Image: Flickr/Lisa Ann Rogers
With the stream of accusations of child sexual abuse not losing any gusto lately, from the ever-growing charges against former Penn State football coach Jerry Sandusky to allegations of such behaviors by assistant basketball coach Bernie Fine, it'd be easy to assume a real upsurge in such abuse.
But that may not be the case.
First, Sandusky was accused of sexually molesting at least eight boys over the past 15 years; he has pleaded not guilty to the more than 40 charges against him.
Then last week Fine of Syracuse University was fired amid accusations of sexual abuse. So far three men, including two former Syracuse ball-boys, have come forward stating that Fine molested them as minors.
Neither Sandusky nor Fine has been found guilty of any crime, but these are only the latest in what seems to be a year filled with news reports about sexual harassment and sexual abuse. Earlier this year an ABC News investigation revealed that USA Swimming (the governing body for the sport up to and including the U.S. Olympic team) has banned for life nearly 40 swimming coaches over the last decade because of sexual misconduct. [Child Abuse: Why People Look the Other Way]
So what's going on?
According to the nation's top experts, children are actually safer from physical and sexual abuse than they have been for decades. A National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect issued by the Department of Health and Human Services found that both physical and sexual abuse of children have dropped significantly over the past 20 years: From 2005 to 2006, an estimated 553,000 children suffered physical, sexual or emotional abuse, down 26 percent from the estimated 743,200 abuse victims in 1993. And between 1993 and 2005, the number of sexually abused children dropped 38 percent, while number of children who experienced physical abuse fell by 15 percent and those who were emotionally abused declined by 27 percent.
In fact, incidence of sexual abuse of children began to drop two decades ago, according to Dr. David Finkelhor, director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire.
In his book "Childhood Victimization: Violence, Crime and Abuse in the Lives of Young People" (Oxford 2008), Dr. Finkelhor notes, "The child victimization declines of the 1990s were something new, and not simply the extension of trend lines from the past. For example, available data on child abuse show strong increases in all forms of maltreatment from the mid-1970s into the 1990s. After a short plateau, the sexual abuse decline seemed to start in 1992, and the physical abuse decline gained momentum after 1996. Many analysts did not interpret the earlier rise as necessarily indicative of a real increase in child maltreatment but rather as the result of a new public and professional mobilization to identify and report cases. But some data suggested real increases in the 1980s."
Overall, Dr. Finkelhor told LiveScience.com, "There is very little evidence that child sexual abuse is on the rise in the U.S., and considerable evidence that it is declining, including data from law enforcement, child protection and surveys of victims themselves." He added that though the prevalence of child sexual abuse worldwide is hard to assess, "there are some indicators of decline in other countries such as Canada and the United Kingdom."
See what we're tweeting about
31 Comments
Add CommentMaybe there's some sort of new axiom that says the more rarely something occurs, the more shocking it is when it does occur, and the noteworthyness creates a feeling of greater occurrence.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSafer than they have been in decades? Probably more like safer than they have ever been in the history of the world.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere has never been a time when accountability was as high as it is now. Not only did social status have much more weight in the past in virtually every society, ensuring that those with high social status were able to get away with whatever they wanted, but the ability to do things in secrecy was much, MUCH greater in the past.
Let's face it - writing comments like yours is conducive to homosexual behavior and it's not much of a stretch from that to child abuse. (I don't literally mean this, but it is just as valid an assertion)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is something that is troubling me about this article (and I read all the links) and none of the other comments mentioned it, and that is the mentality of the victims. What brings the victim and the perp (as they are so often called) together, and the victim living in poverty may be just a very small factor but not the main factor?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn 1973, or 1978, I forget which, the Swedes brought 50 randomly selected boys (under 12 years of age), and the same number of girls together and one self-confessed male pedophile and one self-confessed female pedophile. The children were not made aware that these two people were pedophiles. Three.five of the boys were physically (sexually) attracted to the male, but over half of the boys were attracted to the female; the remainder was not attracted to neither. Almost half the girls were attracted to the female and only one was attracted to the male. The Swedes came to the conclusion that the developing of pheromones had to of played the major role in the children making their selections, and they also believed that the children who selected the pedophiles could show a disposition as a pedophile in their teens or young adulthood.
