Karen A. Duncan, M.A., LMFT, LSW
Keeping Our Children Safe: A National Priority
The tragic murder of Jessica Lunsford has once again brought the epidemic of child sexual abuse to the forefront of our society. Jessica's case reminds us of the purpose for the National Sex Offender Registry - to keep track of sex offenders released from prison or placed on probation in order to prevent their reoffending. It also points out the serious flaws in the criminal justice system. There are obvious inadequacies in this system of tracking sex offenders and in the placement of sex offenders into our communities. Jessica's assault and consequent death also reinforces the critical need to make the prevention of child sexual abuse a national priority.
Child sexual abuse is considered the most underreported type of abuse that occurs to children across our nation. A 2002 study showed that even when children tell adults about sexual abuse it is not reported in 75% of the cases. Children are the most vulnerable victims of sexual abuse and their numbers are growing.
According to The National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect in 1996 children under the age of 8 years old accounted for 39% of the substantiated cases of sexual abuse reported to police and child protective services. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children reports that two-thirds of the victims of rape and sexual assault are children. According to the Rape and Incest National Network one in four girls and one in six boys will experience sexual abuse before reaching the age of seventeen.
The investigation of sexual abuse by child protective services (CPS) is precarious in a system that is overloaded and understaffed. CPS is plagued with caseworkers that are under trained, and lack the necessary funding and resources to adequately investigate reports of sexual abuse and other forms of maltreatment. In an overburden system the "lesser cases" may be put aside, while the more serious cases are given priority. Unfortunately, what can happen is the children who are the "lesser cases" become the more serious cases.
The prosecution of a reported sex offender is not always adequate because prosecutors are not necessarily knowledgeable or have the expertise to build a case. While other types of crimes are reported immediately, a report of sexual abuse can sometimes take years to report to authorities. Also, where there may be witnesses in other criminal cases, sexual offenders abuse children in isolation when no one is around so it comes down to a child giving testimony against an adult.
Sexual offenders do not always cause notable physical harm to children which in the legal system is viewed as a "lack of evidence" for prosecution. The emotional harm from sexual abuse is often greater and longer lasting, but these aspects of sexual abuse are more difficult for prosecutors to describe and prove to juries made up of citizens who are not well informed about the traumatic crime of sexual abuse. Defense attorneys can manipulate jurors and a child or teenager feels anxious and nervous in a courtroom full of adults. Statutes of limitation on reporting sexual abuse are problematic and prevent the investigation of a significant number of sexual abuse cases. Adults who were victims of a sex offender in their childhood can identify thousands of sex offenders who will never see a day in court.
The sexual abuse of children is not well understood within the general public even though the knowledge we have today is greater than twenty to thirty years ago when cases first began to be reported in the media. When the media, which could be a leader in educating the public, sensationalizes certain cases, this results in a proliferation of misleading information that confuses more than it clarifies.
Our society has to make changes if we are ever going to truly prevent this crime from happening to children and teens. One of these changes is providing the public, and parents in particular, with consistent information to keep them informed and aware of this epidemic. We must also begin to get comfortable having conversations about the subject of child sexual abuse. Parents need to be able to approach their kids and talk openly about sexual offenders and child sexual abuse because sex offenders depend on parents' silence, denial and discomfort. As long as we stay silent they can keep committing these crimes against children and teens. Our silence equals permission to a sex offender.
Understanding the traumatic crime of sexual abuse is imperative to preventing it. Parents who are given accurate information can learn how to keep their children safe. All adults committed to stopping this crime benefit from information about sexual abuse and sexual offenders and by using the resources that are available. Information about sex offenders can help us to understand their behavior so we can identify them early on in their cycle of abuse. Information about this crime, especially awareness by adults, becomes useful to prevention. In some cases, children are better educated about this subject than their parents, but unlike their parents they are seldom big enough or experienced enough to thwart a perpetrator's intent to cause them harm. We also need to be sure the programs available to our children do not place them at further risk by giving them a distorted sense of safety or that they can physically overpower a perpetrator. One child who is able to escape a sex offender is a blessing, but the majority of children will not even know the sexual abuse is going to happen until it does. Education programs for children that help them to understand the dangers of sexual abuse by family members and strangers, and that increase their awareness about this crime are the most helpful.
While it was a stranger who committed this crime against Jessica, most sex offenders are a family member or someone the family knows. Family danger is a significant risk in the perpetration of child sexual abuse and accounts for 85 percent of the substantiated and reported cases. The family perpetrator seldom gets the attention of the media even though it is the most prolonged type of abuse that occurs to children causing serious and lasting harm. Sexual abuse is not discriminatory either. Perpetrators exist across the socioeconomic groups, educational levels, marital status and occupations. Chances are we all know someone who has been sexually abused.
A perpetrator who is not directly known to a child accounts for 15 percent of the reported cases of child sexual abuse. However, this type of offender is seldom a complete stranger. More than likely he is someone the child has seen or had some kind of contact with while living in her neighborhood. This type of offender observes a child and the family, plans how to gain access to the child and decides where and how the molestation is going to take place.
