Major Wins On Three Fronts

Not Often...

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.

Alabama

A case in Alabama is currently before the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals, and the argument is that Alabama has violated the ex posto facto 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.

Pennsylvania

A case recently decided 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 punishment - 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.

California

In California, lawmakers are being spurred 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.

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.

Why Is The Registry Bad?

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.

Research shows that perpetrators of sexual crimes have trauma in childhood, have no criminal record, are predominantly male (though recent research 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.

Is This Foreshadowing?

With these major wins, in addition to the recent social media 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 editorial board of the Los Angeles Times 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... before they can happen.

A Message About Prevention For Sexual Abuse/Assault Survivors

Difficult Subject

  

This subject is difficult for me, because I was sexually abused by three separate people growing up: A caregiver, a local teenager, and my mother were the culprits. While that is not my entire story, and as you well know, each of our stories is different, it has served as part of the backbone for why I advocate against child sexual abuse. I have long since set aside using my experiences with sexual abuse as arguments when I am advocating, because most of my advocacy takes place on the internet, where anyone can say anything. It is much harder to argue with verifiable facts than it is to argue with some guy with a weird screenname talking about how he was abused.

This is an especially difficult subject for me to cover, because not only am I limited by my own perspective, I bury my nose in research and news articles far more often than I bury my nose in stories of other survivors. My knowledge of this issue is more academic than it is anything else, so there are things I absolutely cannot relate to. In addition to that, I am not as in touch with my emotions as I could be. Often, it takes me additional time to process how I felt. Just yesterday, I did not realize how tired I was until several hours after I was getting cranky.

Why Facts Are Important

For this, I would like to use an example that may sound a little ridiculous: Let us say that you have a pest problem in your house, but you do not know what kind of pest it is. You have never seen the pests yourself, only the effects: Crumbs, torn packages, that sort of thing. Would you assume it is cockroaches, and buy cockroach spray? Would you keep buying the spray if the pest issue persisted? No, you would attempt to narrow down the suspected pest, so that you know how to deal with it.

Using this example, the first several options are preposterous. You would not use cockroach spray on a mouse, nor a squirrel trap for a cockroach, and you would certainly not buy more solutions for one type of pest if they are ineffective. The best course of action would be to find out what you are dealing with, and then take a next step, so that you can ensure that step is effective at addressing your problem.

This ties into preventing child sexual abuse and sexual assault perfectly, though you would find it difficult to believe. In the 1990's, we began forming policies to address the "pest problem" of sexual crimes without studying who is responsible for these crimes or what impact these policies or "pest traps" would have, and whether they would be effective in solving our sexual crime or "pest problem". Since then, much research has looked not only at these policies, but who is responsible for sexual crimes and what the motivations are. We have identified who the "pests" are, and I will come back to that in a moment.

The results of throwing a pest solution at a pest problem of unknown origin is a shot in the dark at best. Similarly, the results of trying to stop sexual crime with methods that may or may not address sexual crimes are policies that may be completely ineffective at stopping sexual crime. The implications can mean that more victims do suffer from sexual crimes, even though the intent is less sexual crime with fewer victims. I think at this point we can all agree that good intentions, in this case, must be supported by effective policies as well, so that our efforts to stop sex crimes are effective. If more people suffer the pain of sexual crimes because our policies do not do what they are intended to do, that is not a good situation.

Research Is Important

With that having been said, I think there is a lot of value in looking at the research around sexual abuse and sexual assault prevention. In many cases, the facts that exist in research are very counterintuitive to what most people are likely to think about this issue, perhaps even you.

Before I continue, I would like to list five citations for reliable research (among the plethora that exist) that I am familiar with. While it is generally advisable when looking at research studies to look at multiple studies on a subject, I include these because I find them to be representative of the similar studies I have seen, and the academic information available on the subject.