It may be easier to stop if you find out what attracts children and adults together and sexually abuse each other (children do sexually abuse adults). Child sexual abuse with adults is a very rare happening in nature and there is a reason for it. Find the reason and you may find the cure. If you cannot find a cause or reason then you will have no choice but to declare it as natural as heterosexuality and continue to take the steps you are in keeping it under control.
Homosexual behavior has noting to do with child abuse and childred do not sexually abuse adults. If a child initiates sexual contact with an adult, it is not abuse. It is the adults resposnibility to rebuff any such advances, period. I can hardly belive the level of ingorance in the two comments that I am refering to. The mentality of the victims is that of children, who deserve our protection from adult preditors, because they are children.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisChild abuse has nothing to do with sexual orientation. The pedophiles are aroused by sexual dominance and control, which makes children of either sex their potential victims. However, the opportunities for men to prey on boys are vastly more abundant than with girls. Rarely are men allowed unsupervised control and access to young girls, but that circumstance is quite common for young boys. That's why pedophiles seek out positions in religious clergy, sports teams, scouts, etc. Most molesters are married men with children of their own (Catholic priests aside.) Clinical studies have shown that openly gay men are the demographic least likely to be involved in child molestation. If anyone thinks otherwise, then I submit that they have been mislead by untrustworthy sources of information.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSee http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/rainbow/html/facts_molestation.html
I think it is odd that people keep mentioning Catholic clergy, when, in reality, sex abuse occurs at about the same rate in ALL clergy and all men in general. I think it simply has to do with these men being in positions of power, where they have the opportunity to take advantage, I do not think it has to do with sexuality or religion. http://www.reformation.com/
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe idea of children initiating sexual contact with adults is common among pedophiles, particularly those who actively abuse or are pedophile activists/apologists.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have never come across anyone else who has ever expressed that view, scientist, psychologist or non-pedophile.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAbsolutely 100% right !
Children were daily fodder to abusers for thousands of years. No one knew. No one spoke up. No one cared.
Children have never ever been safer.
There is no link whatsoever between homosexuals and pedophiles. In fact, as one other commenter stated they are the least likely demographic to abuse children. It's always some married man or paragon of the community that is guilty.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think the truth is closer to: there is no one type of child abuser - they come in all shapes and sizes. Saying "It's always some married man or paragon of the community that is guilty" is equally misleading and potentially harmful.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGood news, if indeed it has decreased in all its forms. I'd like to see how the Internet factors in to these issues/studies, though. It is easier for a child abuser nowadays to access victims on-line via the *perceived* less risky medium of sharing child abuse images, or contact with children via social media or video conferencing compared to selecting from immediate family or from local areas before the rise of the Internet. Though less chance of physical harm, the psychological harm still exists.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCould this explain some of the reported decrease?
A note of modest skepticism...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhile we are all congratulating ourselves on what a
fine nation we're becoming with 'significantly reduced
abuse (sexual and other) of children', I suggest we
take a breath and notice that the recent statistical
up-trends were tallied and approved in the current era
dominated by reactionary social conservative denialism
run rampant. It is very telling that I had to read in
today's BBC website that the U.S.A. infamously leads
the western industrial nations in <per capita> murders of children by parents and similarly positioned adults.
And guess what? In this grim capacity, Texas leads the nation. Check this out, if you care. A psychiatrist
informed us recently, in sadness, that violent hate
crimes toward humans and other animals are on the
increase across the country too.
Just a sober thought.
