likely that the case being considered by the 11th Circuit will be ruled similarly, and gives opportunity for the PA ruling to be cited in the decision. While this has yet to play out, it is also important because of a win in California.<br />
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<b><u>California</u></b><br />
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In California, <a href="http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-sex-offender-registry-20170618-story.html">lawmakers are being spurred</a> to adopt major reforms to the sex offender registry, essentially treating offenders with lower risk differently than those that are high risk: The lower-risk offenders could eventually be let off the sex offender registry, and the focus for law enforcement and monitoring would be on high-risk offenders instead. These are reforms that are already in place in most other states, but California still has a one-size-fits-all system where every sex offender is required to register for life.<br />
<br />
Interestingly, it is criminal justice leaders, such as district attorneys, the ACLU of California, the California Police Chiefs Association, and several others. The bill is currently moving swiftly through the legislature.<br />
<br />
<b><u>Why Is The Registry Bad?</u></b><br />
<br />
In case you have not heard me say this before, sex offender registration is bad because it focuses on the wrong threat: Sex offenders. Sex offenders are known to commit less than 10% of new sexual crimes in most states, and even less in major states. In New York, that rate is 5%, and in California, that rate is .6%. This focus on sex offenders means that people are focused on those who do not often commit new sexual crimes as if they do, which means the real culprits of sexual crimes, those trusted in the community with no criminal record, fly under the radar.<br />
<br />
Research shows that perpetrators of sexual crimes have trauma in childhood, have no criminal record, are predominantly male (though <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1359178916301446?_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_origin=gateway&_docanchor=&md5=b8429449ccfc9c30159a5f9aeaa92ffb&dgcid=raven_sd_via_email">recent research</a> is calling this into question), and are largely trusted by their victim(s). This shows that programs that reach at-risk youth with trauma in their backgrounds can make a substantial difference in reducing sexual crimes before they happen, and shows that our focus must be on preventing the initial perpetration of sexual crimes rather than reacting where they happen.<br />
<br />
<b><u>Is This Foreshadowing?</u></b><br />
<b><u><br /></u></b>
With these major wins, in addition to the <a href="https://csaprimaryprevention.blogspot.com/2017/06/breaking-news-supreme-court-decides.html">recent social media</a> win at the United States Supreme Court, the it may be that the tide is turning against emotionally-driven policies that feel good but are ineffective in preventing sex crimes. It may be, as the <a href="http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-sex-offender-registries-20170623-story.html">editorial board of the Los Angeles Times</a> puts it, that we are seeing clearer thinking about sex offenders. If so, then maybe we are seeing the beginning of the end of after-the-fact punishment schemes that distract from preventing sexual crimes... <b><i>before</i></b> they can happen.TNF 13http://www.blogger.com/profile/00234644586674907757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653816103545335912.post-56682777163541590372017-07-12T18:51:00.000-07:002017-07-12T18:51:13.941-07:00Stand Up For Net NeutralityYou cannot go far today without hearing about it: Several large US companies would like to end the neutrality we currently enjoy, which allows most internet sites you visit to load just as fast as any other, among other things. If you enjoy being able to use the internet, please consider adding your voice to the chorus telling US leaders to keep net neutrality rules.<br />
<br />
To learn more about net neutrality and why it matters, <a href="https://www.battleforthenet.com/">see here</a>. Also, consider <a href="https://www.change.org/p/save-net-neutrality-netneutrality?recruiter=336553251&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink&utm_campaign=share_petition">signing a change.org petition</a>, in addition to <a href="https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/search/filings?proceedings_name=17-108&sort=date_disseminated,DESC">contacting the FCC</a><span id="goog_1232585312"></span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/"></a><span id="goog_1232585313"></span>.TNF 13http://www.blogger.com/profile/00234644586674907757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653816103545335912.post-71911966463951810772017-07-04T18:45:00.000-07:002017-07-04T18:45:17.260-07:00Why The Statistic Matters: Part Three, Sex OffendersThis is part of a miniseries about why the statistics on this site, and the
upcoming website, should matter to you, not only in your everyday life,
but in preventing child sexual abuse... <i>before</i> it can happen.<br />
<br />
<b><u>Statistic 1: Most Who Commit Sex Crimes Are Not Sex Offender Registrants</u></b><br />
<br />
You have heard me cite this time and again: 95% of new sex crimes are committed by those new to the criminal justice system, stemming from a <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232505213_Does_a_Watched_Pot_Boil_A_Time-Series_Analysis_of_New_York_State's_Sex_Offender_Registration_and_Notification_Law">study on 21 years of arrest data in New York</a>. Another <a href="http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/Adult_Research_Branch/Research_Documents/2015_Outcome_Evaluation_Report_8-25-2016.pdf">2015 study out of California</a> is also significant, finding that just .6% of the 56.1% three-year return-to-prison rate were new sex crime convictions. Unless other criminals are committing sex crimes (which is not supported by the rest of the report, or general trends among sex crimes in general), it is safe to conclude that, nationwide, <b>upwards of 95% of sex crime is committed by those with no criminal background</b>.<br />
<br />
Why does that matter? <br />
<br />
Well, if the bulk of our policies on "preventing" sexual crimes are aimed at sex offenders, who are not responsible for a very high percentage of sex crimes... and we spend lots of money on these policies... then our policies are simply ineffective, and costing lots of money we could spend on more effective methods. This does not just refer to sex offender registration: Notifications of sex offenders, residency restrictions, civil commitment, and of course, juvenile registration and notification. If it targets sex offenders, the policy does very little to protect communities because it is not registered sex offenders who commit sex crimes.<br />
<br />
<b><u>Statistic 2: Juveniles Commit Sex Crimes Too... </u></b><br />
<br />
Specifically, <a href="https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/ojjdp/227763.pdf">juveniles commit 35.6%</a> of sexual offenses against minors. Researchers such as <a href="https://csaprimaryprevention.blogspot.com/2017/06/moore-center-sex-abuse-symposium-part_2.html">Elizabeth Letourneau</a> and <a href="https://csaprimaryprevention.blogspot.com/2017/06/moore-center-sex-abuse-symposium-part.html">Jill Levenson</a> have said that half of sex offenders were juveniles during the commission of their sex crime. Regardless of the specific figure, it is safe to say that a statistically significant portion of sexual crimes are committed by juveniles, not adults.<br />
<br />
This matters almost as much as the first statistic, because it means that the bulk of our policies are aimed at people who committed their crimes as juveniles. While these crimes absolutely were harmful to the victims, one must wonder if punishing juvenile perpetrators for life is aiding prevention, particularly if most of them never commit another sexual crime (<a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305415034_Quantifying_the_Decline_in_Juvenile_Sexual_Recidivism_Rates">97%, to be precise</a>).<br />
<br />
<b><u>Statistic 3: General Recidivism Is High, But Lower Than Other Criminals On Average</u></b><br />
<br />
Recidivism is a much-discussed statistic, and before I touch on why a somewhat high recidivism rate for general crime (<b>both</b> sexual and non-sexual crimes) is high, we must first understand recidivism rates. Some studies look at rearrests, which are considered the most liberal picture of recidivism. Some studies look at returning to prison, which are considered the most conservative picture of recidivism. Still others look at reconvictions, which are a middle ground between the two. As with any crime, any recidivism statistic paints an incomplete picture of new crimes committed by offenders.<br />
<br />
If you recall the <b>56.1% return-to-prison</b> statistic from the study mentioned in the first section, it should be noted that most studies find, on average, a general recidivism rate around 30-40% for sex offenders. This means that California has a rate that is much higher than what would be considered "the norm" for sex offenders. While the very term "sex offender" encompasses a wide variety of crimes and offenders, this also means that specific types of offenders that commit specific crimes have varying rates of recidivism specific to that type or crime.<br />
<br />
This matters, because it means there is room for much improvement in rehabilitating and successfully reintegrating sex offenders back into our communities. It means there are barriers for successful reintegration, and a need to change how we treat criminals in general. While recidivism statistics can be interpreted in a wide variety of ways depending on the study, offender, and offense, it is safe to say that in most cases, sex offenders do not reoffend, whether that is with a sexual crime or any other crime.<br />
<br />
<b><u>Statistic 4: Population Of Sex Offenders, Victims</u></b><br />
<br />
According to the <a href="http://www.missingkids.org/en_US/documents/Sex_Offenders_Map.pdf">National Center for Missing and Exploited Children</a> (whose figures are somewhat disputed among some advocates and state leaders), there are 861,837 registered sex offenders living in the United States. That is 264 sex offenders per 100,000 people. If you have followed the rest of the statistics to this point, then you can probably guess what I am about to say: Focusing our policies on nearly 1 million Americans to protect children, when most of those .862 million people are not responsible for further sex crimes means that we are creating much more damage than we are solving. How do I figure that? The math is simple.<br />
<br />
Restated from <a href="https://csaprimaryprevention.blogspot.com/2017/06/why-statistic-matters-part-two-child.html">part two, child sexual abuse</a>, according to <a href="https://www.childstats.gov/americaschildren/tables/pop1.asp">this source</a>, there are <b>73.8 million children</b> in the United States, and the known victim-reported prevalence is pegged at 8% for boys and 19% for girls, which translates to roughly 3,011,040 boys and 6,870,780 girls, or 9,881,820 children. The estimates that attempt to account for underreporting translate to 6,273,000 boys and 9,040,500 girls, or 15,313,500 children. In other words, our best data and estimates indicate that <b>13.39-20.75% of children are sexually abused (which is a big deal)</b>.<br />
<br />
Running the estimates, 494,091-765,675 children are sexually abused by registered sex offenders, or repeat sex offenders, in other words. If somewhere between .6% and 5% of these 861,837 sex offenders are repeat offenders, that means that there are between 5,171 and 43,092 sex offenders that are repeat offenders.<br />
<br />
This means that there are between <b>818,745 and 856,666 sex offenders who are being needlessly registered</b>, and if we assume that each of them have 5 family members and 10 friends, that is <b>12,281,175-12,849,990 people that are affected by the sex offender registry</b> without sufficient basis. Compared to the <b>494,091-765,675 children that are victimized by repeat sex offenders</b>, that is a very disproportionate number, and while sexual abuse is not trivial, this means that we punish and indirectly affect about 12-14 times the number of people we need to. When you remember that somewhere between 35-50% of these people are juveniles at the time of the offense, you get an <b>appalling number of children that are being harmed</b> by the very laws that were formed to protect them.<br />
<br />
<b><u>Closing Thoughts</u></b><br />
<br />
I have re-written the overview of sex offenders for the website three times now, and each time, I wonder if I am covering all of the bases or giving an overly simplistic view of sex offenders. Even writing this one post has taken me two weeks for similar reasons.<br />
<br />
"Sex offender" is a term that encompasses a wide variety of crimes beyond rape and crimes against children, though together, these crimes make up the majority. However, the mere commission of these crimes, as discussed in the first and third statistics, does not mean the person committing them is an ongoing danger to children. Even the commission of a "child sex crime" would not appear to indicate such a danger because most such crimes are committed by first-time offenders. Covering each segment of restrictions against sex offenders is likewise complex.<br />
<br />
Thus, any attempt to tackle the issue of sex offenders from any angle, research-based or journalist-based, will lead any reader to misleading conclusions about sex offenders.TNF 13http://www.blogger.com/profile/00234644586674907757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653816103545335912.post-53969663636867473712017-06-25T16:45:00.000-07:002017-06-25T16:45:31.480-07:00A Simplified Review Of Finkelhor's "The Prevention of Childhood Sexual Abuse"<b><u>Who?</u></b><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.unh.edu/ccrc/researchers/finkelhor-david.html">David Finkelhor</a> is a child sexual abuse preventionist and sociologist. Since 1977, he has contributed research into the psychology of how child sexual abuse happens and how it can be prevented. If you wish to read more about this pillar of abuse prevention, please do so. As this is a method of simplifying his study, <a href="http://www.unh.edu/ccrc/pdf/CV192.pdf">The Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse</a> (2012), I will not focus as much on the details. It is a fairly short read at 19 pages, but the average person will find it dry and boring even with a dictionary handy.<br />
<br />
<b><u>Reductions In Incidents Of Child Sexual Abuse (p. 16-17)</u></b><br />
<br />
One surprising fact is that sexual violence against children has been on a downward trend since the 1990's, though the reason for this decline is unclear. The evidence for this decline comes both from self-report surveys and crime data trends. This downward trend was also associated with several other areas, such as reductions in general crime, teen pregnancy, teen suicide, and drug abuse. While one review mentions some possible reasons for these declines, there is no causal evidence that connects a solid reason for the downward trend in incidents of child sexual abuse.<br />
<br />
<b><u>His Review Of Current Strategies, By Topic</u></b><br />
<br />
I said this was simplified, right? Well, here is a list for you, then, with the topics he covers and what he concludes about each. If you wish to know more about a particular topic, you can find the page number at the beginning of each topic. I am breaking down his reviews by broad category.<br />
<br />
<b><u>Criminal Justice Strategies</u></b><br />
<ol>
<li><b>Sex Offender Registration (p. 5-6)</b></li>
<ol>
<li>Mixed, but not promising: There has been inadequate research into sex offender registration policies, and many studies also include community notification, which is a separate topic. Crime has been in decline since 1990 or so, and it is unclear if the studies that have been done are finding drops in crimes because of registration, or because of the downward crime trend. Possibility for collateral consequences like stigma on offenders, negative effects, and limited effectiveness, but also a possibility for public confidence in authorities and a sense of safety (even if false).</li>
</ol>
<li><b>Sex Offender Notifications (p. 6)</b></li>
<ol>
<li>Limited studies and negative effects: You can always tell that more research is badly needed when a high-level researcher opens his remarks with saying, "No high-quality studies exist, and the correlational studies have mixed results." He observes that community notifications of sex offenders seems based on the myth of stranger danger, and that notifications are not favored by law enforcement and can significantly interfere with an offender's ability to rehabilitate and reintegrate into society.</li>
</ol>
<li><b>Background Checks (p. 6-7)</b></li>
<ol>
<li>False sense of risk: Surprisingly, Dr. Finkelhor observes that not only have there been limited research into the benefits and costs of background checks, but that doing so would be pointless because of how mainstream they are. He states that research is "badly needed" regardless because the true risk that individuals with backgrounds pose is unclear, and may be weeding out perfectly competent workers or employees who pose little to no risk.</li>
</ol>
<li><b>Sex Offender Residency Restrictions (p. 7)</b></li>
<ol>
<li>Note: These are restrictions that prevent sex offenders from living near day cares, schools, and other places frequented by children. Several studies done into their effectiveness (very limited since 2012) show little to no effect. One <a href="https://mn.gov/doc/assets/04-07SexOffenderReport-Proximity_tcm1089-272769.pdf">study done in 2007</a> in Minnesota found that not one of the 224 re-offenses studied would have been deterred by such policies. There appears to be studies that Finkelhor was not aware of when writing this summary.</li>
<li>Supremely stupid: Not only have residency restrictions been enacted with no research into their effectiveness, the research that has been done on how offenses happen and the effect these policies have in theory shows that they are not worth adopting if the goal is to protect children. He points out that, "law enforcement and sex offender management authorities do not have the credibility or evidence base to temper or thwart misguided populist legislation on sex offender policy."</li>
</ol>
<li><b>Civil Commitment and Lengthening Sentences (p. 7-8)</b></li>
<ol>
<li>No evidence, does not reduce risk: While many different policies have lengthened the sentences of sex offenders and many states have formed procedures to essentially incarcerate sex offenders past their criminal sentence. The basis for these policies is a deterrent effect, and reducing those capable of committing new offenses, both of which have not been studied. It is noted that sentence length appears to have no relationship with the risk of reoffending, and that the evidence supporting these policies is extremely limited and unclear.</li>
</ol>
<li><b>Increasing Detection and Arrest (p. 8-9)</b></li>
<ol>
<li>Note: This is defined as when detection and arrests are increased on the law enforcement side of things, not to be confused with attempts to get victims to report abuse. The focus here is on more staff to detect and investigate abuse for criminal arrests and prosecutions, in the hope of deterring potential offenders and controlling existing offenders through the effects of being arrested.</li>
<li>Mixed: He notes that no studies have tested for the presence of a deterrent effect on sexual offending against children, but that other studies do support deterrents for domestic violence, drunken driving, and robberies. Instead of deterring potential abusers, increased detection and arrests seem instead to deter caught abusers from acting again. It is noted that general research not specific to sexual abuse, "tends to confirm that offenders are deterred more by an increase of getting caught than and increase in the severity of the likely punishment." </li>
</ol>
<li><b>Mental Health Treatment (p. 9-10)</b></li>
<ol>
<li>Mostly positive: While many abusers lack access to adequate treatment, the research shows that treatment (particularly cognitive-behavioral therapy) reduces sexual re-offenses by up to 37%, which is significant because the likelihood of sexual re-offenses are already low. Because this research appears non-experimental in terms of its methodology, some experts are reserved in endorsing mental health treatment for adults and more research into this area is needed. While the strength of the research for adults is convincing, the research around juvenile offenders is even more so because it does use experimental designs.</li>
</ol>
<li><b>Community Reintegration and Supervision (p. 10)</b></li>
<ol>
