Five Things Sexual Abuse Survivors Must Do Better

So, recently, Stop Abuse Campaign came out with a featured story, titled, "Top Ten Things You Learn by Listening to Survivors." 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.

I Am A Survivor

In case you did not know, I myself am a sexual abuse survivor. 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.

Thing Number One: Learn The Facts And Cite Them Properly

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 cherry-pick the statistics they cite.

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bad information is to blame, and organizations cite the source properly, but the source turns out to be a bad apple or outdated.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 Darkness to Light's statistics page 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 full of garbage, and he has an entire Wikipedia page almost entirely on how he is a quack.

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).

Thing Number Two: Include More Perspectives Besides Survivors

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.

I know many stories of people who wrestled with pedophilia, and ended up hurting a child because they did not have resources available to them. While that is no excuse, it means that referring to abusers as pedophiles actually hurts 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).

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.

Thing Number Three: Realize Not All Abused Children React The Same Way

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.

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.

Thing Number Four: Pedophilia Is Not Abuse, Pedophiles Are Not Abusers

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.

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.

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.

Thing Number Five: ACE Scores Are Not Just For Victims

Yes, you read that correctly. There has been much discussion in survivor and prevention circles around the impact of ACEs, or Adverse Childhood Experiences 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.

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.

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.

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.

We Must Improve So That Sexual Abuse Can End

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.

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...

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.

Moore Center Sex Abuse Symposium: Part Three: Adolescent Relationship Abuse/Teen Dating Violence

In case you missed the other parts for this series, please see part one, two, four, or five.

As a refresher...

So, What Is This Symposium?

The Moore Center Symposium 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 Moore Center for the Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse 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 Dr. Elizabeth Letourneau, who used to be the president of The Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers (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 to certain people. 

Beginning Introductions

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, Patrick McCarthy, who is the president and CEO of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, an organization that focuses on improving the lives of children in a variety of ways.  Other speakers at the symposium were Dr. Elizabeth Letourneau, Dr. Bruce Taylor (an expert in criminology), and Jill Levenson (expert in sociology and social work), followed by a showing of the film Untouchable, which I have talked about on this blog before. Following the film, there is a panel discussion about the film and closing remarks by Stephen and Julia Moore, the founding donors of the Moore Center.

Copyright note: The images in this post are copyright-protected. I waited on this post to get permission directly from Dr. Taylor to use them, so please ask Dr. Taylor if you would like to use them yourself.

Bruce Taylor's Speech

The third speaker, Dr. Taylor, discusses findings from a study he did on teen dating violence (funded by three grants from the United States Department of Justice), also known by researchers as adolescent relationship abuse, which Dr. Taylor uses interchangeably throughout his speech. I will refer to it as ARA. Much of his speech is about interventions into ARA, and the practicalities around what works in teaching children about boundaries and relationships to further primary prevention of this very serious problem. 

As many speakers do, he overviews his study:

As well as what he wants to talk about:

How Serious Is ARA?

He then focuses on how serious of an issue adolescent relationship abuse (ARA) is: According to a national study, 68% of youth between ages 10-18 report being victimized by it, and 62% report perpetrating it. The health consequences for adolescent relationship abuse are very similar to those for child sexual abuse. The full overview of what he discusses about the seriousness of ARA:

He then talks about what sort of classroom interventions he used for his studies. Varying approaches have been tried, but there are barriers to these approaches such as parental and school concerns about letting outside organizations like rape crisis centers into schools. In short, schools are reluctant to let people do any kind of mental health intervention. 

Two Main Approaches

The approaches are broken into two categories, interaction-based curriculum and law/justice curriculum:

Interaction-based curriculum focuses on setting and communicating boundaries, developing friendships and relationships and the continuum of the intimacy of relationships in general, as well as identifying wanted/unwanted behaviors and bystander intervention. Law/justice curriculum focuses on laws, definitions, and facts in general around what sort of consequences that inappropriate behavior can have.

Their findings in Cleveland in attempting both approaches and a control group showed that both approaches changed attitudes, but also increased violence and no change in sexual harassment, which he explained could be because of new awareness around inappropriate behaviors. 