I will list the facts that are drawn from these later, but for now, I want to only include the citations:

1.     Sandler, J. C., Freeman, N. J., & Socia, K. M. (2008). DOES A WATCHED POT BOIL? A Time-Series Analysis of New York State’s Sex Offender Registration and Notification Law. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 14(4), 284-302. doi:0.1037/a0013881

2.     Bonnar-Kidd, K. K. (2010). Sexual Offender Laws and Prevention of Sexual Violence or Recidivism. American Journal of Public Health, 100(3), 412-419. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2008.153254

3.     Finkelhor, D. (2009). The Prevention of Childhood SexualAbuse. The Future Of Children, 19(2). 

4.     Seto, M. C., Cantor, J. M., & Blanchard, R. (2006). Child Pornography Offenses Are a Valid Diagnostic Indicator of Pedophilia. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 610-615. doi:10.1037/0021-843X.115.3.610

5.     Buckman, C., Ruzicka, A., & Shields, R. T. (2016) Help Wanted: Lessons on Prevention from Non-Offending Young Adult Pedophiles. Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers Forum Newsletter, 28(2).

All of these citations are from prestigious organizations and have been peer-reviewed, which means that other experts familiar with these topics have double-checked them for accuracy and methodological rigor. In other words, not only do the authors of these studies know their stuff, the studies were reviewed by others who likewise know their stuff. I will come back to that list shortly.

An Overview Of Current Initiatives And Policies

Currently, the popular methods of stopping sex crime naturally center around tracking, supervising, and restricting sex offenders. We put them on both public and private lists, so that people and police in our communities know who and where they are. We notify communities when a high-risk offender is moving in. We sometimes prevent them from living and even being near schools, parks, bus stops, and other places where there are children. We seek harsher sentences, in order to deter would-be sex offenders and exact revenge on these people. Sometimes, these sentences vary by location: Larger urban counties tend to use rehabilitative sentences, where smaller urban counties trend towards harsher, lengthier sentences.

Above all of that, we state that only a monster would commit a rape, or a sex crime against a child, and we seek to use the label of “sex offender” to insinuate that these people are monsters. We lump all offenders who have committed a sexual crime into one label: Sex offender.

Many of these policies vary depending on where you live, but all of them are not sentences, but requirements that endure after the completion of whatever sentence the offender was given. In Wisconsin, for example, sex offenders must wear GPS monitors their entire lives, while that is not the case in New York. In California, residency restrictions are being overturned by judges, while in Minnesota, many cities have passed ordinances. In some places, juveniles as young as nine years old are placed on the sex offender registry, and juveniles do perpetrate 35.6% of child sexual abuse cases.

The overwhelming public opinion is that harsher is better when it comes to policies about sex offenders.

Back To That Research...

Remember that research list? Here are some very short summaries about each article (in the above order), based on their abstracts. If you wish to read the abstracts directly, please feel free to use the links and investigate them yourself (studies 3, 4, and 5 are available full-text while you may have to hunt for the other two).

1. Sandler, J. C., Freeman, N. J., & Socia, K. M. (2008). DOES A WATCHED POT BOIL? A Time-Series Analysis of New York State’s Sex Offender Registration and Notification Law. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 14(4), 284-302. doi:0.1037/a0013881
1. This study was a time-series analysis looking at 21 years of arrest data in New York, categorizing arrestees into several categories, determining that 5% of arrests were of registered sex offenders or those with prior sex offenses on their record, and 95% of arrests were of those new to the criminal justice system. 
2. Bonnar-Kidd, K. K. (2010). Sexual Offender Laws and Prevention of Sexual Violence or Recidivism. American Journal of Public Health, 100(3), 412-419. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2008.153254
1. This study is an evaluation of sex offender management policies including GPS monitoring, civil commitment, community notification, registration, and restrictions on residency, internet, and others. This article looks at the consequences of these policies, and suggests that the effectiveness of these policies is in question and may do more harm.
3. Finkelhor, D. (2009). The Prevention of Childhood SexualAbuse. The Future Of Children, 19(2).
1. This article details many current methods of preventing child sexual abuse, concluding that efforts to punish and manage offenders are less effective than primary prevention efforts. A wide variety of methods, including sex offender registration and notification, sex offender residency restrictions, child safety education, and others are covered. 
4. Seto, M. C., Cantor, J. M., & Blanchard, R. (2006). Child Pornography Offenses Are a Valid Diagnostic Indicator of Pedophilia. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 610-615. doi:10.1037/0021-843X.115.3.610
1. This study is one of several vitally important studies looking at the prevalence of pedophilia in those who have convictions involving sexual abuse material, and those who have molested children. While the study’s sample size was limited, they found that 61% of those with sexual abuse material convictions had pedophilia, and 35% of those with molestation convictions had pedophilia. It is generally accepted among researchers that roughly a third of child sexual abusers have pedophilia, though there is no one study that demonstrates that. 
5. Buckman, C., Ruzicka, A., & Shields, R. T. (2016) Help Wanted: Lessons on Prevention from Non-Offending Young Adult Pedophiles. Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers Forum Newsletter, 28(2).
1. This research update gave a broad overview of the Moore Center for the Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse's "Help Wanted" study, which was based on a podcast done by This American Life. In short, the study they conducted looked at the experiences of offending and non-offending pedophiles to look at common needs that pedophiles have when they are just discovering their sexual attraction to children. The entire point, which was heavily based on the story in the podcast, is that sometimes those with attractions to children are afraid they might molest a child, and the study seeks to answer the question: How can we help those people so that they do not hurt a child? 