<li>Promising, but needs research: Of note is Circles of Support and Accountability, an innovative program originating in Canada which provides a support system for offenders. The idea here is to focus on successfully reintegrating the offender through social support and employment opportunities. While Circles is noted to reduce reoffending by 70%, more research is needed. </li>
</ol>
</ol>
<div>
<b><u>Wrapping Up Criminal Justice</u></b></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Dr. Finkelhor notes that tremendous energy has gone into criminal justice policies, and that the biggest weakness of this approach is that most molestations are not perpetrated by those with a record of sex crimes. In other words, "Even strategies that are 100 percent effective in eliminating recidivism among known offenders would reduce new victimizations only a little." </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
He does recommend four areas to improve upon: Detecting offenders not yet known to law enforcement, focus only on the high-risk offenders, develop better risk-assessment tools, and determine low-intensity strategies for youth, family, and other low-risk offenders. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b><u>Educational Programs (p. 11-14)</u></b></div>
<br />
Here, Dr. Finkelhor overviews programs that teach children boundaries, dangerous situations and when to get help, safe/unsafe touch, along with the underlying message that victims are not to blame. These programs have drawn criticism: They may be too difficult for children to grasp, they may impede a child's trust in adults, and (as I have said before in other terms), "children cannot be reasonably expected to foil... adults bent on molesting them and... it is morally misguided and perhaps psychologically harmful to place the responsibility of preventing abuse on the shoulders of children."<br />
<br />
Research shows that these programs can improve child-parent communication and that children do indeed learn the concepts being taught, particularly at younger ages. Research also shows very limited unintended consequences, and report positive outcomes like more positive self-esteem. Such educational programs have also been shown to reduce risk factors for victimization (in some studies but not others) and can increase bystander intervention. Much to my own surprise, there appears to be no basis for concerns that educational programs have negative consequences on children who experience these programs and are then abused: Instead, research supports the idea that such programs increase victim disclosure and reduce self-blame. Rather than causing more trauma to a victim, prevention programs seem to ease their burden.<br />
<br />
Dr. Finkelhor recommends expanding these programs to include dating violence, statutory crimes, and new sexual crimes that are made possible by the internet.<br />
<br />
<b><u>Community Prevention of Offending (p. 14-15)</u></b><br />
<br />
Here. Dr. Finkelhor overviews small-scale efforts to educate a small community to identify potential abusers with mental health help and an awareness that sexual behavior with children is wrong. Confidential phone numbers are provided in this approach. While there is limited evidence that these practices realistically prevent abuse, there is evidence that potential abusers come forward for help. At the very least, those with concerns about their behavior or thoughts are coming forward for help. It is mentioned that the current environment can reduce the ability of these programs to truly offer confidential help, and that alone can be a significant hindrance to these approaches as policies.<br />
<br />
Separately, another approach is bystander intervention to detect and intervene when abusive situations are actually or potentially happening. There is more evidence supporting bystander intervention, and the research in that area is more developed. This research shows that bystander intervention can change community attitudes, reduce bullying among children, and has the potential to reduce peer abuse or dating violence.<br />
<br />
<b><u>Harm Mitigation (p. 15-16)</u></b><br />
<br />
Harm mitigation is the use of counseling and family intervention to reduce the effects of abuse on victims, and the use of child advocacy centers to reduce the impacts of disclosure on victims through a variety of means. He specifically mentions that not all victims suffer the same level of harm or symptoms from sexual abuse, and he also mentions that there must be sensitivity in discovering the needs of a child victim and forming the most appropriate intervention. He points out that trauma-focused therapy is excellent for victim, and that child advocacy centers can point to or offer this particular therapy.<br />
<br />
While there are other options mentioned, they are essentially miscellaneous tactics that do not have much attention in research. These options can be found on page 16.<br />
<br />
<b><u>Conclusion And Five Promising Areas For Study (p. 17-19)</u></b><br />
<br />
Dr. Finkelhor concludes by indicating that there is no strong evidence pointing to a single strategy in preventing child sexual abuse, but proposes looking into several areas for further study and research:<br />
<br />
<ol>
<li>School-based child-focused educational programs</li>
<li>Evidence-based policy and therapeutic practices around criminal justice</li>
<li>Making cognitive-behavioral therapies standard and widely available</li>
</ol>
<div>
He closes his remarks by expressing optimism that with further research, we can make greater and more numerous accomplishments in reducing child sexual abuse. </div>
TNF 13http://www.blogger.com/profile/00234644586674907757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653816103545335912.post-186303719697617662017-06-22T19:36:00.000-07:002017-08-09T17:46:36.124-07:00News Outlets That Conflate Sexual Abuse And Sexual Attraction<b><u>Why Is This An Issue?</u></b><br />
<br />
As you have heard me illustrate many times, <a href="https://csaprimaryprevention.blogspot.com/2016/06/why-terminology-matters.html">terminology matters to preventing child sexual abuse</a>. Using "sex offender" instead of "sexual abuser" gives the impression that those who abuse have been caught before, that the biggest risk is from recidivists. However, the reality indicates the opposite: First-time offenders are the biggest risks. In other words, improper terminology spreads myths about child sexual abuse, and myths enable sexual abuse to happen.<br />
<br />
Likewise, confusing the sexual attraction to children (similar to heterosexual attraction, but directed towards children in some form) and the horrific sexual abuse of a child gives the wrong impression that child sexual abuse is perpetrated out of sexual pleasure.<br />
<br />
It also gives the wrong impression that those with a sexual attraction are a risk, where the <a href="https://csaprimaryprevention.blogspot.com/2017/06/why-statistic-matters-part-one.html">facts and logic</a> say otherwise. It places an unfair stigma on a group of people, through no fault of their own, have a sexual attraction to children. This can, in turn, increase child sexual abuse by driving people into corners where poor decisions and mental illness thrive. The results of confusing pedophilia and child sexual abuse, or pedophiles and child rapists, make child sexual abuse harder to prevent.<br />
<br />
<b><u>Minimizing Child Sexual Abuse</u></b><br />
<b><u><br /></u></b>
As you have heard me say many times, confusing these terms minimizes child sexual abuse. Why is that? Well, it is like referring to stealing as kleptomania, or a brutal murder on a highway as road rage: It is referring to a horrific act as if it is the result of a feeling, rather than as a conscious choice to harm a child, and that sends an unacceptable message.<br />
<br />
<b><u>Stigmatizing Sexuality</u></b><br />
<b><u><br /></u></b>
Confusing sexual abuse with a sexual attraction to children also places an unfair and frankly slanderous label on those who have never hurt a child in their life. When people use the word "pedophile", it should only be to mean someone with an attraction to children. Otherwise, it places the label of child rapist on those who, according to <a href="https://csaprimaryprevention.blogspot.com/2017/06/why-statistic-matters-part-one.html">estimates and statistics</a>, do not rape children. It is just as serious as posting on Facebook that someone is a child rapist: If they are not, it can land the accuser in hot legal water very quickly.<br />
<b><u><br /></u></b>
<b><u>News Outlet List</u></b><br />
<br />
I think it is high time for a list, given the amount of articles from specific major news sources that confuse terminology around child sexual abuse. This list is current as of June 17, 2017, and was formed through many weeks of viewing news reports with specific keywords flagged: Pedophile and pedophilia. Many more minimize the issue by referring to child sexual exploitation material or sexual abuse images as "child pornography," as if the images are legitimate pornography where the child can consent, is paid, and is actually acting.<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>Note To Media:</b><br />
If you would like your organization removed from this list, then please use the contact widget on the right-hand side of this page to request it. Please be aware that you will need to demonstrate at least three months of organization-wide content that refrains from minimizing child sexual abuse by conflating it with a sexual attraction to children and calls sexual abuse and sexual abusers by proper terms. Absent this content, your request will be denied.<br />
<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.ap.org/en-us/">Associated Press</a></li>
<ul>
<li>Many times, other news organizations will borrow reports from the Associated Press, so they may not come up directly as "Associated Press" in a news feed, you have to actually read the article.</li>
</ul>
<li><a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/">The Australian</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.rt.com/news/">RT</a></li>
<li><a href="http://nypost.com/">New York Post</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/">The Sun</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/">Daily Mail</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.cnn.com/">CNN</a></li>
<li><a href="http://dailycaller.com/">The Daily Caller</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.thebarrieexaminer.com/">The Barrie Examiner</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.thenewstribune.com/">The News Tribune</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/">The Times Of Israel</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.israelnationalnews.com/">Israel News Nation</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.cnbc.com/">CNBC</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.collective-evolution.com/">Collective Evolution</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.startribune.com/">The Star Tribune</a></li>
</ul>
TNF 13http://www.blogger.com/profile/00234644586674907757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653816103545335912.post-64603503008501545812017-06-19T08:31:00.004-07:002017-06-19T18:47:29.952-07:00Supreme Court Decides Sex Offender Social Media Use Is Free Speech: Why This Matters<b><u>Say What?</u></b><br />
<b><u><br /></u></b>A sex offender posted a win in defeating a parking ticket, on Facebook where North Carolina forbids sex offenders from being on social media. He was arrested, and his case went all the way to SCOTUS. The best analysis I have seen for this so far is <a href="http://hotair.com/archives/2017/06/19/scotus-facebook-okay-sex-offenders/">here</a>.<br />
<br />
In short, the Supreme Court decided unanimously in favor of the sex offender, ruling that his access to social media constitutes free speech and cannot be restricted. While I am still working through the decision in its entirety, you can read the <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/16pdf/15-1194_08l1.pdf">complete decision</a> and an <a href="http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/packingham-v-north-carolina/">outline of the case</a>.<br />
<br />
<b><u>What Does This Mean?</u></b><br />
<br />
This ruling means, to quote the decision, "...the State may not enact this complete bar to the exercise of First Amendment rights on websites integral to the fabric of modern society and culture." The decision was not limited to social media, and the decision essentially holds for the entire internet, insofar as it is used for free speech. While I am no legal expert, this ruling may well set the stage for a number of internet and technology-related issues that come before judges.<br />
<br />
<b><u>Why Is This Related To Primary Prevention?</u></b><br />
<b><u><br /></u></b>
The argument of North Carolina was, in part, that restricting sex offenders from social media sites was a virtual extension of banning them from schools, parks, daycares, and other places children gather. They claimed that banning sex offenders from such places, and from certain internet sites, was in the interest of protecting the community.<br />
<br />
Logically, their argument falls short, because sexual offenders do not pose the most significant risk to children: Those new to the criminal justice system who are trusted in the community are. The SCOTUS did not buy the legal argument of North Carolina because, in part,<br />
<br />
"By prohibiting sex offenders from using those websites, North Carolina with one broad stroke bars access to what for many are the principal sources for knowing current events, checking ads for employment, speaking and listening in the modern public square, and otherwise exploring the vast realms of human thought and knowledge. These websites can provide perhaps the most powerful mechanisms available to a private citizen to make his or her voice heard."<br />
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<b><u>Social Media Helps Reintegration</u></b><br />
<br />
Another essential part of why they ruled against North Carolina, that was quoted in many articles on the subject, was,<br />
<br />
"It is unsettling to suggest that only a limited set of websites can be used even by persons who have completed their sentences. Even convicted criminals—and in some instances especially convicted criminals—might receive legitimate benefits from these means for access to the world of ideas, in particular if they seek to reform and to pursue lawful and rewarding lives."<br />
<br />
This issue is closely related to primary prevention, because it allows sex offenders the right to use social media and have a bigger voice in politics, as well as use the internet to reform themselves (which, by the way, includes yours truly).<br />
<br />
<b><u>Concerns About Restrictions On Those Having Served Their Sentence</u></b><br />
<br />
One concern outlined in the court's decision, and was also shared in one of the news articles discussing the decision, was that the law is imposing restrictions on convicts and ex-convicts after the completion of their sentence. This concern was briefly mentioned in the court's decision:<br />
<br />
"Of importance, the troubling fact that the law imposes severe restrictions on persons who already have served their sentence and are no longer subject to the supervision of the criminal justice system is also not an issue before the Court."<div>
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<div>
This suggests that the court may take up the issue again in the future, and a growing number of civil rights advocates are have been concerned about similar issues. I posit that scaling back these restrictions may well reduce recidivism, and can have collateral consequences well beyond what their intent was.<br /><br />
<b><u>One Item Of Concern...</u></b><br />
<b><u><br /></u></b>
I do have one item of concern regarding the court's decision: Their claim that sex offenders pose a serious risk for recidivism, and that the internet can all too easily be used by a sex offender to commit a new sexual crime against a child. The court cites a wide range of examples in airing this concern that, frankly, would give many would-be offenders ideas on how to commit such a crime and get away with it.<br />
<br />
I am concerned by this, because not only does the concern of sex offenders committing new sex crimes have no basis in research, the ruling is such that their statement that runs contrary to said research may be cited in future decisions regarding the issue. I worry about broadly announcing the fact that social media can be used to stalk, sexually exploit, and sexually abuse children in specific ways, and this ruling appears to do just that. We need to avoid giving people ideas.</div>
TNF 13http://www.blogger.com/profile/00234644586674907757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653816103545335912.post-37748448739555549882017-06-18T18:54:00.000-07:002017-10-08T21:02:32.786-07:00Why The Statistic Matters: Part Two, Child Sexual AbuseThis is a miniseries about why the statistics on this site, and the upcoming website, should matter to you, not only in your everyday life, but in preventing child sexual abuse... <i>before</i> it can happen.<br />
<br />
<b><u>Statistic 1: Most Abusers Are Those Known And Trusted</u></b><br />
<br />
To be specific, 90-93% of child sexual abuse is committed by those known and trusted by the victim. This one is probably the single most important statistic to the prevention of child sexual abuse: The common myth is that it is strangers you need to worry about, and teaching stranger danger is rampant. Well, I grew up in that era of stranger danger. It did not protect me from the three times I was sexually abused by those I knew and trusted.<br />
<br />
This single statistic means also that mandatory reporting laws will always impede the prevention of abuse, because it means that those who may be in need of mental health help do not get that help. Why? Because most abusers are those known and trusted, you will not report your son to the police for fondling a younger sibling. You will not want to ruin the rest of his life. The same holds true for the husband, the uncle, the teacher, the babysitter, etc.<br />
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<b><u>Statistic 2: Prevalence Of Sexual Abuse</u></b><br />
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The prevalence of child sexual abuse has been reported in a number of ways. <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1077559511403920">Studies</a> indicate that the victim-reported abuse on surveys is around 8% for boys, and 19% for girls. Estimates that attempt to account for underreporting put abuse at one in six boys, and one in four girls. This statistic is important for obvious reasons. It teaches us that underreporting is real, and that the true prevalence of child sexual abuse in any society will likely never be known. It teaches us that boys are victims of sexual abuse, and that they report less due to a myriad of complex sociological factors.<br />
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But let us practically apply that statistic, just to the United States:<br />
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According to <a href="https://www.childstats.gov/americaschildren/tables/pop1.asp">this source</a>, there are <b>73.8 million children</b> in the United States, and the known victim-reported prevalence (8%, 19%) translates to roughly 3,011,040 boys and 6,870,780 girls, or 9,881,820 children. The
estimate that attempts to account for underreporting (38-50% ARE
reported, so we will assume for the moment that only 38% are reported)
translates to 16,008,548
children.<br />
<br />
In other words, our best data and estimates indicate that <b>13.39-21.69% of children are sexually abused (which is a big deal)</b>.<br />
<div data-redactor-wrapper="1" style="left: -9999px; position: absolute;">
In other words, our best data and estimates indicate that <b>13.39-21.69% of children are sexually abused (which is a big deal)</b>.In other words, our best data and estimates indicate that <b>13.39-21.69% of children are sexually abused (which is a big deal)</b>.</div>
<div data-redactor-wrapper="1" style="left: -9999px; position: absolute;">
In other words, our best data and estimates indicate that <b>13.39-21.69% of children are sexually abused (which is a big deal)</b>.</div>
<div data-redactor-wrapper="1" style="left: -9999px; position: absolute;">
<div data-redactor="1">
<br /></div>
<div data-redactor="1">
In other words, our best data and estimates indicate that <b>13.39-21.69% of children are sexually abused (which is a big deal)</b>.</div>
</div>
<br />
Most of all, the prevalence of child sexual abuse shows us that too many children are affected by this epidemic already for us to be reacting to abuse after it happens. After abuse happens is clearly not good enough.<br />
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<b><u>Statistic 3: Most Abuse Happens In A Residence, One-On-One</u></b><br />