Sexual offenders are men, women and teenagers and while the majority are males, women sexually abuse an average of 1.3 million children a year which is the population size of a city as large as San Diego. Female offenders are often minimized and downplayed as our society continues to deny the harm females cause to the children they sexually abuse. Juvenile offenders are increasing and account for up to 15% of reported cases of sexual abuse. In fact, most offenders incarcerated today began as adolescents and continued offending for a number of years until they were caught. Offenders learn at an early age how to entice, bribe, cajole and threaten children into their abusive cycle. Their years of practice account for the manipulation they are so good at with parents, family members and co-workers.
Sex offenders are not known to stop their criminal behavior on their own. Few if any go to law enforcement or treatment programs for help to stop their sexual abuse of children. Perpetrators of sexual abuse seldom give a full accounting of the number of children they have sexually abused or the types of sexual abuse they commit. It would be common for one perpetrator to have abused as many as twenty children or more. Sexual offenders frequently minimize the emotional and physical pain they cause to children. In many cases, the offender feels like the "victim" and resents the child who reports him.
Treatment for offenders is more available today than ten years ago but the effectiveness of these treatments are still unknown. It has only been in recent years that recidivism rates (how often a sex offender commits the crime again) for sexual offenders following treatment have been tracked. These studies are relatively new and the majority of offenders are not followed past six months. These studies do indicate that most offenders, when they do re-offend will do so within one to two years upon their release.
The families of sex offenders will protect the offender just as Couey's sister did for him. Similar to the Catholic Church members who hid known sex offenders within their walls and parishes, there are family members who cover-up, deny and minimize child sexual abuse and deny their responsibility for placing children at greater risk to be sexually abused. This is also the reason that the same perpetrator can sexually abuse several children, multiple times across generations and never be caught or reported.
Jessica Lunsford's life was cut short because a known sex offender lived in her neighborhood. It is as if a web of silence and denial surrounded Jessica and her family and began to close in. The repeated and long-standing pattern of criminal behavior by Couey substantiates that sex offenders do not stop offending and as long as they are allowed access to children they will commit their crimes. It is obvious from Jessica's needless death that changes need to occur in a system that is meant to protect children, but too often fails in its responsibility to the most vulnerable of our citizens.
The laws we have in place must be enforced consistently throughout the United States. Probation officers across the country need to be held accountable for their failure to keep track of sex offenders. They need to come up with ideas to do their job better even if it means putting bracelets or other tracking devices on all offenders who are in their custody. Law enforcement officers need to become pro-active in prevention and mandated to take the initiative to directly notify citizens when a sex offender moves in to their community. This notification needs to take place immediately and quickly. Re-evaluating the release of sex offenders will help to put in place an added measure of protection across the states. Parents are tired of learning that the person who sexually abused their child has a long history of this deviant behavior.
Prosecutors and judges need to develop a real expertise along with new procedures in the prosecution of child sexual abuse. Child protective services needs an overhaul so that there is enough caseworkers and that these caseworkers are trained, funded, supervised and accountable for the welfare of the children who are in their protection. Legislative action at the federal and state level must take place to fund the protection of our children. Our national security is meaningless if we cannot keep our children safe in their homes, neighborhoods and schools.
Answers need to be given to Jessica's parents and family even if the questions are difficult and the answers not simple. Jessica was a 9-year-old girl who had the world ahead of her. She did not cause her death nor did she contribute to Couey's decision to take her from her home. Each day parents just like Jessica's believe, "this cannot happen to my child" only to wake up like Jessica's parents did and have to face that sexual abuse can happen to any child or teen when a perpetrator is in their midst. It is past the time to take child sexual abuse serious and to address this long-standing epidemic that occurs to thousands of children every year.
During the time of Jessica's body being found, parents in Denver, Colorado protested at a community meeting with law enforcement because a neighborhood couple had a known sex offender living with them. The wife stated, "We need to give everyone a chance" referring to the chance she thought Michael Carroll, the sex offender living with her, should have. Did this couple express concern about the children Carroll was around or validate the worries and anxieties of the parents? Did they consider the right of the children to be safe in their own communities? Law enforcement's response was for parents not to become "vigilantes" while one mother said she wanted to post a sign in her yard warning parents and kids which I thought was a great community service.
Jessica's parents and the parents in Denver need national support just as all the other parents do whose children have been the victims of sex offenders. Child advocates need to come forth en masse and hold lawmakers accountable for child protection. Child protection services across the states need to drop their defenses and work with advocates and other experts to find the solutions that cannot wait any longer to be found to protect our children.
The crimes against children strike at the core of this nation's morals and values and sexual abuse does this in a way that challenges all of us to take action. While civil liberty advocates consider the civil rights of offenders, let us not forget the civil rights of our children. The fact remains that an offender would not have his or her civil liberties taken away if they had not first taken them away from a child. Perhaps, it is time for our criminal justice system to view crimes against children, especially the crime of sexual abuse, as different from other criminal acts that are committed by adults against other adults. The time has come to truly answer the question of how we are going to assure the right of our children to be safe and live free of the fear of sexual predators. We have to ask this question and find the answers so that we do not ever have to ask again, "What do we do about the unnecessary and tragic loss of children like Jessica Lunsford" and the thousands of children she represents.
Yours in healing,
Karen A. Duncan