December 2011 Archives

Pedophilia occurs with disturbing frequency in athletic programs, churches, Boy Scout troops, and youth organizations—places that children congregate, including the homes of trusted family members.

Professor Daniel Pollack, a frequent contributor to ChildLaw, has co-authored a social work textbook called How to Screen Adoptive and Foster Parents: A Workbook for Professionals and Students. If you read this blog regularly, you'll know all about this book which we profiled earlier this year.

A recent op-ed written by the book's co-author, James Dickerson, highlights this important work:

It is accepted in professional circles that you can help child sex abuse victims with appropriate therapy, but there is little that you can do to help pedophiles. They will offend again and again if they are not incarcerated. Someday there may emerge an effective treatment for them.

Today it does not exist.

The best way to protect children, boys and girls, from abuse is to properly screen individuals who apply for jobs that will require them to work with children, just as you would individuals who apply for foster and adoptive children.

It will not come as a surprise to mental health professionals that Sandusky was married and had adopted six children, along with opening his home to an unknown number of foster children. It is a recognizable pattern.

Although the science does not exist to treat pedophiles, the science does exist to screen them for abusive tendencies. I deal with this in a social work textbook that I co-authored with Professor Daniel Pollack of Yeshiva University, and Dr. Mardi Allen of the Mississippi Department of Mental Health, on the subject of screening for abusive tendencies in adoptive and foster parent applicants.

In the book, we point out in a chapter devoted to the subject that pedophiles are naturally attracted to positions that require them to be around children. Of course, most Boy Scout leaders, church youth group leaders, and teachers are not pedophiles, but those categories are a natural draw to pedophiles and that is where you are most likely to find them.

What are some of the clues that should be recognized by social workers, parents, and employment screeners?

For the answer, buy the book at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or directly from the NASW Press.

A recently released report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reveals some sobering numbers: nearly 1 in 5 women have been raped in their lifetime. This statistic is widely known and almost universally accepted. But what do these numbers say about children?

According to the study, approximately 80% of female victims experienced their first rape before the age of 25 and almost half experienced the first rape before age 18 (30% between 11-17 years old and 12% at or before the age of 10).

When you crunch the numbers even more, you discover that approximately 400,666 girls under ten have experienced "completed forced penetration, attempted forced penetration, or alcohol/drug facilitated completed penetration."

This translates into six girls in each and every elementary school in the United States.

In my town, with four elementary schools, that's 24 girls.

Exactly who are these girls in your community? Who is responsible for these crimes? And who is serving these victims?

Here's how I calculated these numbers. According to the CDC, "18.3% of women in the United States have been raped at some time in their lives, including completed forced penetration, attempted forced penetration, or alcohol/drug facilitated completed penetration." Of this 18.3%, 12% were raped "at or before the age of 10." Doing the math, 12% of 18.3% is 2%. According to the United States Census, there are approximately 152,925,887 women in the United States. Of these, 6.7% are under 5 years old and 6.4% are 5 to 9 years old. Add 6.7% and 6.4% and you get 13.1% of the population are girls ages 0 to 9 - the target population. This translates to 20,033,291 girls ages 0 to 9 in the United States. If 2% of those 20 million girls experience rape, that's 400,666 girls.

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, there are 67,148 elementary schools in the United States. 400,666 girls divided by 67,148 elementary schools equals 6 girls per elementary school who experience "forced penetration, attempted forced penetration, or alcohol/drug facilitated completed penetration" before their tenth birthday.

Last week the United States Supreme Court ignored the extraordinary pleas of three nationally recognized child advocacy groups and granted the Justice Department's request to dismiss a child sex abuse victim's appeal for criminal restitution.

The case now returns to the district court which must follow the DC Circuit's holding that the victim in this case, Amy, does not have a clear and indisputable right to full restitution, but must instead trace precisely how her losses were “proximately” caused by each of the thousands of child molesters and pedophiles who collect and trade her child sex abuse images.

The Supreme Court's rejection means that a child pornography victim's right to criminal restitution in the federal courts will continue to be limited and denied in sixteen states and territories, including California, New York and Washington, DC. Only in the Fifth Circuit—encompassing the states of Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi—is restitution still mandatory.

The Court's denial—and the Justice Department's stubborn refusal to abandon a legal standard which the influential Ninth Circuit concluded "present[s] serious obstacles for victims seeking restitution in these sorts of cases"—leaves child sex abuse victims like Amy with scant chance for justice in the federal courts.

Pedophiles, child molesters and the Justice Department are likely to seize on the high court's rejection as a sign that criminal restitution for child sex abuse victims is all but impossible in the federal courts except under the most egregious circumstances.

We continue to urge everyone to Make a Difference and ask the Justice Department to stop siding with convicted child molesters and pedophiles instead of child sex abuse victims!

Just go to http://bit.ly/ChangeJustice for full details on how you can help.

For the complete background on this issue, visit http://www.childlaw.us/restitution/.