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The <a href="https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/saycrle.pdf">circumstances</a> of abuse can be shocking to some: 77% of child sexual abuse is done in a residence, and 81% of child sexual abuse occurs in a one-on-one situation. This is vitally important for prevention and for policymakers, because it means that the majority of abuse does not happen in parks, schools, playgrounds, libraries, movie theaters, or businesses. Restricting people from any of these places does nothing to stop sexual abuse, because not only does abuse not happen in these places, abuse is more often perpetrated not by strangers, but by someone the child knows.<br />
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<b><u>Statistic 4: False Allegations Are Extremely Rare</u></b><br />
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How rare, you ask? Think <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_allegation_of_child_sexual_abuse">4-8%</a>, and typically those false reports are allegations <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0890856709653958">originating with an adult</a> in the child's live, not the child themselves. What this clearly demonstrates is that children can be trusted to tell the truth about being sexually abused. If a child has told you they were abused, you must treat it as a fact and respond accordingly by going to a therapist with expertise in sexual abuse victims, a child advocacy center, Child Protective Services, or the police. While no doubt, given statistic number one, you know and trust the abuser, the fact of the matter is that they need treatment and help, and they will not get that without the police being at least notified. This statistic is obvious: <b>Believe a child's allegation of sexual abuse</b>.<br />
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<b><u>Wrapping Up</u></b><br />
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While there are many more statistics in child sexual abuse that matter a great deal, these four statistics and why they matter form the core of what the average person absolutely must know about child sexual abuse. By being aware of not just the fact and figure, but why that figure is important, you can become involved in preventing child sexual abuse... <i>before</i> it can happen.TNF 13http://www.blogger.com/profile/00234644586674907757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653816103545335912.post-86928579926213525612017-06-17T20:04:00.000-07:002017-06-17T20:05:38.237-07:00Why The Statistic Matters: Part One, PedophiliaAll the time, you hear statistics about a great number of things. You see them frequently here, on the blog. But you do not often see the practical application of them, and it is up to you to figure out the point of the statistic in question. Some are obvious, while others are not nearly as obvious.<br />
<br />
Because of that, I will do a miniseries on why the statistics cited on this site should matter to you, not only in your everyday life, but why they matter to preventing child sexual abuse.<br />
<br />
<b><u>Statistic 1: Population Of Pedophiles</u></b><br />
<br />
Current statistics (the DSM-V (the psychiatry Bible) and Michael Seto) put the population of those with pedophilic disorder as mainly being male: 3-5% of adolescent and adult males. This is, of course, an estimate. However, it is telling because pedophilic disorder is not the same thing as pedophilia: The DSM-V differentiates the two. This means that the high estimate of 3-5% of males means that even more have a sexual attraction to children. Why? Because pedophilic disorder is a very specific mental condition in which those with pedophilia, a sexual attraction to prepubescent children, have difficulties like depression, anxiety, and difficulty relating to others. It does not cover those with an attraction to teenagers, which means that the true population figure for those with attractions to children broadly is actually higher than 3-5% of males. That is about to matter even more because of statistic number two...<br />
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<b><u>Statistic 2: Proportion Of Those Who Sexually Abused Children Who Have Pedophilia</u></b><br />
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The second statistic is well-known by researchers and therapists working with forensic and non-forensic populations of pedophiles: One-third of those who sexually abused children have pedophilia. <a href="http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/ncjrl/pdf/I%20C%20A%20C/2012%20-%20October%2015-16/A%20-%20Child%20Pornography%20Offenses%20Are%20a%20Valid%20Diagnostic%20Indicator%20of%20Pedophilia.PDF">Yes, one-third</a>. This tells us a great deal of information about child sexual abuse: Mainly, that it is not about getting sexual pleasure from a child. You see, if the population of those with pedophilic disorder is an estimate and a low one, but the proportion of abusers with pedophilia is proportionately higher than that estimate (6-15 times higher). This means there is something associated with the attraction that drives the motivating factors that fuel the decision to abuse a child.<br />
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<b><u>Statistic 3: Most Who Have Pedophilic Disorder Do Not Abuse Children</u></b><br />
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If you were to read through the section on pedophilic disorder in the DSM-V, you see a rather bleak picture of a person tortured by their attractions to children. When you get to the differential diagnosis section, you see that pedophilic disorder can correlate to alcohol and substance abuse, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and even antisocial personality disorder. When you get to comorbidity, you see that pedophilic disorder is correlated to depression, bipolar, and anxiety disorders... while they also note that these observations are only among forensic populations of those with pedophilic disorder, meaning that more study is needed in this area.<br />
<br />
You have heard me <a href="https://csaprimaryprevention.blogspot.com/2016/05/using-math-to-determine-pedophiles-who.html">state on this blog before</a>: Given our best estimates without trying to compensate for underreporting, 3-5.2% of pedophiles molest children, and after accounting for that, 4.8-9.36% molest children. In other words, our best guess is that <b>90.64-97% of pedophiles do not molest children</b>. This is obviously significant, because it means that a sexual attraction to children does not appear to frequently correlate with sexual abuse. It also means that what I just outlined from the DSM-V about the bleak lives of someone with a sexual attraction to children... only comes from looking at 3-10% of those with such an attraction. In other words, a lot of our information is missing about pedophilia, sexual attraction to children in general, and most importantly, <i><b>it is not reasonable to correlate pedophiles with child molestation</b>. </i>It means that a sexual attraction to children is <i>more common than child sexual abuse</i>. This is frankly huge, not only for those who study pedophiles and pedophilia, but also for child sexual abuse prevention.<br />
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<b><u>Statistic 4: Those Viewing Sexual Abuse Images More Often Have Pedophilia...</u></b><br />
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To be precise, 61% of those convicted of possessing child sexual exploitation material have pedophilia. What this means is that pedophiles are trying to satisfy their sexual needs with sexual material of children. This begs the question, given recent discussion around art, virtual reality, and 3-D images involving children, of whether researchers are wrong to assume that such virtual imagery serves as a gateway for a hands-on offense involving a child. If more pedophiles view sexual imagery involving real children, could that number be reduced if virtual imagery involving children were more available, and legal? Could this virtual imagery be not only a better outlet than imagery involving real children, but reduce the number of sexual abuse cases? More study is clearly needed in this area to test correlation.<br />
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<b><u>Enough Statistics: What Is The Point?</u></b><br />
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The point to overviewing just these three statistics and why they matter is not merely an academic exercise: It has real implications for preventing child sexual abuse. It suggests that stigmatizing a sexual attraction to children and viewing it as a risk factor for sexually harming children is not going to be helpful to preventing child sexual abuse, because a sexual attraction to children is less often a risk factor for a hands-on sexual abuse case and more often a risk factor for viewing sexual abuse images. While viewing images of children being sexually abused is indeed harmful to the children involved, the creation of virtual images is not because real children are not involved.<br />
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These statistics also very clearly indicate that we have barely scratched the surface of knowing pedophilia and sexual attraction to children: It means more study is sorely needed in a variety of ways to uncover that knowledge. It means we should look at what happens when you give those with a sexual attraction to children support instead of an automatic and clearly incorrect label of child molester, as <a href="https://csaprimaryprevention.blogspot.com/2017/04/prevention-project-dunkelfeld-and.html/">Prevention Project Dunkelfeld is doing in Germany</a>. It is obvious to anyone working in these areas... they need money to do this research, and the number of people willing to put money towards this research is limited.<br />
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<b><u>Bottom Line</u></b><br />
<br />
Conflating a sexual attraction to children, which we barely know much about, with the sexual abuse of a child spreads incorrect myths that hamper our ability to prevent sexual abuse and interfere with the ability of those with an attraction to children to seek support and seek peers who face the same attraction. Mixing up the sexual attraction to children, with the sexual abuse of a child, is unwarranted, inaccurate, and only serves to enable child sexual abuse by driving both issues further into darkness and secrecy, where sexual abuse thrives.TNF 13http://www.blogger.com/profile/00234644586674907757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653816103545335912.post-51922814474349228272017-06-17T11:31:00.000-07:002017-06-17T11:31:22.585-07:00What You Do Not Know About Pedophiles Could Spare Children Sexual Abuse<h1 class="graf graf--h3 graf--leading graf--title" id="d1cc" name="d1cc" style="--margin-top-multiplier: 0; background-color: white; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8); font-family: medium-content-sans-serif-font, "Lucida Grande", "Lucida Sans Unicode", "Lucida Sans", Geneva, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 40px; letter-spacing: -0.028em; line-height: 1.04; margin: 0px 0px 0px -2.5px;">
What You Do Not Know About Pedophiles Could Spare Children Sexual Abuse</h1>
<div class="graf graf--p graf--hasDropCapModel graf--hasDropCap graf-after--h3" id="1736" name="1736" style="--baseline-multiplier: 0.179; background-color: white; clear: left; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8); font-family: medium-content-serif-font, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 1.58; margin-top: 10px;">
<span class="graf-dropCap" style="--baseline-multiplier: 0.157; display: block; float: left; font-family: medium-content-sans-serif-font, "Lucida Grande", "Lucida Sans Unicode", "Lucida Sans", Geneva, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 64px; font-weight: 700; letter-spacing: -0.03em; line-height: 0.83; margin-bottom: -0.08em; margin-left: -5px; margin-right: 7px; padding-top: 7px; position: relative;">M</span>any, many times our knowledge of something is incomplete. When that happens, we avoid taking an action when we would do so with that knowledge we are missing. We can also take action when we would not do so with that knowledge we lack. Worse, we can take action based entirely on how we feel, which can lead to disastrous consequences.</div>
<figure class="graf graf--figure graf-after--p" id="d4b4" name="d4b4" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8); font-family: medium-ui-sans-serif-text-font, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Oxygen, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Open Sans", "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 18px; margin: 43px 0px 0px; outline: 0px; position: relative; user-select: auto; z-index: 100;"><div class="aspectRatioPlaceholder is-locked" style="margin: 0px auto; max-height: 419px; max-width: 700px; position: relative; width: 700px;">
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<canvas class="progressiveMedia-canvas js-progressiveMedia-canvas" height="42" style="backface-visibility: hidden; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; height: 418.594px; left: 0px; margin: auto; opacity: 0; position: absolute; top: 0px; transition: visibility 0s linear 0.5s, opacity 0.1s 0.4s; vertical-align: baseline; visibility: hidden; width: 700px;" width="75"></canvas><img class="progressiveMedia-image js-progressiveMedia-image" data-src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*w0uCmi6fV_vZzlMZVkhZQA.jpeg" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*w0uCmi6fV_vZzlMZVkhZQA.jpeg" style="backface-visibility: hidden; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; height: 418.594px; left: 0px; margin: auto; opacity: 1; position: absolute; top: 0px; transition: visibility 0s linear 0s, opacity 0.4s 0s; visibility: visible; width: 700px; z-index: 100;" /></div>
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<figcaption class="imageCaption" style="--baseline-multiplier: 0.157; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6); font-family: medium-content-sans-serif-font, "Lucida Grande", "Lucida Sans Unicode", "Lucida Sans", Geneva, Arial, sans-serif; font-feature-settings: 'liga' 1, 'lnum' 1; font-size: 14px; left: 0px; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.4; margin-top: 10px; outline: 0px; position: relative; text-align: center; top: 0px; width: 700px; z-index: 300;">You could spare a child the pain of abuse with your knowledge.</figcaption></figure><div class="graf graf--p graf-after--figure" id="a2d7" name="a2d7" style="--baseline-multiplier: 0.179; background-color: white; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8); font-family: medium-content-serif-font, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 1.58; margin-top: 38px;">
So how does that play out in the case of child sexual abuse, pedophiles, and pedophilia? I am going to run with two scenarios. There are more, but I think two are sufficient to make my point about pedophiles.</div>
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Ready?</div>
<h3 class="graf graf--h3 graf-after--p" id="2557" name="2557" style="--baseline-multiplier: 0.157; background-color: white; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8); font-family: medium-content-sans-serif-font, "Lucida Grande", "Lucida Sans Unicode", "Lucida Sans", Geneva, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 32px; letter-spacing: -0.02em; line-height: 1.15; margin: 56px 0px 0px -2px;">
<span class="markup--strong markup--h3-strong">Scenario One</span></h3>
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<span class="graf-dropCap" style="--baseline-multiplier: 0.157; display: block; float: left; font-family: medium-content-sans-serif-font, "Lucida Grande", "Lucida Sans Unicode", "Lucida Sans", Geneva, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 64px; font-weight: 700; letter-spacing: -0.03em; line-height: 0.83; margin-bottom: -0.08em; margin-left: -5px; margin-right: 7px; padding-top: 7px; position: relative;">S</span>o, a male friend comes to you and tells you that they are a pedophile, that they have sexual attractions to children. To you, a pedophile is someone who molests children. You ask him who the victim was. He says there was no victim. You are baffled, because a pedophile is someone that molests children. The conversation ends, rather awkwardly.</div>
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</figure><div class="graf graf--p graf-after--figure" id="219c" name="219c" style="--baseline-multiplier: 0.179; background-color: white; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8); font-family: medium-content-serif-font, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 1.58; margin-top: 38px;">
The scene rubs you the wrong way, so you ask some people about it. They tell you the guy always seemed creepy, and so you call the police and tell the police what he told you. You know this guy is always hanging out with this one kid, and after calling the police, you ask this one kid if the guy has ever touched him in an odd way. The kid says yes, he has. So the police come, you tell them what the child said, and the police interview the child. The child repeats that the guy has touched him in an odd way.</div>
<div class="graf graf--p graf-after--p" id="7848" name="7848" style="--baseline-multiplier: 0.179; background-color: white; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8); font-family: medium-content-serif-font, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 1.58; margin-top: 29px;">
So the police arrest the guy, and the guy takes a plea deal and spends ten years on probation for molesting a child. Only… he does not finish his probation. His probation gets violated because he cannot find a job, and decides to talk to children anyway. He becomes sexual with one of them, and gets caught for molesting a child.</div>
<h3 class="graf graf--h3 graf-after--p" id="6c50" name="6c50" style="--baseline-multiplier: 0.157; background-color: white; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8); font-family: medium-content-sans-serif-font, "Lucida Grande", "Lucida Sans Unicode", "Lucida Sans", Geneva, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 32px; letter-spacing: -0.02em; line-height: 1.15; margin: 56px 0px 0px -2px;">
<span class="markup--strong markup--h3-strong">Scenario Two</span></h3>
<figure class="graf graf--figure graf--layoutOutsetLeft graf-after--h3" data-scroll="native" id="6dd1" name="6dd1" style="--margin-top-multiplier: 0; background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8); float: left; font-family: medium-ui-sans-serif-text-font, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Oxygen, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Open Sans", "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 18px; margin: 44px 30px 0px -150px; outline: 0px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-top: 10px; position: relative; user-select: auto; width: 525px; z-index: 100;"><div class="aspectRatioPlaceholder is-locked" style="margin: 0px auto; max-height: 349px; max-width: 525px; position: relative; width: 525px;">
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<div class="progressiveMedia js-progressiveMedia graf-image is-canvasLoaded is-imageLoaded" data-action-value="1*li2svUbsUbMwHXWEpmOgAg.jpeg" data-action="zoom" data-height="639" data-image-id="1*li2svUbsUbMwHXWEpmOgAg.jpeg" data-scroll="native" data-width="960" style="background: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; cursor: zoom-in; height: 349px; left: 0px; margin: auto; max-width: 100%; position: absolute; top: 0px; transition: background 0.2s; width: 525px;">
<canvas class="progressiveMedia-canvas js-progressiveMedia-canvas" height="47" style="backface-visibility: hidden; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; height: 349px; left: 0px; margin: auto; opacity: 0; position: absolute; top: 0px; transition: visibility 0s linear 0.5s, opacity 0.1s 0.4s; vertical-align: baseline; visibility: hidden; width: 525px;" width="75"></canvas><img class="progressiveMedia-image js-progressiveMedia-image" data-src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/600/1*li2svUbsUbMwHXWEpmOgAg.jpeg" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/600/1*li2svUbsUbMwHXWEpmOgAg.jpeg" style="backface-visibility: hidden; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; height: 349px; left: 0px; margin: auto; opacity: 1; position: absolute; top: 0px; transition: visibility 0s linear 0s, opacity 0.4s 0s; visibility: visible; width: 525px; z-index: 100;" /></div>
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</figure><div class="graf graf--p graf-after--figure" id="1944" name="1944" style="--baseline-multiplier: 0.179; background-color: white; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8); font-family: medium-content-serif-font, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 1.58; margin-top: 38px;">