Expanding The Approaches

Based on these findings, they expanded their study with more interventions and specialization to schools in New York City. There were a lot of specifics for how and why they expanded their interventions, and how they specialized their interventions for New York City compared to Cleveland that the average person would ignore. Interested parties can see the video for these specifics. Of note is that interventions cannot wait until a child is 10-13 years old, it must happen earlier because by age 10, children are already facing ARA.

Also of note is that one of the expansions was a building intervention, where children drew simple maps of their school with what areas of the building were safe, unsafe, and in between. They refer to this as "hot spots mapping", and those are used to add school personnel to unsafe areas. The results of this particular intervention were very promising.

Resistance To ARA Interventions

Despite nationwide studies being done by multiple groups (besides Dr. Taylor's) showing the effectiveness of these mental health interventions, there is high resistance to interventions around teen dating violence/ARA. This resistance seems to be in place despite offering incentives, such as free but copyrighted materials. They did not have any major guesses as to why there was resistance to implementing interventions. They wondered if state/national education mandates, time restrictions, and budget cuts might be a factor in the resistance to school-based research and interventions into ARA. 

Moore Center Sex Abuse Symposium: Part One: Juvenile Sex Offender Policies And Effectiveness

In case you missed the other parts for this series, please see part two, three, four, or five.
As a refresher...
So, What Is This Symposium?

The Moore Center Symposium 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 Moore Center for the Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse 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 Dr. Elizabeth Letourneau, who used to be the president of The Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers (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. 

Beginning Introductions

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, Patrick McCarthy, who is the president and CEO of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, an organization that focuses on improving the lives of children in a variety of ways.  Other speakers at the symposium were Dr. Elizabeth Letourneau, Dr. Bruce Taylor (an expert in criminology), and Jill Levenson (expert in sociology and social work), followed by a showing of the film Untouchable, which I have talked about on this blog before. Following the film, there is a panel discussion about the film and closing remarks by Stephen and Julia Moore, the founding donors of the Moore Center.

Patrick McCarthy's Speech

At the beginning of his speech, Dr. McCarthy observes that before he learned about the Moore Center, almost everything he knew about child sexual abuse was wrong. Yes, this is the guy with a master's and doctorate in social work, and the keynote speaker of a child sexual abuse prevention symposium. He says that there are only three things about child sexual abuse that he still believes, now knowing more of the facts:

• Everyone has been affected by child exual abuse- as a victim or as someone who knows a victim. 
• The pain of child sexual abuse is long-lasting and can be made less significant, but is still present years later.
• Whatever our own experiences, we all want to protect children from sexual abuse.

Policies Not Based In Fact And Ineffective

He suggests (as you have heard me say before) that many of the policies we have around sexual abuse seem to be based in common sense, but are completely wrongheaded and ineffective. The example he cites to support this idea the perception among the public that those who abuse children kidnap them off the street, rather than the factual idea that children are abused by people they know and trust, even adolescents. He says that half of child sexual abuse involves an adolescent with the average age of 14. He states that rather than addressing the facts, we teach stranger danger and fail to take the steps that would be effective in keeping children safe. He says again that the policies we have in place too often make children less safe.

Dehumanizing Abusers

He points out that we throw abusers under the bus, because we treat anyone who engages in any sort of inappropriate sexual behavior as a monster we want to protect our children from. We even treat teenagers and children, some as young as eleven years old, like monsters. He discusses that sex offender registration and community notification can isolate abusers away from support systems, and thus make them more likely to reoffend rather than less likely. 

Public Health Approach Vs. Criminal Justice Approach

One of the points made is that the criminal justice approach to stopping sexual abuse, while this approach must be a part of addressing sexual abuse, is failing because we are not integrating facts and research into these policies. He argues that if we treat sexual abuse as both a public health issue AND as a criminal justice issue, more children could be spared the pain of abuse. 

He suggest several ways in which criminal justice system is failing to protect children and are wrongheaded. The first example he uses is that public policy is based on the idea that offenders cannot change, so policies focus on removing offenders from the community through incarceration and community isolation. At the same time, we focus on changing the behavior of potential victims (attempting to increase reporting, in other words), which he says runs the risk of teaching victims and potential victims that they or their families were responsible for the abuse and are re-victimized by believing they could have stopped it. 