Candide - Let's face it. Being entirely uneducated and not really knowing anything about the world around you makes you very afraid--and we always hate what we fear, right? Fear is conducive to bigotry, racism, and homophobia. Thanks for giving us a stellar example of what this looks like!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou are a person hiding a serious problem and you have been hiding it for a long time. When you think someone is getting close to what you have been hiding for such a long time, you lash out at them to push them away because they are making a statement that is making you feel uncomfortable, by making you believe that they know what you are doing, by getting close to what you have been hiding. Lashing out at me by calling me a pedophile, or saying that I am a pedophile sympathizer, is not going to help your problem. You need to get some psychiatric help because you are doing a great deal of harm to your victims, and I believe your victims are children. "authentic8", tell me I am wrong and convince me; is 8 your victims chosen age?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI believe we have excellent grounds to congratulate ourselves. Utterly. The country and the West in general is orders of magnitude safer than 20 years ago, than for hundreds of years. That is a fantastic thing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI wonder if this documented drop in child abuse has anything to do with the availability of so called child porn on the Internet? If it has then possibly adult heterosexual abuse should also show obvious signs of having declined.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisExcerpt from 'What is the Primary Fundamental Right?'
"It should be recognized that the police around the world probably hold more child pornography in their possession than all the other interested groups put together. As with drugs any commodity made illegal increases in value and tends to corrupt. If the objective is to stop the sexual abuse of children then by gradually releasing these huge amounts of pictures the police could keep the market in child porn flooded for years to come. No new pictures would need to be produced to keep up with demand so in theory fewer children should be abused. This action could also legally allow the computer generated child porn pictures to compete with the real ones therein hopefully reducing the long term level of such abuse. Pedophilia has always been there and it is never going to go away but the abuse of the children probably could be minimized.
It can be strongly argued that censorship laws designed to supposedly stop the sexual abuse of children actually help promote it."
http://www.primaryfundamentalright.org/index.php?pageName=pfrWhatIs
Further excerpts from 'What is the Primary Fundamental Right?'
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Everyone seems to overlook the fact that probably over 98% of all criminal pedophiles are men. This means that it is a male related disturbance simply because it doesn't afflict women to the same degree. Therefore it could be seen as a testosterone induced condition. It's probable that 99% of all men sometimes find some children sexually attractive to some degree but 98.99% have better control over their testosterone induced inclinations. Statistically and biologically it is impossible for all men to have full control over their testosterone just as it is in having full control over anything biological.
When some men's primary sex drive is child oriented it is probably equally impossible for them not to commit an offence should the opportunity arrive. This could be similar to telling a normal heterosexual male not to try and make contact with attractive women. To punish that non aggressive male for his natural thoughts and actions is absurd. To punish the non aggressive pedophile could therefore also be inappropriate. Everything is relative when dealing with sexual pleasure.
The reality is that they are being punished for being the men on the far side of the bell curve. Statistically someone has to occupy that position. Had they been born women then they would have had a possible 98% less chance of committing the crime of pedophilia. Theirs is a biological handicap, probably no different from being born with a club foot. But to make matters worse they are constructed to enjoy their deviance. This implies that they could also serve another function within society. Possibly they are born to be the 'bogey man' predators so that parents would be fully protective towards their children and train them early to recognize possible danger.
Common sense dictates that defenseless persons should not be left alone with any male capable of spermiation unless he is their natural father. "
http://www.primaryfundamentalright.org/index.php?pageName=pfrWhatIs
No, more openess about it and reporting is on the rise. I belive that it's actually on the decline.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou've actually touched on a poorly known and rather taboo subject, especially in the very insular and frightened U.S. culture today. If this were allowed
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thismore discussion, more light, children would be much
safer, if only because of a larger and wiser consciousness in Grownup America.
A story:
Many years ago, my wife was a teaching assistant at a very well fundedupscale elementary/middle school in
Santa Monica, California. One weekend she attended an all day workshop led by a French scholar and educator
from a university in France. This woman's curriculum
led the teaching staff through many subjects. Eventually the problem of child abuse, sexual and otherwise, came up, and one of the teachers stood up and in a bewildered
voice asked how can any adult ever be attracted to a child in the first place?!
The educator said, "Look... children are beautiful. Their faces are beautiful and their bodies are beautiful. The mere presence of children creates in
normal adults a tenderness and protectiveness. If
this weren't so, we'd have perished as a species long ago, because children can also be such
a trial to us."