Very similar to the first scenario, a male friend tells you they have pedophilia, and they are a pedophile because they have pedophilia. You are shocked, and you want to know what pedophilia is, because it sort of sounded like he was emphasizing the fact that he had pedophilia.</div>
<div class="graf graf--p graf-after--p" id="b44d" name="b44d" style="--baseline-multiplier: 0.179; background-color: white; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8); font-family: medium-content-serif-font, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 1.58; margin-top: 29px;">
So you pull out your phone, and you look up what pedophilia is, and you see on <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedophilia" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedophilia" rel="nofollow noopener" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.44); background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6) 50%, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 50%); background-position: 0px 1.07em; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 2px 0.1em; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Wikipedia</a> that it is:</div>
<blockquote class="graf graf--blockquote graf-after--p" id="b331" name="b331" style="--baseline-multiplier: 0.179; background-color: white; border-left: 3px solid rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8); font-family: medium-content-serif-font, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 21px; font-style: italic; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 1.58; margin: 29px 0px 0px -23px; padding-bottom: 2px; padding-left: 20px;">
A psychiatric disorder in which an adult or older adolescent experiences a primary or exclusive attraction to prepubescent children.</blockquote>
<div class="graf graf--p graf-after--blockquote" id="5e7a" name="5e7a" style="--baseline-multiplier: 0.179; background-color: white; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8); font-family: medium-content-serif-font, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 1.58; margin-top: 29px;">
You go on to read that:</div>
<blockquote class="graf graf--blockquote graf-after--p" id="5399" name="5399" style="--baseline-multiplier: 0.179; background-color: white; border-left: 3px solid rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8); font-family: medium-content-serif-font, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 21px; font-style: italic; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 1.58; margin: 29px 0px 0px -23px; padding-bottom: 2px; padding-left: 20px;">
In popular usage, the word <span class="markup--em markup--blockquote-em" style="font-feature-settings: 'liga' 1, 'salt' 1; font-style: normal;">pedophilia</span> is often applied to any sexual interest in children or the act of child sexual abuse. This use conflates the sexual attraction to prepubescent children with the act of child sexual abuse, and fails to distinguish between attraction to prepubescent and pubescent or post-pubescent minors. Researchers recommend that these imprecise uses be avoided because although people who commit child sexual abuse sometimes exhibit the disorder, child sexual abuse offenders are not pedophiles unless they have a primary or exclusive interest in prepubescent children, and the literature indicates the existence of pedophiles who do not molest children.</blockquote>
<div class="graf graf--p graf-after--blockquote" id="8fd8" name="8fd8" style="--baseline-multiplier: 0.179; background-color: white; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8); font-family: medium-content-serif-font, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 1.58; margin-top: 29px;">
You sort through the academic gobbledegook and look up what sorts of sexual therapists there are in your area, and tell your friend… you are sorry he is facing that disorder, and you want to help however you can. You understand that a disorder is something that people do not choose and cannot help, and you want to be there for your buddy.</div>
<h3 class="graf graf--h3 graf-after--p" id="085b" name="085b" style="--baseline-multiplier: 0.157; background-color: white; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8); font-family: medium-content-sans-serif-font, "Lucida Grande", "Lucida Sans Unicode", "Lucida Sans", Geneva, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 32px; letter-spacing: -0.02em; line-height: 1.15; margin: 56px 0px 0px -2px;">
<span class="markup--strong markup--h3-strong">What Just Happened There?</span></h3>
<div class="graf graf--p graf--hasDropCapModel graf--hasDropCap graf-after--h3" id="4a84" name="4a84" style="--baseline-multiplier: 0.179; background-color: white; clear: left; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8); font-family: medium-content-serif-font, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 1.58; margin-top: 8px;">
<span class="graf-dropCap" style="--baseline-multiplier: 0.157; display: block; float: left; font-family: medium-content-sans-serif-font, "Lucida Grande", "Lucida Sans Unicode", "Lucida Sans", Geneva, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 64px; font-weight: 700; letter-spacing: -0.03em; line-height: 0.83; margin-bottom: -0.08em; margin-left: -5px; margin-right: 7px; padding-top: 7px; position: relative;">W</span>hat you just witnessed are two very different reactions to something that is really not very common: Someone telling you that they are a pedophile. Obviously in the first scenario, there is no attempt to verify what they are saying, there is just the assumption of what a pedophile is, and the inability of the pedophile in question to explain what they mean. Maybe they are a teenager, maybe they just do not have the words. But regardless, they now have to face stigma and hate for <em class="markup--em markup--p-em" style="font-feature-settings: 'liga' 1, 'salt' 1;">the rest of their life</em> because an assumption was made, and it snowballed from there… and eventually a child was harmed.</div>
<div class="graf graf--p graf-after--p" id="c4a6" name="c4a6" style="--baseline-multiplier: 0.179; background-color: white; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8); font-family: medium-content-serif-font, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 1.58; margin-top: 29px;">
That first scenario can play out any number of ways to come to that conclusion of a child being abused. Maybe instead of the police, the person tells someone who then blabs it to everyone they know, and then it goes on Facebook… and then his life is ruined because no one will hire him, no one will house him, and he eventually turns to children to cope with his stress. Regardless of how the pedophile goes from telling their secret to being under a tremendous amount of stress, that pressure needs an outlet, and there is the chance that the outlet becomes directed at children rather than themselves.</div>
<div class="graf graf--p graf-after--p" id="5121" name="5121" style="--baseline-multiplier: 0.179; background-color: white; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8); font-family: medium-content-serif-font, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 1.58; margin-top: 29px;">
While many times this stress is indeed directed inwards (alcohol abuse, drug abuse, depression, anxiety, lack of friends… etc), it can sometimes be directed to others… and that becomes risky. It can be directed at children, or it could impact children by viewing images or videos where they are being sexually abused.</div>
<figure class="graf graf--figure graf--layoutOutsetLeft graf-after--p" data-scroll="native" id="c05c" name="c05c" style="--margin-top-multiplier: 0; background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8); float: left; font-family: medium-ui-sans-serif-text-font, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Oxygen, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Open Sans", "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 18px; margin: 43px 30px 0px -150px; outline: 0px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-top: 10px; position: relative; user-select: auto; width: 525px; z-index: 100;"><div class="aspectRatioPlaceholder is-locked" style="margin: 0px auto; max-height: 394px; max-width: 525px; position: relative; width: 525px;">
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</figure><div class="graf graf--p graf-after--figure" id="45f3" name="45f3" style="--baseline-multiplier: 0.179; background-color: white; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8); font-family: medium-content-serif-font, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 1.58; margin-top: 38px;">
The second scenario… <em class="markup--em markup--p-em" style="font-feature-settings: 'liga' 1, 'salt' 1;">I fooled you</em>. See, I set it up in a way that makes it seem like the friend did the right thing by looking up the term- which they did. However, they still found wrong information. While it is noted briefly in Wikipedia, pedophilia and pedophilic disorder are treated as two different things, and both are indeed separate from child sexual abuse.</div>
<div class="graf graf--p graf-after--p" id="28a1" name="28a1" style="--baseline-multiplier: 0.179; background-color: white; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8); font-family: medium-content-serif-font, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 1.58; margin-top: 29px;">
Child sexual abuse is certainly an atrocity. But by knowing the difference between child sexual abuse, pedophilia, and pedophilic disorder, we can know how to react to each situation so that we can treat people in the best possible way. By knowing the essential information that can make all the difference in the world, we can ensure that we react properly to what we are being told… and correct others when they do not use the proper words to communicate what they mean.</div>
<h3 class="graf graf--h3 graf-after--p" id="2ee5" name="2ee5" style="--baseline-multiplier: 0.157; background-color: white; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8); font-family: medium-content-sans-serif-font, "Lucida Grande", "Lucida Sans Unicode", "Lucida Sans", Geneva, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 32px; letter-spacing: -0.02em; line-height: 1.15; margin: 56px 0px 0px -2px;">
But If Stress Can Be Directed Outwardly, Then…</h3>
<div class="graf graf--p graf--hasDropCapModel graf--hasDropCap graf-after--h3" id="b7ae" name="b7ae" style="--baseline-multiplier: 0.179; background-color: white; clear: left; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8); font-family: medium-content-serif-font, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 1.58; margin-top: 8px;">
<span class="graf-dropCap" style="--baseline-multiplier: 0.157; display: block; float: left; font-family: medium-content-sans-serif-font, "Lucida Grande", "Lucida Sans Unicode", "Lucida Sans", Geneva, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 64px; font-weight: 700; letter-spacing: -0.03em; line-height: 0.83; margin-bottom: -0.08em; margin-left: -5px; margin-right: 7px; padding-top: 7px; position: relative;">E</span>xactly: Not all child sexual abuse is perpetrated by pedophiles. It means that some people, who have never felt an attraction towards children in their life, can sexually abuse them. And this happens: In fact, it is more frequent than child sexual abuse that is perpetrated by pedophiles. <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/ncjrl/pdf/I%20C%20A%20C/2012%20-%20October%2015-16/A%20-%20Child%20Pornography%20Offenses%20Are%20a%20Valid%20Diagnostic%20Indicator%20of%20Pedophilia.PDF" href="http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/ncjrl/pdf/I%20C%20A%20C/2012%20-%20October%2015-16/A%20-%20Child%20Pornography%20Offenses%20Are%20a%20Valid%20Diagnostic%20Indicator%20of%20Pedophilia.PDF" rel="nofollow noopener" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.44); background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6) 50%, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 50%); background-position: 0px 1.07em; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 2px 0.1em; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">One-third</a> of sexual abuse is perpetrated by pedophiles, and two-thirds are perpetrated mainly by heterosexuals. So if we are to blindly judge sexual feelings as being a threat to children, then we must pin the blame firmly on heterosexuals, who make up two-thirds of abusers. See where blaming sexual abuse on sexual feelings leads? Nowhere in a hurry. So now what?</div>
<figure class="graf graf--figure graf-after--p" id="7056" name="7056" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8); font-family: medium-ui-sans-serif-text-font, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Oxygen, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Open Sans", "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 18px; margin: 43px 0px 0px; outline: 0px; position: relative; user-select: auto; z-index: 100;"><div class="aspectRatioPlaceholder is-locked" style="margin: 0px auto; max-height: 276px; max-width: 700px; position: relative; width: 700px;">
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</figure><h3 class="graf graf--h3 graf-after--figure" id="b6ac" name="b6ac" style="--baseline-multiplier: 0.157; background-color: white; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8); font-family: medium-content-sans-serif-font, "Lucida Grande", "Lucida Sans Unicode", "Lucida Sans", Geneva, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 32px; letter-spacing: -0.02em; line-height: 1.15; margin: 53px 0px 0px -2px;">
<span class="markup--strong markup--h3-strong">Child Sexual Abuse Is About Power, Control, And Self-Deception</span></h3>
<div class="graf graf--p graf--hasDropCapModel graf--hasDropCap graf-after--h3" id="5c0f" name="5c0f" style="--baseline-multiplier: 0.179; background-color: white; clear: left; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8); font-family: medium-content-serif-font, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 1.58; margin-top: 8px;">
<span class="graf-dropCap" style="--baseline-multiplier: 0.157; display: block; float: left; font-family: medium-content-sans-serif-font, "Lucida Grande", "Lucida Sans Unicode", "Lucida Sans", Geneva, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 64px; font-weight: 700; letter-spacing: -0.03em; line-height: 0.83; margin-bottom: -0.08em; margin-left: -5px; margin-right: 7px; padding-top: 7px; position: relative;">If</span>child sexual abuse were about feeling pleasurably about being sexual with a child… we would expect rates of child sexual abuse to be much higher than they actually are. We know from researchers and therapists that the number of motivations and the full explanation for those motivations for child sexual abuse are vast enough to fill a fairly dense book. Even one of the best researchers in the field, <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="https://csaprimaryprevention.blogspot.com/2017/06/moore-center-sex-abuse-symposium-part_2.html" href="https://csaprimaryprevention.blogspot.com/2017/06/moore-center-sex-abuse-symposium-part_2.html" rel="nofollow noopener" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.44); background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6) 50%, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 50%); background-position: 0px 1.07em; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 2px 0.1em; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Elizabeth Letourneau</a>, was only able to narrow down the motivations for juveniles who sexually abuse children… into <em class="markup--em markup--p-em" style="font-feature-settings: 'liga' 1, 'salt' 1;">19 basic items.</em></div>
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A list of 19 motivations is not simple to comprehend, and that is just the motivations for juvenile sexual abusers. Dr. David Finkelhor outlined a process by which someone breaks down the barriers to being sexual with a child into four basic steps, and his process is not simple either. Suffice it to say that grooming is just as much about breaking down the reluctance of the <em class="markup--em markup--p-em" style="font-feature-settings: 'liga' 1, 'salt' 1;">abuser</em> as it is about the reluctance of the <em class="markup--em markup--p-em" style="font-feature-settings: 'liga' 1, 'salt' 1;">child.</em></div>
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<span class="markup--strong markup--h3-strong">The Best Way To Intervene</span></h3>
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The best way to stop child sexual abuse, and intervene, is to act before the abuse happens. Some organizations advocate knowing the signs of grooming. Others focus on looking at the behavior of adults or older youth. Regardless, the focus needs to be on ensuring that those facing a significant amount of stress have the ability to handle it without taking it out on other people. We need to ensure that they have healthy self-care habits. This is true for people who react outwardly and those who react inwardly: If we can teach them how to manage the intense feelings that they are facing in a healthy way, then child sexual abuse and a variety of other ills can be reduced greatly.</div>
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Mental health is <em class="markup--em markup--p-em" style="font-feature-settings: 'liga' 1, 'salt' 1;">just as important</em> as physical health.</div>
TNF 13http://www.blogger.com/profile/00234644586674907757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653816103545335912.post-64693418498213727312017-06-11T09:59:00.002-07:002017-06-11T09:59:20.718-07:00"So... How Do We Do that?"<b><u>Say What?</u></b><br />
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Often, I get up in news discussions and say something to the effect of... "Most sex offenders do not reoffend, most sexual crimes are committed by first-time offenders, not registrants. Our money would be better spent on preventing these crimes before they can happen."<br />
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And someone says to me... "Right, that sounds great. But how do we do that?" So, I think it is high time to discuss some practical ways that people (yes, you) can prevent child sexual abuse, as well as systemic policies that can be put in place. In the midst of writing out the prevention section for the website, I think this deserves a blog post as well.<br />
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<b><u>Remember That Symposium?</u></b><br />
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Remember that rather dry symposium I covered last month? Well, <a href="https://csaprimaryprevention.blogspot.com/2017/06/moore-center-sex-abuse-symposium-part.html">one of the presentation</a>s was by Jill Levenson, discussing among other things, the fact that most sex offenders have trauma in their backgrounds. So what, sex offenders had a rough childhood. Exactly. But here is the thing: If we know that most of them come from some sort of trauma in their childhood, we know early on who is at-risk to becoming a sex offender. If we can help take care of them and give them the message that they are loved, believed in, etc... then we can intervene before they hurt people. And it is not just sex offenders: Dr. Levenson's presentation had similar findings for crime in general, not just sex crime.<br />
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<b><u>Interventions For At-Risk Youth</u></b><br />
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There does need to be formal interventions for children with traumatic childhoods, and without the label. Someone with a rough background does not need to hear that they are at-risk, I mean, really. But we do need programs to reach these children, and mentors as well. After-school programs, mentoring, and the YMCA have done a lot of good in these areas. Ministries aimed at youth have also done very well. So, there is a need for formal programs here.<br />
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But let me share a brief tale of when I was a camp counselor. My first week, I had a very diverse group of middle school kids, and one of the kids had me hearing things like "emotionally disturbed" and "anti-depression medication" and "lost his mom when he was eight." You get the idea, I am sure. Well, one day, some girls came up to me and told me that this kid was pushing them off the swing. So I go up to them all, and I tell them they need to get along or they will be in trouble. It was so effective that five minutes later, the camp director came up to me and told me that the kid would be sweeping the mess hall because he had kept doing it.<br />