Another example is that public policy is focused on predicting and controlling individual behavior, based in the erroneous principle that we can guess and who will and will not commit a crime. He blasts tools like plethysmographs, polygraphs, and risk assessments as not being based in science, and suggests that we instead view sexual abuse as something that is situational and context-specific, so employing community education techniques can help change how the public views sexual abuse as an issue.

His next example is that juvenile offenders who engage in abusive acts are seen as permanently pathological, or "damaged," requiring lifelong monitoring and "coercive treatment". He suggests that the research supports instead the idea that juvenile offenders are engaging in perfectly normal exploratory and experimental behaviors that have gone off-track. He calls these behaviors harmful but preventable. 

He observes the idea that anyone with a sexual attraction to children is a sociopath, someone with no empathy for the victims and families and no interest in controlling their behavior. By contrast, he suggests that the groundbreaking work being done by Dr. Letourneau in the Help Wanted study is challenging that idea, and showing that youth who have an attraction to children often face barriers to getting help with their attractions, and indeed, a desire to get that help. He illustrates that public policy pushes people away from that help, sometimes at risk of arrest and isolation.

His final example is that public policy is based on the idea of high recidivism among juvenile offenders: That idea, he states, is not supported by research, and indeed, fewer than 5% of juvenile offenders will reoffend, raising the question of whether their crime could have been prevented in the first place. 

Need For Public Policy Advocacy

He says the examples show how far we have to go until the evidence from research and practice informs the policies being made by policymakers. He suggests that there needs to be advocates who can inform policymakers on effective policies. 

A Disaster From 25 Years Ago

His next point regards the predictions of a few big names about 25 years ago about the idea that we would see a rise in super-predators, or those with horrifying behaviors that developed during the predator's youth. The policies that were formed in reaction to this prediction, such as zero-tolerance policies, mandatory minimum sentencing, and so forth have set the backdrop for where we are today with policies. The data we have today shows that the prediction was wrong: Recidivism is low, and violent crime rates are dropping, not skyrocketing. These policies that were formed in reaction to this prediction, he says, are harmful and wrongheaded. 

How Do We Change Policy?

He prefaces his suggestions on how we can change policy with the observation that he does not have a magic answer, but suggests that the specific steps to changing policy can depend on what an individual advocate or group wants to accomplish. He recommends two priorities: Reversing course from current public policy initiatives to target and punish sex offenders, and increasing public involvement in developing public policy that is more effective at reducing crime. 

He recommends in regard to the first priority, eliminating the need for juveniles to register as sex offenders, a goal he suggests is very feasible. He proposes eliminating the indiscriminate sentencing of child sex offenders and the "bad science" options of plethysmography, polygraphy, and indefinite monitoring. He suggests instead developing prevention methods that are systemic (schools and community groups) and address at-risk youth to prevent harm before it can happen. In that, he suggests intervention strategies that get help to at-risk youth, whether they are at-risk because of having a sexual attraction to children or for some other reason. 

With that in mind, he comes up with five things he has learned:

1. Rather than a broad campaign to change public opinion, individual outreach to policymakers and policy implementers (judges, youth-serving organizations, politicians, etc.), and outreach to those that influence these policies, or those that already have relationships with policymakers and policy implementers. 
2. Linking the data and research to personal experience and stories that are effective in changing perceptions.
3. Not investing huge amounts into standalone advocacy, but building on existing messaging and advocacy platforms. This means outreaching and partnering with victim advocates, field-leading organizations like ATSA, the National Conference of State Legislators, the National Governor's Association, the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, the National Juvenile Defenders Association, etc. This also means outreaching to organizations to libertarian, conservative, and other "unlikely allies" that can be more powerful in reaching other viewpoints.
4. Be strategic and opportunistic so that when unexpected opportunities come up through the contacts with other advocacy platforms.
5. Data, facts, and evidence matters, as is the stories that can display those facts to the general public. 

Public Investment Into Prevention Strategies

He points out the value of individuals and organizations that donate money to researching, developing, and supporting the infrastructure to make prevention a reality. However, he points out that we need policymakers to dedicate public funds to developing the prevention of child sexual abuse because of the great need for funding and research into creating more effective policies. 