"Sometimes that tender response to their beauty spills over into a kind of sexual attraction [she did not distinguish men's reactions from those of women's here]. But normal adults with decent senses of boundaries,
appropriateness, and impulse control simply don't do anything about
it. That is, even if they recognize the feeling at all [I suspect she meant that we unconsciously sublimate those occasional feelings]."
"However, adults with poor empathy, poor boundaries or control, may actually act on these inevitable feelings. This results in crimes against children, which we hear about."
I believe that what she said is a profound truth, which would in general be suppressed as anathema in most circles today. To the extent that it is a truth and reality which is suppressed or denied, to this same
extent it blinds adults and allows children to be at times in the hands of potential predators, who additionally have <no> larger sense of context for
the odd feelings they are having. Unfortunately, denialism as the default response is the head-in-the-
sand order of the day now.
The more we truly understand ourselves and one another, the safer we and our children will be in the world.
We steadfastly refuse new understanding at our peril.
There definitely is such an effect, and it's not new; it's very much a part of how we see the world.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe broad statistics are reassuring, but they may not be telling the whole story. We don't live our lives on a broad statistical plain; we live our lives in specific situations that do or don't have specific risks. Are children generally more or less exposed to high-risk situations? Are there particular characteristics that place children in higher risks, that are not shared by the broad population? Is the overall incidence getting lower, while incidence among particular populations is perhaps unchanged or increasing? The situation is too complicated to address by broad-brush, sweeping statistics that may be concealing as much as they reveal. We need much more research on this.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn terms of why it is declining, I suspect its the same reason violent crimes and such are declining: The baby boomers are aging and retiring from their life of crimes. Likely the same proportion of youngsters are involved in crime but since they represent a smaller proportion of our overall society, the overall rate of crime is decreasing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"stargene", that sounds similar to the experiment I read when I was doing my theses in behavioral psychology to get my teaching certification. I couldn't find any research in America that wasn't controlled by the bigotry of the American churches. And your comment is the kind of information that Americans do not want to hear... after all, isn't American children, until they are 18 years-old, considered nave and stupid to everything around them, and always the unsuspecting victim of "dirty old men??? In my long teaching career, I have heard and seen children do and say things that would scare the life out of you, or it should if you cared about your career or family. Being a male teacher, and for my own protection, I demanded and received video cameras in my class room. It is believed that most thieves will not steal if they know they are being watched, but children with voyeur behaviors will take everything to the edge for that couple minutes of attention. The supervised cameras saved my career and reputation many times.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJust restructuring and revising our educational system will prevent a lot of abuse and accusations and teaching careers.
Perhaps a different title for the article would have been more appropriate? I would feel let down by an article entitled "Have We Found Life On Mars?" that went on to tell me that no, there was still no sign of life on Mars...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPeople would rather perpetuate the same tired stereotypes than to get educated and learn the truth. The registry has perpetuated the stereotype even more, despite the fact that a significant number of people on the registry are on there for such "dangerous" behavior as streaking, public urination, or teens having consensual relations with each other. While this case is going on, there are THREE stories in media this week involving prosecution of kids between ages 6 and 9 for sex crimes! Our hysteria is at an all-time high. Enough with the stereotypes. Abolishing the registry is a good place to begin the reform process.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisProbably because the only people who propagate such assumptions are uneducated online vigilante groups. Which one are YOU a member of, by chance?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"There is no link whatsoever between homosexuals and pedophiles", bY definition, it's homosexuality no matter what the age of the victim may be, perhaps even masterbation may be some form of homosexuality?. I still cannot believe the aura of happiness and triumph through out the article and comments. One child is too many!!!!!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this<a href="http://www.edingtons.co.uk/">London Property Search Service</a>
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHi, thanks so very much for these suggestions!...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this<a href="http://www.edingtons.co.uk/">London Property Search Service</a>
Hi, thanks so very much for these suggestions!...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://inderjeet-singh88.blogspot.in/