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So, he and I are sitting there, waiting for the director to come and lecture him before he does his sweeping, and I ask if I could talk to him. He said no, he wanted to be left alone, so I respected that and kept silent. The director comes, and he sweeps, and we are walking back to all the other kids... and I asked him again if I could say something. I said to him, "I know you've had a rough life so far. I know you lost your mom, and I'm sorry about that. But please don't make the same mistake I did of taking it out on everyone else." I did not have any more problems with him the rest of camp.<br />
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This is just one story of many where I talked with youth going through a rough time. You do not need to be part of a program to make a difference. All you need to do is say a kind word, show that you care and understand, and tell them you believe in them. Kids need to hear that, even without trauma in their background.<br />
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<b><u>Proper Sexual Education</u></b><br />
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One issue that needs resolving is that we teach children many, many things to help them succeed in the real world: Get a job, go to college, choose a career... but we do little to prepare children for sex and relationships. I was never taught consent growing up, the concept just was not taught. That is an issue, because children who are exploring with their sexuality can hurt younger children if they are missing the information they need to ensure they are safe and respecting others' boundaries.<br />
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We need comprehensive sexual education that goes beyond the physical and physical health aspects of sex: We need to teach consent, mental health, relationship health, respect, and everything in between. If we are going to prepare children for the real world, we must prepare them for how to handle sex and dating, and the potential legal consequences for not handling those areas well. We cannot just assume that they are moral enough to understand, because all the good intentions in the world can still cause harm without guidance.<br />
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<b><u>Destigmatizing Mental Health</u></b><br />
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We need to talk about mental health and how we are feeling, and if we are parents, we need to demonstrate that to our children: Ask them how they are feeling, not just how they are doing. We need to talk about mental health, and we need to show children what self-care is. We need to stop stigmatizing mental health in our everyday speech: Calling something psychotic or retarded, referring to people as crazy, loony, or nutzoid... We need to stop using mental health as an excuse to bully people, and we need to stop pushing the issue under the rug or avoiding it altogether. For ideas in how you can start destigmatizing mental health in your sphere of influence, <a href="http://makeitok.org/">visit this website</a>.<br />
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<b><u>Using Proper Terminology</u></b><br />
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You had to know this was coming. Improper terminology can spread myths about sexual abuse that lead the public to erroneously believing that individuals or situations that pose zero risk to children... do pose a risk. Sometimes, we refer to child sexual abuse as "child sex offending" and those who perpetrate it as "sex offenders." I argue that both terms are incorrect: When someone has been caught, they are unlikely to commit a new sexual crime, particularly if a child is involved, so referring to it as an ongoing event (offend<b><u>ing</u></b>) is mistaken, as is referring to someone as being a constant perpetrator (offend<b><u>er</u></b>), because those who perpetrate child sexual abuse are rarely adjudicated offenders: They are those with no criminal record, trusted in the community. We cannot define people by their behavior, attraction, mental illness, etc. It runs the high risk of putting our focus on the wrong population.<br />
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Referring to those who have abused as pedophiles is inaccurate, then, because you are using a label that refers to someone with a sexual attraction to children and implying that attraction is the cause for their abuse of a child. It minimizes child sexual abuse and pushes pedophiles further from help by conflating their attraction with acting on it, when the two are separate. Referring to child sexual abuse as pedophilia is even worse because it directly conflates feeling with action. Pedophilia needs to only be understood as a sexual attraction to children.<br />
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<b><u>Defund The Sex Offender Punishment Scheme</u></b><br />
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As most who sexually abuse children are first-time offenders and sexual recidivism among sex offenders is extremely low, we need to stop spending so much money on policies that attempt to address an issue that does not exist. Instead, our efforts on sex offenders would be better spent on rehabilitating and furthering their reentry into the community: Extend help, not fear and suspicion. This would not only help curb what little sexual recidivism there is, but would curb the proportionately higher rate of general recidivism. Incarceration should be reserved for particularly heinous cases where there is no remorse and multiple prior sexual offenses: Incarcerate those who pose a risk to the public, and rehabilitate those who do not pose that risk.<br />
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In other words, no more registry. No more public notifications. No more hype and drama when sex offenders are released. Spend that money on research and prevention, not useless tactics that put children at increased risk.TNF 13http://www.blogger.com/profile/00234644586674907757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653816103545335912.post-9601129562552868552017-06-02T19:25:00.000-07:002017-06-02T19:25:21.302-07:00Moore Center Sex Abuse Symposium: Part Four: Adverse Childhood Experiences And Causes Of Sexual Offending<div>
In case you missed the other parts for this series, please see part <a href="https://csaprimaryprevention.blogspot.com/2017/05/moore-center-sex-abuse-symposium-part.html">one</a>, <a href="https://csaprimaryprevention.blogspot.com/2017/06/moore-center-sex-abuse-symposium-part_2.html">two</a>, <a href="https://csaprimaryprevention.blogspot.com/2017/05/moore-center-sex-abuse-symposium-part_96.html">three</a>, or <a href="https://csaprimaryprevention.blogspot.com/2017/05/moore-center-sex-abuse-symposium-part_71.html">five</a>.</div>
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As a refresher...</div>
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<b><u>So, What Is This Symposium?</u></b></div>
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The <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnjud_v9nRM&index=1&list=PLKiLZoOtCsny77UpR6FABJUM4v3n-hpzp">Moore Center Symposium</a> is a "meeting of the minds" on the prevention of child sexual abuse. It offers professionals (and advocates) an opportunity to learn more about the issue of child sexual abuse and how it can be prevented. The <a href="http://www.jhsph.edu/research/centers-and-institutes/moore-center-for-the-prevention-of-child-sexual-abuse/">Moore Center for the Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse</a> is a subset of Johns Hopkins' Bloomberg School of Public Health, which is a major educational institution in Maryland that is well-known for its work in the public health sector (as its name should indicate). The Moore Center is currently being directed by <a href="http://www.jhsph.edu/research/centers-and-institutes/moore-center-for-the-prevention-of-child-sexual-abuse/about-us/our-staff.html">Dr. Elizabeth Letourneau</a>, who used to be the president of <a href="http://www.atsa.com/">The Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers</a> (ATSA), and is a researcher that studies a myriad of topics within the realm of sexual abuse prevention. I am watching these admittedly dry and boring speeches to pull the essential parts out and communicate them to you. If you want to view them yourself, by all means, just be forewarned that they are dry and can be triggering. </div>
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<b><u>Beginning Introductions</u></b></div>
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The symposium starts with an introduction by Johns Hopkins' President, Ronald Daniels, regarding some of the reasons for the symposium and the keynote speaker at the symposium, <a href="http://www.aecf.org/people/patrick-mccarthy/">Patrick McCarthy,</a> who is the president and CEO of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, an organization that focuses on <a href="http://www.aecf.org/work/">improving the lives of children</a> in a variety of ways. Other speakers at the symposium were Dr. Elizabeth Letourneau, <a href="http://www.norc.org/Experts/Pages/bruce-taylor.aspx">Dr. Bruce Taylor</a> (an expert in criminology), and <a href="https://www.barry.edu/social-work/faculty/bios/jlevenson.html">Jill Levenson</a> (expert in sociology and social work), followed by a showing of the <a href="http://www.untouchablefilm.com/">film <i>Untouchable</i></a>, which I have <a href="https://csaprimaryprevention.blogspot.com/2017/04/filling-in-gaps-of-untouchable.html">talked about on this blog before</a>. Following the film, there is a panel discussion about the film and closing remarks by <a href="http://www.jhsph.edu/research/centers-and-institutes/moore-center-for-the-prevention-of-child-sexual-abuse/about-us/founding-donors.html">Stephen and Julia Moore</a>, the founding donors of the Moore Center.<br />
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<b><u><span style="font-size: large;">Jill Levenson's Speech</span></u></b></div>
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Her speech focuses on early adverse childhood experiences and the causes of sexual offending. She starts with a <a href="https://www.cartoonstock.com/cartoonview.asp?catref=pwen214">handy little comic</a> to illustrate the need to move beyond myth and current policy practices around prevention, and suggests that we need to start thinking about prevention differently. </div>
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She then gives a disclaimer that she does not want to minimize the pain done to sexual violence victims, but that it helps to have an understanding of how sexual violence happens and inform interventions. She states that there are no sides, there is no contest, and that sexual abuse victim organizations and advocates and sex abuse preventionists are not on opposing sides: Everyone is on the same team, trying to stop sexual violence. I would hope that advocates for the primary prevention of child sexual abuse, who have either been victimized by abuse, perpetrated abuse and lament it, or of any background really, are included in her team. </div>
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<b><u>Public Health Model Of Primary Prevention</u></b></div>
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She starts by showing a <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pub/technical-packages/infographic/sv.html">graphic from the CDC</a> about primary prevention where there are five areas that the CDC suggests to stop sexual violence: Promote social norms of protection, support victims/survivors, create protective environments, provide opportunities to empower and support women, and teach skills to prevent sexual violence.</div>
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She then asks what is missing from the model: Perpetrator prevention, or preventing someone from becoming a perpetrator. <b>That is the focus of her speech</b>. She then gives a handy demonstration of the public health model, which has three focuses: On primary prevention of universal precautions first, on secondary prevention of at-risk populations, and lastly on tertiary prevention of reacting when the problem presents itself.<br />
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<i><u>Note:</u></i> A handy way to think of this would be the flu: It is best to handwash and cover your mouth/nose (primary prevention - before the flu), and barring that, it is best to stay away from those that might be sick or getting flu shots to those who are vulnerable (secondary prevention - focusing on at-risk populations). The last thing you would want to do with the flu is just do nothing and wait for it to happen and then take steps (tertiary prevention).</div>
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She then points out that our resources and policies are currently aimed the polar opposite from what you would expect: Rather than focusing on primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention in that order, we "flip the pyramid" by focusing on tertiary prevention first, secondary second, and primary prevention last. In other words, we focus first on foster care, delinquency programs, incarceration, and sex offender registries/policies, we focus second on programs for at-risk youth and families, and improving parenting, and lastly we focus on primary prevention like changing cultural messages, reducing social problems, and reducing adverse childhood experiences (ACE's).</div>
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<b><u>Overviewing The ACE Study</u></b></div>
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The <a href="http://www.ajpmonline.org/article/S0749-3797(98)00017-8/abstract">Adverse Childhood Experiences study</a> was a collaboration with the CDC and other researchers looking at family dysfunction and its causes. They originally were looking at obesity, and were noticing that many with issues with obesity had early harmful experiences in their childhood, so they did a study of over 17,000 participants to look at background challenges like abuse, family conflict, or neglect.<br />
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The survey looked at abuse, household challenges, and neglect: In abuse, they found that 21% experienced sexual abuse, 28% experienced physical abuse, and 11% experienced emotional abuse. In household challenges, they found that 13% dealt with violence towards their mother, 27% dealt with substance abuse, 19% had mental illness in the family, 23% dealt with a separation or divorce, and 5% had an incarcerated family member. In neglect, they found that 15% experienced emotional neglect and 10% experienced physical neglect.</div>
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They found that 36% of their sample had zero ACE's, 26% had one ACE, 16% had two ACE's, 9% had three ACE's, and 12% had at least four ACE's. Those numbers are about to be very important, but notice that in the original ACE study, they found that the <b>higher number</b> of participants had <b>lower ACE scores</b>, and that percentage <b>drops</b> as you increase the ACE score.</div>
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In other words, at least 64% of the population had some sort of adverse childhood experience of some kind. These experiences seemed to be correlated with social issues like a disordered social environment or caretakers who are not equipped to protect them from harm.<br />
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The ACE's that people experience as evidenced in the study are just a small representation of what people actually deal with in their life. She discusses the two kinds of ACE's that people can suffer: Disadvantaged communities (discrimination, poverty, bullying, crime, and violence) and unexpected events (accidents, injuries, illness, death of loved ones, a natural disaster).<br />
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She discusses the three different kinds of issues that are correlated with various mental health problems: Chronic events, multiple events, and cumulative events. She goes on to talk about the lasting effects that ACE's can have on people: Health issues (diabetes, obesity, depression, STD's, heart disease, cancer, stroke, COPD, broken bones), behaviors (smoking, alcoholism, drug use), and life potential (graduation, academic achievement, lost time from work). The ACE study found that the higher the ACE score, the more issues that come up.<br />
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<b><u>Dr. Levenson's Study: Looking At ACE's and Sex Offenders</u></b><br />
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Dr. Levenson was interested in these effects, and what the backgrounds of sex offenders might look like with the ACE study in mind. So she and a few others <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1079063214535819">did a study on that</a> (Adverse Childhood Experiences in the Lives of Male Sex Offenders, Levenson, Willis, and Prescott, 2014). What they found was that sex offenders had a much higher number of ACE's in their background than general population males in every single category they studied.<br />
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When they broke down how many ACE's the male sex offenders reported, they found that 15.6% of sex offenders had zero ACE's, 13.7% had one ACE, 12.8% had two ACE's, and 12.3% had three ACES, which so far is in keeping with the original ACE study: Higher ACE scores are associated with lower percentages. However, instead of finding a lower percentage than 12.3% for sex offenders with an ACE score of 4+, they found a whopping 45.7% did... compared to 9% for general (non-sexual) offenders.<br />
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She then looked at specific states, such as Texas (<a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28350259">Obstacles to Help-Seeking for Sexual Offenders</a>, Levenson, Willis, and Vicencio, 2017), which generally found very similar results to the original 2014 study. She also looked at the ACE scores of female sex offenders (<a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25210107">Adverse Childhood Experiences in the Lives of Female Sex Offenders</a>, Levenson, Willis, and Prescott, 2015), which again found similar results to the original 2014 study..<br />
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She looked in two other studies (<a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0886260515570751">Levenson and Socia, 2015</a>, <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/303826280_The_influence_of_childhood_trauma_on_sexual_violence_and_sexual_deviance_in_adulthood">Levenson and Grady, 2016</a>) studies at the correlations between ACE's and five areas: Criminal versatility (different types of arrests), persistence (quantity of arrests), sexual deviance, sexual violence, and substance abuse. She wanted to know which ACE's correlated with which of the five areas, finding that more sex crime arrests correlated with domestic violence, child sexual abuse, and emotional neglect, and that more general arrests were associated with substance abuse, unmarried parents, and an incarcerated family member.<br />
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She also overviews a study that featured in the <a href="https://www.ojjdp.gov/">OJJDP</a> Journal of Juvenile Justice (<a href="http://www.journalofjuvjustice.org/JOJJ0302/JOJJ0302.pdf">The Prevalence of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) in the Lives of Juvenile Offenders</a>, Baglivio at al, 2014, p. 6-23) looking at the prevalence of ACE's in juvenile offenders. They surveyed over 64,329 juvenile offenders in Florida finding that the lower the ACE score, the fewer offenders (male or female) who reported having them, and the higher the score, the more offenders report them, maxing out at three ACE's for males and four ACE's for females, dropping back down. This finding was again consistent with the previous three studies overviewed.<br />
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She goes on to describe the results of a new, not-yet published study, looking at a variety of demographics: Original CDC ACE study sample (pink), adult sex offenders (gray), juvenile sex offenders (orange), and juvenile non-sex offenders (blue) and found a similar trend to the previous studies. As the results are not yet published, I drew a proportionate graph:<br />
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<b><u>Sex Offenders Had It Rough. So What?</u></b></div>
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The point to all this is that both adult and juvenile sex offenders have some sort of childhood trauma, in many cases multiple traumas, that may serve as the backdrop for sexual offending. That being the case, how can we form interventions to help children with these traumas to prevent abuse, prevent maladaptive behavior, and also begs the question... what effect does this trauma have on children, and how to children react? She proposes three basic responses: Fight, flight, or freeze. When this happens, there are multiple internal reactions within the brain.<br />