As you can see from this information, there is a wide variety of research available to tell us which methods of preventing and stopping sexual abuse and sexual assault work, and which do not. Overwhelmingly, the research literature supports preventative methods over punitive methods. The first study, and sex offender recidivism studies, suggest that the biggest group of people responsible for sexual crimes overall are those with no criminal background. If interventions could reach these people before these crimes are committed, many victims would be spared the sort of pain you had to experience.

Powerful Voices

Child sexual abuse victims, survivors, and their families have been powerful voices for legislative change in the past three decades and beyond. Many of our current policies have been the result of people like you speaking up, and making the statement that sexual crimes should not and cannot be tolerated by the rest of society. I wholeheartedly agree with that message that sexual crime is unacceptable and needs to stop. However, I believe that if we are to be effective in making that vision a reality, we must pay close attention to what the facts and the research say. As I pointed out earlier, if we form policies that are not based in fact, we run the risk of wasting time and resources and creating more victims.

Taking The Politics Out Of Prevention

The goal of preventing child sexual abuse has been political for many years, and I believe it need not be so. Conservatives, liberals, moderates, independents, socialists, and everything in between: We are all human, and we all know that when our youngest members suffer, we all suffer. The suffering of children at the hands of other children and adults who use them for sexual pleasure needs to stop. We can all wholeheartedly agree on that point. Can we agree that to do so, we must focus on the facts involved in these issues, even if they are complex and difficult to understand, accept, or believe? Can we agree that the facts and the research are important to preventing others from knowing the pain of sexual crimes? If we can agree on those points, then we must speak up and let our politicians hear us: Demand that they focus on the research so that others will not know our pain.

Advocating Prevention Means Sex Offender Policies Must Take The Back Seat

Prevention, particularly primary prevention, means that we seek to stop sexual crimes before they can happen. In other words, intervening in the process that leads someone from a stressful background or event to using someone else as a sexual frustration outlet. That means programs need to be available for those sexually attracted to children who fear they might one day act on it, and it means that children need to be educated on sex, sexuality, consent, and what mental health resources are available to them if they are struggling with an issue (any issue, including being victimized or fearing that they might victimize others). There are a wide variety of areas involved in primary prevention, and you can explore all of them by reading the third study above by Dr. Finkelhor.

While criticizing sex offender policies may seem like a bad move, the reality is that at most, they will only ever address less than 5% of new sex crimes (the first study). Compared to primary prevention, which can address up to 95% of new sex crime, the focus on prevention is a no-brainer. The reality is, in addition to not being effective, sex offender policies have been shown in some studies to increase recidivism rather than decreasing it: In other words, they are correlated with more crime, not less.

The Shorter Version…

The simple version of this can be summed up in four points:

1. Despite the difficulty of the subject matter, and because of it, we need to have serious and open conversations about what is and is not effective at impacting sex crime.
2. Research and research-based policies need to be brought into the limelight so that future generations can avoid seeing the kind of pain that survivors of sexual abuse and assault experience.
3. Current policies are focused almost exclusively on a problem that does not have much basis in research.
4. Survivors of sexual abuse and assault have powerful voices that have been effective in seeing legislative changes on this issue, and if these voices speak to effective vs. ineffective policies, real change can be seen.

The future is in your hands. How will you act?