Filling In The Gaps Of "Untouchable"

Say What?

In case you have not yet heard, the documentary Untouchable is screening with the MSP International Film Festival. Last night's showing was sold out, and audience members asked a number of great questions of the panel composed of director David Feige, child advocate Patty Wetterling, and local legal powerhouse Eric Janus. However, the film does not cover the entire issue- only a few small facets of it, like sex offender registration, sex offender notification, and residency restrictions.

And just how do you cover a nationwide hodgepodge of laws that were originally designed to protect children, and have since become a quagmire of punitive nonsense? The laws that apply in one state are different in another, civil commitment is left untouched, and only the briefest mention of International Megan's Law is made. In the interest of brevity, and in sparking a conversation about this topic nationwide, the director chose to limit the scope of the documentary (and its length, since we have "shorter and shorter attention spans" these days).

Untouchable In A Nutshell

If you have not yet seen the film (and you should, whether you are already allied in the fight to protect children or not, because you might get to meet Patty Wetterling as I did last night), let me summarize it (spoiler alert!).  Bearing in mind that I am abbreviating a 104-minute movie into two paragraphs, the movie starts out discussing the victimization of Lauren Book, daughter of Ron Book, at the hands of their nanny Waldina. Following this revelation, Ron Book pursues and passes many different laws that have wide-ranging and unpredictable effects on sex offenders. While Lauren Book champions Lauren's Kids, sex offenders are getting more and more fed up with how the laws are impacting them and their families.

The movie is peppered with facts and studies, and you learn (as you have seen many times on this blog) that recidivism is very, very low. You also learn what the basis is for many of these laws in terms of facts: Nothing. The Supreme Court of the United States ruled that sex offender registration and other laws are constitutional because the recidivism rate for sex offenders is "frightening and high", which as it turns out comes from a single unsupported line in a 1986 Psychology Today article from someone with no research background. While it may be difficult to feel bad for sex offenders, the movie reveals that many of the laws that were originally intended to keep children safe have instead become a quagmire of draconian and punitive nonsense that has little to no impact on new sex crime.

More Information About Civil Rights, Laws, And Civil Commitment

By far the best place to find more information about sex offender laws, civil commitment, and current court cases is the National Association for Rational Sex Offense Laws. If you want to lose yourself in finding out more information, or wish to advocate against the laws that are failing to protect our children, you can find a ton of great information at NARSOL.

There is also, as was mentioned in the film, Women Against Registry. They cover the issue of how these laws impact the relatives of sex offenders. They are very similar to NARSOL in many respects, but they focus on the damage that sex offender laws have caused to completely innocent people: The mothers, aunts, sisters, daughters, and families of sex offenders.

Questions Asked And Answered

The questions asked by the audience were appropriately varied on a range of topics:

• How many children are harmed by family vs friends vs strangers? What are the proportions?
• Patty Wetterling and Eric Janus pointed out that strangers account for less than 10% of cases, Patty mentioned that 2% of non-family child abductions are perpetrated by strangers. Both stated that stranger danger is not working.
• What is the realistic recidivism rate for sex offenders with underreporting in mind? 
• Eric Janus pointed out that recidivism is a very small part of violent crimes and most violent crimes are committed by first-time offenders, not those with prior records. Patty Wetterling pointed out that what we are doing in looking at recidivism is not working, and Eric Janus closed by saying that underreporting would likely inflate recidivism rates by 25-30%. Many of the recidivism rates mentioned in the movie were 2-4%.
• Are there any states on a remarkably different path from the national norm in punishing sex offenders?
• Short answer: No, most states are still focusing on punishment.
• David Feige pointed out that each state handles the issue differently, and that each state carries over whatever restrictions were more punitive so that someone could not move to a different state to ease the restrictions placed on them. Both Eric Janus and David Feige pointed out that there is a nationwide "hodgepodge of laws and restrictions," and that mandatory reporting does not help because people are afraid of being turned into the police. 
• David Feige mentioned Prevention Project Dunkelfeld in Germany, which promises confidential help without reporting to the police, and that the project is seeing great success. 
• How many offenders are victims of child sexual abuse? (asked by a psychologist)
• Eric Janus said not the majority and that the studies vary, and Patty Wetterling said that the thought of being considered an offender in the making keeps male victims of child sexual abuse from disclosing their abuse. They speculated on the problems that mandatory reporting causes, and that the fear of being considered a risk to children scares many victims, as was hinted at in the film.
• How did Patty Wetterling's advocacy evolve to be defensive of sex offenders?
• Over time, and by meeting sex offenders and seeing people in varying situations that were not the original intent of the laws she helped create. She used the word "hijacked" as she did in the movie to refer to how the registry has evolved to become punitive. She emphasized that the point was to create an investigative tool for law enforcement, not a public list. 
• How do you short circuit the focus of being tough and punitive on crime?
• David Feige suggested that laws be evidence and fact based, focusing on the fact that risk is a part of life. He admitted that nuanced arguments are harder to make than simple ones, because people buy the simple arguments more readily. 
• Eric Janus suggested storytelling and humanizing people to get people to empathize, while changing the question to "How can we prevent this from happening?"
• Patty Wetterling suggested early interventions like comprehensive sexual education and treatment over punishment, and by starting the focus on one demographic, like juvenile sex offenders, so that people can see the complexity of one single group of sex offenders. 
• Did the evolution of Lauren Book's views on the issue happen during the movie? Did Ron and Lauren Book see the film, and what did they think?
• To the first question, no. To the second, yes, they saw the movie and were very enthusiastic, save for the comedian at the beginning of the film. David Feige pointed out that they were less enthusiastic after seeing the reaction of the screenings since its release. 
• How did all sex offenders get thrown into one pot?
• David Feige very quickly said something to the effect of "bad politicians and badly written laws", and Patty Wetterling pointed to the media, which reports about "sex offenders" rather than differentiating the nuanced information that is valuable.
• Does Ron Book regret his threatening to kill Waldina?
• No, he does not, though David Feige speculated that he may rethink his threat to kill Waldina when she gets out of prison in 2025. 

Two Questions Left Partially Answered

One of the answers to the question about the proportion of abusers (first bullet point above) indicated that stranger sexual abuse is very, very rare. Patty cited the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in saying that only 2% of non-family abductions are perpetrated by strangers, but admitted she did not know that specific statistic. That answer is incomplete. The exact figure is that around 4-5% of child sex abuse cases are perpetrated by strangers, while around 5% remains unknown, and the remaining 90% breaks down into 30% family, 60% friends of the family. The overarching point that was made in the film, which you have heard me mention time and time again, is that abuse is not perpetrated by monsters, but by people we know, trust, and care about.

The answer to the question about how many offenders are victims was: It depends. We have no idea what proportion of victims go on to become abusers (certainly a very small minority at most), but we do know from these studies what percentage of abusers have been victims. Eric Janus said a variety of studies have mixed results. While that is true, there are two sets of studies that have been done: Studies that use polygraph, and studies that do not.  Studies that use polygraph generally find between 30-40% of abusers have been victimized, and studies that do not use polygraph generally find between 50-60% of abusers have been victimized.

How You Can Get Involved

One of the points David Feige made was that there is little information available from him and the film's website on how to get involved. His purpose in making the film was more to start the conversation around this hard and complex topic. He and the film make the case that sex offenders are not being treated fairly by these laws.

I take a different approach, and I can tell you why you need to get involved: The longer these laws are in effect, the more victims we have. We must form fact-based policies so that we can stop sexual violence before it happens. How do you get involved in making that happen?

I propose three areas you can get involved:

1. Contact legislators and city leaders: Email with a phone call to follow-up works well, mailing, emailing, and calling works very, very well. Be respectful.
2. Become an advocate: Learn the facts by heart, and speak up whenever you get the chance. Contact journalists and reporters, write editorials, comment online, etc. 
3. Donate money: No one wants to fund research into helping pedophiles (those with an attraction to children, not those who have already hurt them) or helping sex offenders, but that research is badly needed. 

WAR and NARSOL both have opportunities for you to get involved, and there are many victim advocacy groups that take a fact-based primary prevention approach. The biggest thing you can do is be a voice, and tell people what you think.