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She says that these ACE's can change the architecture of the brain to create stress hormones, and they become conditioned psychologically, socially, and behaviorally to be ready for the next stressor or threat, and this limits the growth in essential processing skills areas. In other words, these events start a domino effect in the brain that, if not interfered with, can have lifelong consequences for those with ACE's in their background.</div>
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These can form beliefs and themes that are unhealthy and can lead to cognitive distortions, mental illness, and damaging patterns of thinking. Those beliefs and themes affect behavior through internal impacts that lead to impeded self-regulation and relational skills, two essential areas to developing appropriate behaviors that do not hurt others.<br />
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<b><u>No Excuses, But Understanding For Interventions</u></b><br />
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She emphasizes that prior trauma is no excuse for sexually violent behavior, and that the presence of ACE's can help understand how sexually violent behavior develops and thus how we can intervene. She suggests that these effects on children and the child's brain can lead to using sexual assault to meeting emotional and social needs.<br />
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In other words, ACE's that are chronic and continuous can lead to factors like distorted boundaries, distorted skills, reenacting trauma on others, turn to children that are less threatening, getting needs met through violence and power, or taught to act in certain ways. Summarized more simply, "<b>Kids growing up in chronically adverse conditions who then later in life sexual offend are somehow using sex and sexual assault as the vehicle to meet psychological, emotional, and social needs.</b>" The point, again, is to understand why this behavior happens. She proposes that children raised in chronically traumatic conditions (ACE's) evolve: Just as mankind evolved, children from traumatic vs. healthy environments develop maladaptive vs. healthy behaviors.<br />
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She acknowledges that we know that there are children who do not grow up to abuse others despite horrific trauma, but that we need to shift our paradigm in our communities in how we look at policies so that those with trauma in their backgrounds can get the help and interventions they need.</div>
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<b><u>How Do We Treat Trauma, And How Must Policy Change?</u></b></div>
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In wrapping up her speech, she looks at the trauma-informed approach from <a href="https://www.samhsa.gov/">SAMHSA</a>: Realizing the prevalence and impact of trauma, recognizing the symptoms of trauma, responding by including knowledge around trauma into policy, procedure, and practice, and avoiding re-traumatization. </div>
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They discuss <a href="https://knowledge.samhsa.gov/groups/trauma-informed-care-alternatives-restraint-seclusion">trauma-informed care</a> and how to treat people in light of prior trauma as a way to solve a wide variety of problems besides just sexual violence. She also suggests a top-down, bottom-up approach by policymakers and other leaders. She talks about the need for role-models and supportive people who believe in those with trauma in their backgrounds, and how immensely helpful it is to have supports for those with ACE's and the earlier the better, but also for adults. Make sure that those with trauma have access to role models, mentoring, and are exposed to adults and peers who believe in them.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
She suggests that people need to feel a certain accepted, valued, connected, and empowered, and without that, they resort to crime, gangs, teen pregnancy, and self-medication. In order to counter that, we must make opportunities for attachments, meaningful pursuits, self-efficacy, and self-sufficiency. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
She reinforces that while <u>not every abused child becomes an abuser</u>, <b>those with ACE's are more likely to grow up to abuse others</b>.<br />
<br />
She goes back to the prevention pyramid from the first few slides and flipping the pyramid to focus on primary prevention, the need to teach respect, consent, and issues in creating solid gender roles, as well as focusing on secondary prevention for at-risk populations of trauma-informed care in helping those with ACE's. She also touches on tertiary prevention, which should be the smallest area of focus: Think about treatment, support, and accountability so that they can successfully lead a law-abiding life and be responsible citizens.</div>
TNF 13http://www.blogger.com/profile/00234644586674907757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653816103545335912.post-61635088147730710942017-06-02T16:59:00.003-07:002017-06-03T12:24:07.806-07:00Moore Center Sex Abuse Symposium: Part Two: Effective Public Health Prevention And Juvenile Sex Offender Registration<div>
In case you missed the other parts for this series, please see part <a href="https://csaprimaryprevention.blogspot.com/2017/05/moore-center-sex-abuse-symposium-part.html">one</a>, <a href="https://csaprimaryprevention.blogspot.com/2017/05/moore-center-sex-abuse-symposium-part_96.html">three</a>, <a href="https://csaprimaryprevention.blogspot.com/2017/06/moore-center-sex-abuse-symposium-part.html">four</a>, or <a href="https://csaprimaryprevention.blogspot.com/2017/05/moore-center-sex-abuse-symposium-part_71.html">five</a>.</div>
<div>
As a refresher...<br />
<br /></div>
<div>
<b><u>So, What Is This Symposium?</u></b></div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
The <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnjud_v9nRM&index=1&list=PLKiLZoOtCsny77UpR6FABJUM4v3n-hpzp">Moore Center Symposium</a>
is a "meeting of the minds" on the prevention of child sexual abuse. It
offers professionals (and advocates) an opportunity to learn more about
the issue of child sexual abuse and how it can be prevented. The <a href="http://www.jhsph.edu/research/centers-and-institutes/moore-center-for-the-prevention-of-child-sexual-abuse/">Moore Center for the Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse</a>
is a subset of Johns Hopkins' Bloomberg School of Public Health, which
is a major educational institution in Maryland that is well-known for
its work in the public health sector (as its name should indicate). The
Moore Center is currently being directed by <a href="http://www.jhsph.edu/research/centers-and-institutes/moore-center-for-the-prevention-of-child-sexual-abuse/about-us/our-staff.html">Dr. Elizabeth Letourneau</a>, who used to be the president of <a href="http://www.atsa.com/">The Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers</a>
(ATSA), and is a researcher that studies a myriad of topics within the
realm of sexual abuse prevention. I am watching these admittedly dry and
boring speeches to pull the essential parts out and communicate them to
you. If you want to view them yourself, by all means, just be
forewarned that they are dry and can be triggering.<br />
<br /></div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
<b><u>Beginning Introductions</u></b></div>
<div>
</div>
<br />
<div>
The symposium starts with an introduction by Johns Hopkins' President,
Ronald Daniels, regarding some of the reasons for the symposium and the
keynote speaker at the symposium, <a href="http://www.aecf.org/people/patrick-mccarthy/">Patrick McCarthy,</a> who is the president and CEO of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, an organization that focuses on <a href="http://www.aecf.org/work/">improving the lives of children</a> in a variety of ways. Other speakers at the symposium were Dr. Elizabeth Letourneau, <a href="http://www.norc.org/Experts/Pages/bruce-taylor.aspx">Dr. Bruce Taylor</a> (an expert in criminology), and <a href="https://www.barry.edu/social-work/faculty/bios/jlevenson.html">Jill Levenson</a> (expert in sociology and social work), followed by a showing of the <a href="http://www.untouchablefilm.com/">film <i>Untouchable</i></a>, which I have <a href="https://csaprimaryprevention.blogspot.com/2017/04/filling-in-gaps-of-untouchable.html">talked about on this blog before</a>. Following the film, there is a panel discussion about the film and closing remarks by <a href="http://www.jhsph.edu/research/centers-and-institutes/moore-center-for-the-prevention-of-child-sexual-abuse/about-us/founding-donors.html">Stephen and Julia Moore</a>, the founding donors of the Moore Center.</div>
<u>Copyright note:</u> The images of this post are copyrighted to Johns Hopkins University, which I have emailed approval for.<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Z4AAFFiLS8Q" width="560"></iframe>
<br />
<b><u><span style="font-size: large;">Elizabeth Letourneau's Speech</span></u></b><br />
<br />
Dr. Letourneau's speech starts with acknowledgements and a brief discussion of prior symposiums. The topic of her speech, as with Patrick's, was to focus on policy's impact on prevention. Her speech focuses on juvenile sex offender registration and notification policies. She starts by looking at how someone would ordinarily solve a problem using a <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/overview/publichealthapproach.html">public health approach</a>. First, you would do "surveillance" to determine what the problem is, then you would do "risk factor identification" to determine the cause of the problem, then "intervention evaluation" of what works to solve the problem, and finally, you would "implement" or take action to solve the problem. In that order, of course.<br />
<br />
She points out that many issues have been resolved using this model, such as violence, environmental issues, infectious diseases, etc... yet child sexual abuse <i>does not use this model</i>. Instead, policy reactions to child sexual abuse are focused around the idea that abusers are sexually and morally deviant and at high risk to abuse the rest of their lives. She counters this notion with an incomplete list of causes for harmful sexual behavior in juveniles:<br />
<br />
<ol>
<li>Traumatized children reacting to their own abuse</li>
<li>Persistently delinquent teenagers</li>
<li>Otherwise normal adolescents acting experimentally but irresponsibly</li>
<li>Generally aggressive and violent youth</li>
<li>Immature and impulsive youth</li>
<li>Adolescents engaging in normal but illegal consenting sex</li>
<li>Youth who take what they want because they are indifferent to others</li>
<li>Youth imitating what they see in the media</li>
<li>Youth misinterpreting what they thought was mutual interest</li>
<li>Youth ignorant of the legality of their actions or the possible ramifications</li>
<li>Youth imitating what is normal in their family background</li>
<li>Youth who get a thrill out of violating the rules</li>
<li>Socially isolated youth who use younger children as substitutes for peers</li>
<li>Seriously mentally ill youth</li>
<li>Youth responding to peer pressure</li>
<li>Youth preoccupied with sex</li>
<li>Youth using drugs or alcohol</li>
<li>Youth who get swept away by a moment of sexual pleasure</li>
<li>Youth with sexual deviance problems</li>
</ol>
<br />
She also points out that sexual crimes committed by juveniles have less duration and severity than adult offenses, and that juveniles are highly responsive to evidence-based treatment. She points out the findings of <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305415034_Quantifying_the_Decline_in_Juvenile_Sexual_Recidivism_Rates">a study done in 2016</a> (Quantifying the Decline in Juvenile Sexual Recidivism Rates, Michael F Caldwell, full text available). That study looked at 106 studies and 11,000 cases and found that the general recidivism rate for juvenile sex offenders from 1980-1995 was 34.47% and the sexual recidivism rate for that period was 10.3%. Contrasted to the period of 2000-2010, which found a 30% general recidivism rate and a 2.75% sexual recidivism rate, Dr. Letourneau highlights that recidivism rates have declined, and that <b>97% of juvenile sex offenders will not reoffend with a new sexual offense</b>.<br />
<br />
She points out that sexual recidivism among juvenile abusers almost never happens once a child has been caught. She also cites a study she and her colleagues did sampling all of the juvenile offenders in Maryland, Oregon, and South Carolina who were in the legal system and they have the same findings as the above study: 3% reoffend sexually. She highlights this as a single example for the plethora of other studies with similar findings on the subject.<br />
<br />
She discusses the restrictions placed on juveniles, such as residential treatment programs, sex offender registration, public notification, residence restrictions, employment restrictions, and education restrictions. She states that 38 states subject children adjudicated as minors to sex offender registration, and all minors adjudicated as adults. She gives the example from a juvenile offender featured in a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/22/magazine/22juvenile-t.html">New York Times article</a>. That offender, named Johnnie, was caught at <b>age 11</b> receiving oral sex from his younger sister. From there, the<b> mother contacted the police</b>, and Johnnie was arrested, charged, and convicted, then sent to a residential treatment program for a year and four months. Then, he was required to register as a sex offender in Delaware and <b>put on their public list</b>: His <b>first suicide attempt</b> was 2 weeks after being publicly listed (just shy of age 13, if you did the math).<br />
<br />
They list some of the requirements of sex offender registration to illustrate what it is like:<br />
<br />
<ol>
<li>Verify registry information in person at a state or local police station</li>
<li>On the offender's birthday, register every 90 days (tier three offenders), 3 months (tier two offenders), or 6 months (tier one offenders).</li>
<li>Register in each jurisdiction where someone resides or works.</li>
<li>May be handcuffed or put into a cell while waiting for processing</li>
<li>A sign may indicate that the offender is at the "Sex Offender Registration Desk"</li>
<li>Adult offenders and juvenile offenders may be registered in the same place (children in the same room as adult sex offenders)</li>
<li> Agents that process registration can be in any frame of mind: Angry, sad, happy, etc.</li>
<li>Provide 75 separate pieces of information, like SSN, internet identifiers, email address, vehicle registration/description, addresses for residence, work, or school.</li>
<li>Must report any change within 3 business days</li>
<li>Registration may be distributed online, or released to schools and other child-centered organizations, or law enforcement only, depending on risk level.</li>
</ol>
<br />
<u style="font-style: italic;">Note/Aside</u>: Is this reminding anyone of Nazi, Germany? I never watched many Holocaust movies, and this seems eerily familiar...<br />
<br />
She talks about this young man being just one example out of many hundreds, and references <a href="https://www.hrw.org/report/2013/05/01/raised-registry/irreparable-harm-placing-children-sex-offender-registries-us">a Human Rights Watch report</a> on the subject.<br />
<br />
<b><u>One Study On Juvenile Sex Offender Registration And Notification</u></b><br />
<br />
Then she overviews <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1079063215574004?url_ver=Z39.88-2003&rfr_id=ori%3Arid%3Acrossref.org&rfr_dat=cr_pub%3Dpubmed&">a study that she did</a> with the funding and collaboration of several other researchers and organizations, and begins discussing the recent follow-up study she did with the same collaborators to expand on it. The aims of their study were to examine the effects of registration and notification on six domains: Mental health, victimization, feeling of safety, feeling of social support, behavior, and association with peers. The demographics of the participants were discussed: Most were male, and the sample size was between 200 and 300 with an average age of 15.1 years old. Most were attending school, and most were heterosexual.<br />
<br />
She discusses characteristics of the offenses, and compared those who were required to register with those who were not and did an analysis to control for any differences between the two groups. Registered offenders were more likely to be older, have a formal charge/adjudication, have a victim, and be caucasian.<br />
<br />
The results of their analysis, without and with controlling for demographic differences found a variety of impacts on each of the six domains they were studying. They found that registered offenders were more likely to have mental health issues like suicide attempts/thoughts, depression, anxiety. They also found that registrants were more likely to have been victimized by someone sexually, were less likely to feel safe, and that non-registered offenders felt less social support than registered offenders.<br />
<br />
<b><u>Does Juvenile Sex Offender Registration Work?</u></b><br />
<br />
She then asks the question, if even with all the collateral consequences of juvenile sex offender registration, does registration still work? Does registration make anyone safer? The research answers with a resounding <b><u><i>no</i></u></b>: There is no baby in the bathwater of juvenile sex offender registration, and every published study (yes, every one- if you want to challenge Dr. Letourneau's claim, by all means) has found no evidence of preventative or positive effects from juvenile sex offender registration. Many studies, by contrast, have found unintended and even harmful effects on juvenile offenders. She points out that registration has nothing to do with the causes of child sexual abuse and does not fit the realities of adolescence.<br />
<br />
She talks about how rare it is in research to find such consistent findings across research literature on a particular policy. She agrees with the findings of Patrick McCarthy in his own mission, and states that juvenile registration is a failed policy that must end. She states three points to support this assertion: That few US policies have such wide research consensus regarding the effectiveness of a policy, that registration is like youth imprisonment where the message is that registered youth are dangerous, feared, and worthless with no real future, and that holding children accountable and providing them with evidence-based treatment can reduce the likelihood of future offending where sex offender registration cannot reduce that likelihood.<br />
<br />
She then discusses some of the progress that is being made nationwide towards reforming juvenile sex offender registration: On a federal level, the Attorney General dropped juvenile notification requirements from federal policy and as of last year permits discretion in the registration of juvenile sex offenders; On a state level as of last year, Oregon and Delaware have replaced automatic juvenile registration with discretionary policies; The State Supreme Courts of Ohio and Pennsylvania have ruled against some components of juvenile sex offender registration.<br />
<br />
She closes by stating that the time has come to abandon juvenile sex offender registration as a failed policy.TNF 13http://www.blogger.com/profile/00234644586674907757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653816103545335912.post-34959850975329022832017-06-01T17:14:00.001-07:002017-06-01T17:14:11.076-07:00How Australia Is Failing Its ChildrenSo, this past week, my news feed has been blowing up with big-sounding news out of Australia. The claim is that they are about to put a big dent in "child sex tourism", which is such a bad term to be using. Just call it child sexual abuse overseas or something, can we? I mean, you do not want to legitimize that sort of thing.<br />
<br />
<b><u>What Is The Issue?</u></b><br />
<br />
Anyway, the news is that they are working on a bill to invalidate the passports of child sexual offenders. And that may seem like a good idea, right? I mean, clearly, if there are 20,000 people who are child sexual offenders in Australia, and 800 of them traveled abroad in the last year, it is an issue. You know, even if only half of those travel to SE Asia, and half of THOSE (by now we are talking 200 people, 1% of the total) failed to notify authorities per the requirement of their registration. So, clearly, focusing on maybe 1-2% of those affected is going to make a big impact on child sexual abuse in SE Asia. Something is not right there.<br />
<br />
Several outlets have reported the news in a variety of ways:<br />
<br />
<a href="https://qz.com/994379/australia-will-be-the-first-country-in-the-world-to-take-away-passports-from-child-sex-offenders/">Quartz</a><br />
<a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/30/asia/australia-child-sex-tourism-passports/"><br /></a>
<a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/30/asia/australia-child-sex-tourism-passports/">CNN</a><br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2017-05-31/critics-slam-australias-plan-to-revoke-passports-of-child-sex-offenders">US News</a><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/columnists/janet-albrechtsen/travel-ban-on-child-sex-offenders-aat-deserves-to-be-stripped-of-power/news-story/40640544d6bc43ecdfdf28dc0747284a">The Australian</a><br />
<br />
<b><u>Australia Is Walking Down The Path Of The United States: Tertiary Prevention</u></b><br />
<br />
I have covered this time and time again: Policies aimed at sex offenders are only ever effective on recidivists, because these policies are what we call "tertiary prevention." They are a way to stop those who have already acted from acting again. This seems important, until you look at the data: <a href="https://www.womenagainstregistry.org/recidivism">Sex offender recidivism</a> is extremely low, and most sexual crimes are <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232505213_Does_a_Watched_Pot_Boil_A_Time-Series_Analysis_of_New_York_State's_Sex_Offender_Registration_and_Notification_Law">committed by first-time offenders</a>, not registrants.<br />
<br />
In other words, primary prevention methods, or methods of intervening before a sexual crime takes place, are always going to be far more effective at stopping sexual crime, and <b>tertiary prevention</b> methods are always going to be the <b>least effective way</b> to stop sexual crime. Focusing on sex offenders, which works as a political maneuver but not much else, does not protect children.<br />
<br />
<b><u>Issues In Asia</u></b><br />
<br />
One of the issues related to this is that child sexual abuse is a very serious problem in Asia, particularly the Southeast portion including Cambodia, India, and the Philippines. One of the problems is claimed to be that people are visiting these countries specifically to sexually abuse children, both boys and girls. While this is certainly an issue, and one that appears to be normal and accepted in these cultures (ie, it happens to everyone, not that people are okay with it), I very much doubt that this issue stems from travelling convicts with sex crimes on their record, because of the statistics I have seen. If that is not an issue in the United States (and the State Department has been on record saying that exact thing), then I doubt that other countries that are less wealthy than the United States have an issue either. Rather, the problem would be those who have no criminal record, some of whom are on business trips and dealing with job-related stress. It would be interesting to do a study on this issue, to see what kind of demographics are at play, but the proposal in Australia, similar to International Megan's Law in the United States, seems based more on politics than it is in actually keeping children safe.<br />
<br />
<b><u>Even The Jacob Wetterling Resource Center Says This</u></b><br />
<br />
Remember Jacob? Maybe you did not grow up in Minnesota, but much of the sex offender policies we have started with three victims: Jacob Wetterling, Megan Kanka, and Adam Walsh. Jacob Wetterling's sexual assault, kidnapping, and murder (that last revelation came last year) sparked the activism of Patty Wetterling in creating a sex offender registry as an investigative tool for law enforcement. Her activism started the <a href="http://www.gundersenhealth.org/ncptc/jacob-wetterling-resource-center/">Jacob Wetterling Resource Center</a>, which <a href="http://kstp.com/news/sex-offenders-jacob-wetterling-resource-center-money/4495794/">recently suggested</a> we need to stop spending money on sex offenders and start spending it on prevention.<br />
<br />
<b><u>Pedophiles Are Not The Same As Child Sex Offenders Are Not The Same As Sexual Abusers</u></b><br />
<br />
As always, the news media is butchering terminology around this issue. A pedophile is not someone who has hurt a child, they are someone with a sexual attraction to children. Most with that attraction never abuse, and most who abuse do not have that attraction. A child sex offender is someone who has been caught for a sexual offense with a child: Caught, not someone who has perpetrated it. For the purposes of the article from Australia, this is an accurate term.<br />
<br />
However, when we refer to those that hurt children, it is highly inaccurate to call them child sex offenders because most are not adjudicated (seen in the criminal justice system). Most have never been caught, and most are known and trusted in the community and unlikely to ever be caught. Without using accurate terminology around this issue, we spread myths, like the idea that sex offenders just keep hurting children, or the idea that all pedophiles are a threat to children. Those myths fuel harmful policies that do not protect children, and cause all kinds of collateral damage.TNF 13http://www.blogger.com/profile/00234644586674907757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653816103545335912.post-70448668281355678372017-05-27T20:13:00.002-07:002017-05-27T20:13:41.631-07:00Lessons And Thoughts From The 2017 Moore Center Symposium<b><u>My First Symposium... Via Youtube</u></b><br />
<br />
In case you did not know, I watched the entire symposium via Youtube, and for my sake, I am glad I did. I was able to pause, go back, and rehear things that I found interesting and catch nuances that I missed the first time. Perhaps I have been missing from the academic world for too long, but I would almost certainly miss things if I had been sitting in the audience. Therefore, I am very grateful to the Moore Center for generously putting their symposium on Youtube.<br />
<br />
<b><u>Three Big Ideas</u></b><br />
<br />
To me, there were three big ideas shared at the symposium:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>Current policies are failing, and failing hard if you take any kind of a close look at the research.</li>
<li>We need to do a better job at outreaching to those that share the goal of prevention as well as the general public, so that sexual abuse can be prevented and handled effectively if it does happen. </li>
<li>Most sex offenders have some kind of trauma in their childhoods, so paying more attention to children from difficult backgrounds can aid prevention just as much as a formal intervention.</li>
</ul>
<div>
These three ideas were present throughout the symposium, and were illustrated in a variety of ways via a variety of new research presentations and discussions. </div>
<br />
<br />
<b><u>Two Opportunities For The Average Person</u></b><br />
<br />
There are two great opportunities that the average person can take (yes, you, random person that just stumbled onto my blog, and you, person that subscribed to my posts).<br />
<br />
The first is seeing the documentary Untouchable, which does an even more fantastic job than I can at telling a story. I could tell you my story, but it will almost certainly be limited forever to the written word, and those stories have limits. Untouchable can tell a story that I cannot: The story of a father whose daughter was abused and what he did about it, the story of a daughter who was abused and what she did about it, and the stories of those whose lives were affected by what this father-daughter duo did. While Untouchable does weave boring facts and statistics into the stories it seeks to tell, I can promise that it will be the most thought-provoking 104 minutes you will spend watching a film.<br />
<br />
The second is learning more about the subject of child sexual abuse, why you should learn more, and how you can help end child sexual abuse once and for all. Maybe you were sexually abused, and are working through the pain it caused you. Maybe someone you know was sexually abused, and you want to know how to help them through their pain. Maybe you know someone who was sexually abused, and you just do not yet know it. Regardless, sexual abuse has affected everyone. The trauma of abuse is not limited to just the one in four girls and one in six boys that experience it before they turn 18 years old, it also affects the friends, neighbors, and family members of those children. That trauma needs to be a thing of the past, and the only way we can make that happen is by learning about the issue, learning about what we are currently doing to solve it, and coming up with new ideas that are based in research.<br />
<br />
<b><u>One Thing Advocates Need To Do</u></b><br />
<br />
Tell stories. You need to share your story (and yes, I realize I have not yet shared the full brunt of my own story, and for many reasons, that must wait a few months). People need a person, a face, a name that they can identify with. They need you to paint them a picture of how child sexual abuse has affected you, and they need to know what you think can help solve the epidemic. They need to see that the issue of sexual abuse does not need to be scary and that anyone can tackle it.<br />
<br />
<b><u>Zero People Are Unaffected By This Issue</u></b><br />
<br />
I touched on this in one of the two opportunities: If you were not directly affected by sexual abuse, you know someone who was. Maybe they are your best friend. Maybe it was a spouse, a brother, a sister, a mother, or a father. Maybe it was an uncle, or that guy you play tennis with. Whether they have said anything or not does not matter, because most victims take years to talk about it, if they do at all. The fear and the stigma drives this issue under the rug, and that is where it thrives. By realizing that we all know someone who has faced this issue, we can help shine a light on this dark and scary subject.<br />
<br />
<b><u>Why Does The University of Minnesota Not Have A Sexual Abuse Prevention Division Of Some Kind?</u></b><br />
<br />
Yes, I learned the other day by calling the University of Minnesota's School of Public Health that they do not have any division or organization that addresses child sexual abuse. They have a program in human sexuality, but that is not nearly the same thing. I think the University of Minnesota needs to step to the plate, and for the next few weeks, I will be determining what it might take to make that happen. Oh, of course that project is bigger than I am. Yes, I am idealistic in thinking they care about some guy with a weird pseudonym. Maybe <i>you</i> can help me succeed in convincing them why it is needed. Just try not to steal my idea before I get the chance to implement it!TNF 13http://www.blogger.com/profile/00234644586674907757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653816103545335912.post-85175576220875844042017-05-27T17:10:00.001-07:002017-06-02T19:27:24.278-07:00Moore Center Sex Abuse Symposium: Part Five: "Untouchable" Panel Discussion and Founder Comments<div>
In case you missed the other parts for this series, please see part <a href="https://csaprimaryprevention.blogspot.com/2017/05/moore-center-sex-abuse-symposium-part.html">one</a>, <a href="https://csaprimaryprevention.blogspot.com/2017/06/moore-center-sex-abuse-symposium-part_2.html">two</a>, <a href="https://csaprimaryprevention.blogspot.com/2017/05/moore-center-sex-abuse-symposium-part_96.html">three</a>, or <a href="https://csaprimaryprevention.blogspot.com/2017/06/moore-center-sex-abuse-symposium-part.html">four</a>.</div>
<div>
As a refresher...</div>
<div>
<b><u>So, What Is This Symposium?</u></b></div>
<div>
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The <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnjud_v9nRM&index=1&list=PLKiLZoOtCsny77UpR6FABJUM4v3n-hpzp">Moore Center Symposium</a> is a "meeting of the minds" on the prevention of child sexual abuse. It offers professionals (and advocates) an opportunity to learn more about the issue of child sexual abuse and how it can be prevented. The <a href="http://www.jhsph.edu/research/centers-and-institutes/moore-center-for-the-prevention-of-child-sexual-abuse/">Moore Center for the Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse</a> is a subset of Johns Hopkins' Bloomberg School of Public Health, which is a major educational institution in Maryland that is well-known for its work in the public health sector (as its name should indicate). The Moore Center is currently being directed by <a href="http://www.jhsph.edu/research/centers-and-institutes/moore-center-for-the-prevention-of-child-sexual-abuse/about-us/our-staff.html">Dr. Elizabeth Letourneau</a>, who used to be the president of <a href="http://www.atsa.com/">The Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers</a> (ATSA), and is a researcher that studies a myriad of topics within the realm of sexual abuse prevention. I am watching these admittedly dry and boring speeches to pull the essential parts out and communicate them to you. If you want to view them yourself, by all means, just be forewarned that they are dry and can be triggering. </div>
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<b><u>Beginning Introductions</u></b></div>
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The symposium starts with an introduction by Johns Hopkins' President, Ronald Daniels, regarding some of the reasons for the symposium and the keynote speaker at the symposium, <a href="http://www.aecf.org/people/patrick-mccarthy/">Patrick McCarthy,</a> who is the president and CEO of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, an organization that focuses on <a href="http://www.aecf.org/work/">improving the lives of children</a> in a variety of ways. Other speakers at the symposium were Dr. Elizabeth Letourneau, <a href="http://www.norc.org/Experts/Pages/bruce-taylor.aspx">Dr. Bruce Taylor</a> (an expert in criminology), and <a href="https://www.barry.edu/social-work/faculty/bios/jlevenson.html">Jill Levenson</a> (expert in sociology and social work), followed by a showing of the <a href="http://www.untouchablefilm.com/">film <i>Untouchable</i></a>, which I have <a href="https://csaprimaryprevention.blogspot.com/2017/04/filling-in-gaps-of-untouchable.html">talked about on this blog before</a>. Following the film, there is a panel discussion about the film and closing remarks by <a href="http://www.jhsph.edu/research/centers-and-institutes/moore-center-for-the-prevention-of-child-sexual-abuse/about-us/founding-donors.html">Stephen and Julia Moore</a>, the founding donors of the Moore Center.</div>
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<b><u><span style="font-size: large;">Untouchable Panel Discussion (Dr. Fred Berlin, Dr. Ryan Shields, Dr. Jill Levenson, Director David Feige)</span></u></b></div>
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The first few minutes of the video are introductions of the moderator, Fred Berlin, and the panelists. In short, David Feige (pronounced FAI-GUH) being the exception, all involved are extremely smart and extremely relied on for their expertise in this area, both in the media, and with numerous other organizations, including the White House.<br />
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<b><u>Note:</u></b> If you have not yet seen Untouchable, this may not make much sense. So go see it! Find a non-profit that is hosting it, see it at a film festival, or <a href="http://www.untouchablefilm.com/screenings/">host a screening</a>. You can also request a personal screening at that link as well.<br />
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<b><u>Questions from Moderator:</u></b><br />
<ol>
<li><b>Moderator Comment</b>: Invitation to make whatever comments they wish/opening comments</li>
<ol>
<li><b>Dr. Shields </b>(2nd time seeing film): No lack of strong opinions, varying perspectives harnessing energy to react to sexual abuse... what if we harnessed the energy seen in the film and directed it towards prevention? Still in a reactive frame, however.</li>
<li><b>Dr. Levenson</b> (6th time seeing film): Film does not hit you over the head, it lets you come to your own conclusions. Powerful to see screening with homeless registrants. </li>
<li><b>Director Feige </b>: Deeply saddened by irrelevance of limitations of film ("just a movie") where people are hungry and need basic things like a place to pee, place to shower, etc. Need to change policy in a way that is evidence-based and responsive to reality... and find port-a-potties for homeless sex offenders. Film was designed to start a conversation and stay balanced so that the film can appeal to everyone: Victims, registrants, families of registrants, policymakers, etc. Value in creating solutions to the problem. </li>
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<li><b>Moderator comment</b>: Not just a movie, about life, perceptions, caring about human beings we need to know about, disagrees with Director Feige in saying it was just a movie.</li>
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<li><b>Director Feige</b>: Most audiences do not turn on Ron Book until much later in the film, cites <a href="https://csaprimaryprevention.blogspot.com/2017/03/untouchable-will-be-at-minneapolis.html">screening at MSPIFF</a>. People are far more empathetic towards Ron and Lauren Book until much deeper in the film. </li>
<li><b>Dr. Levenson</b>: Film forces us to look at big picture and ripple effects, you cannot solve problem of sex crimes by creating more trauma on sex offenders and family/friends of sex offenders. Film drills home that having a home is fundamental, and not having one impacts the stability of every other area of life. </li>
<li><b>Dr. Shields</b>: Imagine a world where registration policies were effective and inexpensive... the fatal flaw is that we are waiting for harm to occur and then react to it. Unacceptable policy position, because it does not effectively reduce child sexual abuse. Lots of energy towards ineffective policy.</li>
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<li><b>Moderator Question</b>: How do we go beyond preaching to the choir? Challenge of multiple perceptions/perspectives, how do we reach people at a personal level? How do we get public perceptions to change?</li>
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<li><b>Director Feige</b>: Central conundrum, taking on THE least popular, THE most difficult, THE most marginalized subject... and go beyond just looking at a young female sex offender in an unfortunate situation. People empathize with faces, stories, so storytelling is important. Hoping that film is a way to open people up and wrestle with the subject in a way that is ultimately grounded in science and fact. <b>Open invitation</b> to show the film to legislators, invitation to non-profits for <a href="http://www.untouchablefilm.com/screenings/">screenings</a> (has real human being whose only job is to set up non-profit screenings). Tells story of how Ron Book hated the comic at the initial screening, Ron Book says that the comic makes fun of the issue.</li>
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<li><b>Moderator Question</b>: Are there things you wish you could have put in the film that you struggled with including/not including in the film? Are there things that the panel would have wanted to see in the film?</li>
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<li><b>Director Feige</b>: Civil commitment, overview of what civil commitment of sex offenders and the case in Minnesota. Also penile plethysmograph and overview a few deleted scenes and lots of compelling stories from other people. Lots of issues, lots of characters that were all compelling, but he had to pick an issue to keep the film within reason.</li>
<li><b>Dr. Levenson</b>: She states she is sure she will think of them when she is driving home.</li>
<li><b>Dr. Shields</b>: When the director asks of Ron Book, "Which of these laws would have protected your daughter?" Was there additional pushback?</li>
<li><b>Director Feige</b>: Ron likes to talk, very successful at convincing people of his point of view, very smart, very cagey. He liked the question. Ron Book stated multiple times an intent to murder Waldina, the abuser of Lauren Book. </li>
<li><b>Dr. Levenson</b>: Lots of guilt and pain for Ron Book, and the only way to deal with that is by doing what she is doing with legislation. </li>
<li><b>Director Feige</b>: Talked about trying for two years to get Patty Wetterling to interview for the film, constantly refused... film was slated for the Tribeca Film Festival, and the producer asked director Feige to try again, calls, hands Mr. Feige the phone... and she said yes. Including Patty Wetterling adds a great aspect to the film, captures Ron Book being trapped in his anger and drive to push changes much better.</li>
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<li><b>Question from audience</b>: Please share thoughts on 1) if a child molester lived next door to you, and 2) if your child got molested and the offender got to live and work near children?</li>
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<li><b>Director Feige</b>: You can have an emotional reaction, but that is separate from creating policy. We do not just let one lone individual express their anger in policy. Knowing what he knows now, he would probably not be angry, but it is crucial to understand that our society needs to aspire to be greater than its base instincts to do better collectively than we do as individuals. Anyone would be angry enough to kill the abuser. Personally, knowing what he knows now, director Feige would not be worried, but without that knowledge there is still the distinction between policy reaction and personal reaction. </li>
<li><b>Moderator comment</b>: False question, there are already those who have molested living in our communities and of course everyone wants to protect children. The issue is how to make that protection happen.</li>
<li><b>Dr. Levenson</b>: People have to live somewhere and those with prior sex crimes are already living around us. Her daughter was victimized as a young adult, and everyone has faced that to some degree. Children just want the abuse to stop, and to feel safe and normal. Adults who are victimized want an acknowledgment of accountability and harmfulness. Trying to view things with compassion and empathy can help figure out healing without vengeance.</li>
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<li><b>Moderator comment</b>: Do we as adults sometimes not allow children to really express what they're actually feeling when they are abused?</li>
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<li><b>Director Feige</b>: Super-draconian laws inhibit reporting because there is no opportunity to solve issue of an abuser without totally breaking up the family unity and community.</li>
<li><b>Dr. Levenson</b>: The pain and damage done to children and families by policies like the requirement of parents to give up their parental rights if they are convicted of a sex offense adds a different aspect/dimension to reporting. </li>
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<li><b>Moderator comment</b>: Comment about prevention, people are coming forward out of worry that they or a loved one is accessing sexual abuse imagery, but there are new mandatory reporting laws to require these people to be reported to police, and these mandatory reporting laws can depress reporting.</li>
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<li><b>Dr. Shields</b>: Help Wanted project in line with the idea of when we provide help: When someone has been hurt, or before that point? We need to confront this question, and the Help Wanted project is aimed at getting help to adolescents with pedophilia before anything happens. </li>
<li><b>Dr. Levenson</b>: New mandatory reporting laws regarding sexual abuse imagery, but these laws damage the therapeutic relationship and hurts a caregiver's ability to provide confidentiality and trust in their office. Another area is helping counselors respond to those with sex abuse imagery concerns help these clients effectively without freaking out, without overreacting, and without shaming... that being able to help these people is what prevention is about.</li>
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<li><b>Audience question</b>: What can everyday people do to try to do more about prevention? </li>
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<li><b>Dr. Levenson</b>: Take any opportunity you can to be a role model in the life of a child, whenever we come across children, like a child being berated by a parent at the store, to treat them with kindness so that they feel special, important, and worthy so they feel adults can be trusted. Every instance helps the child understand the world, which builds empathy and helps them avoid becoming people who harm others. </li>
<li><b>Director Feige</b>: Be a champion of truth. Be courageous in dispelling myths that are so pervasive and commonplace. Be an advocate for truth, be an advocate for science, and be an advocate for challenging myths.</li>
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<b><u><span style="font-size: large;">Founder Comments</span></u></b></div>
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Those interested in hearing the Moore couple talk about their story, and the founding of the Moore Center, should absolutely watch this couple talk for themselves. It is <b>17 minutes</b>, and is well worth your time. I am not going to butcher their presentation by summarizing it.</div>
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TNF 13http://www.blogger.com/profile/00234644586674907757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653816103545335912.post-24912498092729914722017-05-26T19:53:00.000-07:002017-05-26T19:53:00.648-07:00The Cherry-Picked Statistics Of Parents For Megan's Law<b><u>Yes, Another Fun Exercise</u></b><br />
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In case you forgot about the last time I fact-checked a list of statistics, <a href="https://csaprimaryprevention.blogspot.com/2017/03/37-scarey-repeat-sex-offenders.html">see here</a>. This time around, we will do Parents For Megan's Law, which has <a href="https://www.parentsformeganslaw.org/public/statistics_offenders.html">a short list of scary-looking facts</a>. Yes, scary-looking. Almost all of them, off the top of my head, are garbage or come from garbage sources that do not even come close to a comprehensive look at the issue. Fortunately for us, PFML has decided to tell us where they are getting their bogus information from so we can have an easier time of nitpicking their erroneous statistics.<br />
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<b><u>The List... And Its Counters</u></b><br />
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<b>For Adults</b><br />
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<li>The New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS) reports the results of a 2004 Harris and Hanson study which indicates that rapists have a 24% rate of re-offense, child molesters targeting girls 16%, and child molesters targeting boys, 35%. Offenders with a previous sex offense conviction have a 37% re-offense rate. </li>
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<li><a href="http://www.criminaljustice.ny.gov/nsor/som_mythsandfacts.htm">Source Cited</a> (NOTE: <b><i>DISABLE</i></b> your javascript when following this link, as it is infected with a virus)</li>
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<li>Why should I trust a link that tries to infect my computer with a virus? Just no. </li>
<li>They cite a long list of information, so their "source" is just a garbage way of linking you to a second list of information. </li>
<li>The actual study <a href="http://www.static99.org/pdfdocs/harrisandhanson2004simpleq.pdf">can be found here</a>, and the sample size is rather small at 4,724. The study also uses estimates for some of their information, and multiple studies have been done since that have very different results. Also, we have the <a href="https://www.eff.org/files/filenode/024_hanson_decl_11.7.12.pdf">statement of R. Karl Hanson himself</a> about recidivism rates. Women Against Registry has a <a href="https://www.womenagainstregistry.org/recidivism">nice list of recidivism rates</a> for sex offenders and the studies that source them that range from <b>.8-12%</b>, most being around <b>3-4%</b>.</li>
<li>Child molesters have generally lower rates of recidivism compared to rapists, and the 37% recidivism rate does not differentiate between any new crime committed and sexual recidivism (<a href="https://www.womenagainstregistry.org/Resources/pdf/NYsomgmtbulletinmay2007.pdf">which a New York study puts at 8%</a> with an 8-year follow-up period, and is generally much lower than general recidivism).</li>
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<li>Rapists repeat their offenses at rates up to 35%; offenders who molest young boys, at rates up to 40%; and those rates do not decline appreciably over time.</li>
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<li>Source Cited: Godfrey and Botelho v. John Doe. Brief for the United States as Amicus Curiae in Support of Petitioners. 01-729. Page 3. </li>
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<li>I will take your brief and raise you the <a href="https://www.eff.org/files/filenode/024_hanson_decl_11.7.12.pdf">statement of R. Karl Hanson</a>: "<span style="font-size: 12pt; text-indent: -0.25in;">Once convicted,
<b>most sexual offenders are never re-convicted of another sexual offence</b>.</span><span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; text-indent: -0.25in;">First-time sexual
offenders are <b>significantly less likely to sexually re-offend</b> than are those
with previous sexual convictions.</span><span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; text-indent: -0.25in;">Contrary to the
popular notion that sexual offenders remain at risk of re-offending through
their lifespan, <b>the longer offenders remain offence-free in the community, the
less likely they are to re-offend sexually</b>. Eventually, they are less likely to
re-offend than a non-sexual offender is to commit an “out of the blue” sexual
offence."</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 12pt; text-indent: -0.25in;"><a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232505213_Does_a_Watched_Pot_Boil_A_Time-Series_Analysis_of_New_York_State's_Sex_Offender_Registration_and_Notification_Law">See also</a>: 95% of new sex crimes are not committed by registered sex offenders, but by first-time offenders, those new to the criminal justice system. Citing the recidivism rates of specific offender types do not make those types the norm. </span></li>
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<li>“Reported recidivism rates vary widely depending on the length of follow-up period employed, the methods used to calculate recidivism, and, perhaps, the sample size of the study.”</li>
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<li><a href="http://www.stephenbrakeassociates.com/RR12.pdf">Source Cited</a>.</li>
<ol>
<li>This is common knowledge, and frankly speaking, not every study is done the same with the same results. Studies with larger sample sizes find higher recidivism rates, but the larger sample sizes also include a broader definition of what is considered a sexual offense. Some states include kidnapping and first-degree murder, where others call indecent exposure and public urination a sex offense. </li>
<li>Recidivism can also measure three things: Rearrest rates, reconviction rates, and re-incarceration rates, and findings will be higher for rearrests and lower for re-incarceration. </li>
<li>They just refuted their first two statistics by saying that they may be false representations of recidivism. </li>
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<li>“In his study of 561 sex offenders, Dr. Gene Abel found pedophiles who targeted young boys outside the home committed the greatest number of crimes with an average of 281.7 acts …molesters who targeted girls within the family committed an average of 81.3 acts…”</li>
<ol>
<li>Source Cited: Child Molesters: A Behavioral Analysis for Law Enforcement Officers Investigating Cases of Child Exploitation (1992) Kenneth V. Lanning </li>
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<li>Dr. Gene Abel is not a serious researcher by any stretch of the imagination, and his pseudo-science has been <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Abel">thoroughly debunked</a>. I know of one study where the man defined pedophilia in part as the act of child molestation, and then he asked about 5,000 people if they had molested a child and if they had a sexual attraction to children. He then concluded that 95% of child molesters "have a sexual attraction to children". Meanwhile, <a href="http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/ncjrl/pdf/I%20C%20A%20C/2012%20-%20October%2015-16/A%20-%20Child%20Pornography%20Offenses%20Are%20a%20Valid%20Diagnostic%20Indicator%20of%20Pedophilia.PDF">another study has shown</a> around a third of child molesters have pedophilia, as measured by science, not flawed survey-taking. </li>
<li>In short, no one can take Gene Abel seriously these days.</li>
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<li>46% of rapists who were released from prison were re-arrested within 3 years of their release for another crime: 18.6% for a violent offense, 14.8% for a property offense, 11.2% for a drug offense and 20.5% for a public disorder offense.</li>
<ol>
<li>Source Cited: Recidivism of Sex Offenders Released from Prison in 1994. US Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics. </li>
<ol>
<li>In other words, well over half committed an offense that had nothing to do with rape? Okay, what is the point? Rapists do not make up the majority of sexual offenders.</li>
<li>I think we have thoroughly looked at recidivism. It varies by offense, but generally, most sex offenders do not commit future sex crimes.</li>
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Offender Characteristics:<br />
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<ol>
<li>The average age of a rapist is 31-years-old and 52.2% are white males.</li>
<ol>
<li>Source Cited: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Statistics. <a href="https://bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/SOO.PDF">1997 Sex Offenses and Offenders Study. 1997.</a></li>
<ol>
<li>Okay, tip when citing a study: You only need to cite the year once. </li>
<li>Another tip: The title of the study should be verbatim what the title of the study is.</li>
<li>That particular tidbit of information, along with most of this entire list, is refuted by the numerous organizations (Darkness to Light, Jacob Wetterling Resource Center, Stop It Now!, and many others) <b>who say there is no profile for those that sexually abuse or rape others</b>. You cannot profile them, yet PFML is trying to mislead people into suspecting white 31-year-old males. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4AAFFiLS8Q">Half of child sexual abuse is perpetrated by juveniles</a>, not adults, and <a href="http://www.unh.edu/ccrc/pdf/CV26_Revised%20Characteristics%20of%20Crimes%20against%20Juveniles_5-2-12.pdf">70% of sex offenders have offenses against children</a>. If you run the math on that, I doubt you come up with most people being 31 years old and a white male to boot.</li>
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<li>One-Fourth of Exhibitionists Commit Additional Sex Offenses.</li>
<ol>
<li><a href="https://www.parentsformeganslaw.org/public/statisticsaso.html">Source Cited</a>.</li>
<ol>
<li>It is quite well-known that exhibitionists often have higher sexual recidivism rates (often, further exhibitionist displays) than the average sex offender. It is also well-known that exhibitionists make up a very small portion of sex offenders. </li>
<li>Citing one single study to support the conclusion that all exhibitionists are a threat is like citing a single political poll to say that Donald Trump will lose the 2020 election. </li>
<li>That 1/4th of exhibitionists commit new sex offenses means that 75% do not.</li>
<li>How is this a characteristic of a sex offender? </li>
</ol>
</ol>
<li>On a given day in 1994 there were approximately 234,000 offenders convicted of rape or sexual assault under the care, custody, or control of corrections agencies; nearly 60% of these sex offenders are under conditional supervision in the community.</li>
<ol>
<li>Source Cited: Sex Offenses and Offenders an Analysis of Data on Rape and Sexual Assault. (1997) U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics. </li>
<ol>
<li>Citing the same source in a different manner, over 20 years after the fact is relevant, does not make the fact more relevant.</li>
<li>Most sex offenders are in the community, and most never reoffend or are even a risk to the community. The biggest risk to children does not come from sex offenders.</li>
<li>They obviously did not bother reading past the first page for this statistic, as it is copied almost verbatim from the title page. Lazy.</li>
</ol>
</ol>
<li>An estimated 24% of those serving time for rape and 19% of those serving time for sexual assault had been on probation or parole at the time of the offense for which they were in State prison in 1991.</li>
<ol>
<li>Source Cited: Sex Offenses and Offenders an Analysis of Data on Rape and Sexual Assault. (1997) U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics.</li>
<ol>
<li>This is completely irrelevant.</li>
</ol>
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<li>Of released sex offenders who allegedly committed another sex crime, 40% perpetrated the new offense within a year or less from their prison discharge.</li>
<ol>
<li>Source Cited: Sex Offenses and Offenders an Analysis of Data on Rape and Sexual Assault. (1997) U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics.</li>
<ol>
<li>This is also fairly irrelevant. </li>
<li>A relevant statistic might be that, in <a href="http://www.journalofjuvjustice.org/JOJJ0302/JOJJ0302.pdf">a study of over 64,000 sex offenders</a>, only <b>3.1% of males and 1.8% of females had zero adverse childhood experiences</b> in their childhood. In other words, most sex offenders have trauma in their childhood, which means we could intervene long before they commit a sex crime.</li>
</ol>
</ol>
<li>Overall, an estimated 61% of violent sex offenders in State prisons have a prior conviction history that resulted in a sentence to probation or incarceration.</li>
<ol>
<li>Source Cited: Sex Offenses and Offenders an Analysis of Data on Rape and Sexual Assault. (1997) U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics.</li>
<ol>
<li>What is the definition for a violent sex offender? </li>
<li>This statistic seems abnormally high in the face of more recent research, particularly the low sexual recidivism rates nationwide and the study of 21 years of arrest data out of New York finding that 95% of sex crimes were committed by first-time offenders (those with no prior record). Which brings us back to...</li>
<li>What do they define as a violent sex offense? Forcible rape, statutory rape, lewd acts with children, forcible sodomy, and "other sexual assaults", whatever that means.</li>
</ol>
</ol>
<li>Only 2% of the Catholic clergy sexual abusers were ever jailed. The number of victims reported were 10,667 with an estimate of 4,392 abusers.</li>
<ol>
<li>Source Cited: Hamilton, Marci (2004) Shockingly, Only 2% of Catholic Clergy Sexual Abusers Were Ever Jailed. Find Law, March 11,2004. </li>
<ol>
<li>The population of the United States is currently 321.4 million people. Of those, it is estimated that one in six boys and one in four girls faces child sexual abuse, alternatively phrased by many researchers as one in ten children. 10% of 321.4 million is 32.14 million people, which is many, many times 10,667. </li>
<li>In other words, there are many more abuse victims that are not abused by Catholic clergy.</li>
<li>And frankly, it is estimated that <b>38% of sexual abuse cases are reported to police</b>, which would be a much better statistic to cite. </li>
</ol>
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</ol>
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Juveniles:</div>
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<ol>
<li>The average adolescent sex offender will, without treatment, go on to commit 380 sex crimes during his lifetime.</li>
<ol>
<li>Source Cited: Howard E. Barbaree, Stephen M. Hudson and Michael Seto (1993) Sexual Assault in Society: The Role of the Juvenile Offender. In The Juvenile Sex Offender. Guilford Press, NY. Page 11.</li>
<ol>
<li><a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305415034_Quantifying_the_Decline_in_Juvenile_Sexual_Recidivism_Rates">97% of juvenile sex offenders </a>will never commit another sex offense.</li>
<li>The cited source is a book, and it sounds like something Gene Abel would say.</li>
<li>I <a href="http://www.gainesville.com/opinion/20170104/jean-zeeb-column-misleads-about-sex-offenders">debunked this</a> in the last fact-check as well.</li>
</ol>
</ol>
<li>20% of all rapes and 30% to 50% of child molestations are perpetrated by adolescent males.</li>
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<li>Source Cited: Howard E. Barbaree, Stephen M. Hudson and Michael Seto (1993) Sexual Assault in Society: The Role of the Juvenile Offender. In The Juvenile Sex Offender. Guilford Press, NY. Page 11</li>
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<li>Which means we obviously need to be doing a better job of raising children and intervening in sexual crimes before they happen. Thank you for making my point, which is that...</li>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b><i><u>Sexual crimes are preventable before they happen by reaching at-risk youth and those with Adverse Childhood Experiences before a victim is harmed. They are not preventable by only reacting after they happen with sex offender policies.</u></i></b></span></div>
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TNF 13http://www.blogger.com/profile/00234644586674907757noreply@blogger.com0