Enough Abuse Blog

Isis Interview with MCC: Each Child Should be Cherished

2012-02-21T12:11:00.002-05:00

Each Child Should be Cherished: An Interview with Massachusetts Citizens for Children

Written on February 17, 2012 by Isis Staff in In The News

The "Cherish Mug" is adorned with the MCC logo and available for purchase at Isis Parenting and on the MCC website.

Isis Parenting is proud to support Massachusetts Citizens for Children and their commitment to keeping children safe from abuse and neglect. We decided to interview the folks at MCC so they could describe their history, current initiatives and their unique logo, designed by artist Corita Kent.

Tell us a little bit about MCC and your mission.
Massachusetts Citizens for Children was founded in 1959 by Martha May Eliot, M.D., a Harvard educated pediatrician who went on to head the U.S. Children’s Bureau and UNICEF. Her idea, which was supported by then Governor Foster Furcolo, was to establish a permanent and independent organization of concerned citizens who would work to improve the lives of the state’s most vulnerable children. Our mission is grounded in the belief that all children have basic rights, including the right to be safe from abuse, neglect, and violence; to be economically secure; to receive quality medical and preventive care; to learn in quality educational settings; and to live in caring families and healthy communities. Unfortunately, the realities of some children in our state do not reflect this ideal. Our work throughout our 52-year history has been to ensure that all children are safe, healthy, and are given an optimal environment in which to grow, learn and be happy.

Who was Corita Kent and what was her relationship with Massachusetts Citizens for Children?
Corita Kent, also known as Sister Mary Corita, gained international fame for her vibrant serigraphs which became a hallmark of the anti-war movements in the 1960s and 70s and were popular until her death in Boston in 1986. Corita was well known for her rainbow swash painted in 1971 on one of the gas tanks near the Southeast Expressway in Dorchester. Her 1985 United States Postage stamp “Love” sold in the hundreds of millions. Corita’s art reflected her spirituality, her commitment to social justice, her hope for peace, and her delight in the world all around us.
In the mid-80’s Corita became acquainted with MCC’s work and created an exclusive serigraph to commemorate the organization’s 25th Anniversary. The phrase she believed captured the essence of our mission and work was: “It’s only fair that each child be cherished.” She encouraged us to use the saying as our official logo and determined that it should be in bright, bold red. And so, our logo simply, colorfully and brilliantly expresses our mission and hopes for children.

How do you see Corita’s words applying to what your organization is doing today?
A key part of our history has been to keep children safe from abuse and violence. We are also committed to the right of each child to live in caring families and healthy communities. These two ideas are complimentary; there are abusive behaviors that we can prevent – and we are working to do so – but beyond that, we need to be engaged in creating the home, community, world that we want. So, if we only focus on the things we should NOT be doing we’re missing half the message – what are the things we SHOULD be doing? The ansEwer is that we should be cherishing our children.
The saying “It’s only fair that each child be cherished” is a quiet message but it is a critical one. Oftentimes people, when confronting a serious and widespread problem, such as child sexual abuse, become paralyzed with inaction. Faced with sad facts and statistics it is so easy to get stuck in a “Well what’s the point?” loop. We don’t want people to feel powerless to create change. Shifting perspectives can have a huge impact. For example, instead of focusing our messages exclusively on “Prevent Shaken Baby Syndrome / Abusive Head Trauma,” we educate parents on how to care for their babies when they are fussy and crying and how to take care of themselves, too, when infant caring becomes stressful. Instead of limiting the message to “Stop Child Sexual Abuse,” we educate parents, youth, professionals and communities about how to create safe environments. In both cases, the effect of using complementary messages is that people gain the motivation to participate in actions that will actually reduce the numbers of abused children.

What are some of your major initiatives this year?
We will soon be launching a major public campaign to reduce infant deaths and injuries from shaking. It will target young men between 18 and 25 years of age – the group most overrepresented in cases of shaken babies. The Enough Abuse Campaign on child sexual abuse prevention which we lead will be expanded to new communities and areas of the state and we will be providing consultation support to youth-serving organizations who are seeking to strengthen their ability to protect children from sexual abuse in those setting.
We will be promoting our “Pinwheels for Prevention” Campaign in April and in the fall are planning a “Cherish Our Children” Stroll, for which we will again be partnering with Isis Parenting. Other events you can find by following us on Facebook and on our websites:www.masskids.org and www.enoughabuse.org!

The Cherish Mugs are adorable and we’re getting a wonderful response to them in our stores. They make a great gift! How will the proceeds from the mug be used?
Proceeds from the sale of the mugs will go directly to support our programs on Shaken Baby Syndrome/Abusive Head Trauma Prevention and Child Sexual Abuse Prevention. We are a serious “no frills” organization so a very high percentage of funds raised supports our direct programs.

How do you think the missions of MCC and Isis are intertwined?
MCC and Isis Parenting have a shared vision in that both organizations believe in the power of education and the value of strong community. Moreover, Isis wants to empower parents to be the best they can be and they are committed to supporting parents to make parenting easier, less stressful and more joyful. Massachusetts Citizens for Children is committed to giving every child a fair chance at a healthy, safe and happy childhood. One of the best ways to achieve that goal is for each of us to love, cherish, and protect our own children, then the children in our community, then across Massachusetts and beyond – until all children are safe from abuse and violence and all children are able to live in a caring family and healthy community.

Advocates trying to start child abuse task force

2012-02-16T12:08:00.000-05:00

Advocates trying to start child abuse task force
by Laurie Balliett, contributing writer
February 16, 2012

HYANNIS — Community and child advocates are considering a new task force to help prevent sexual abuse of children on Cape Cod.

At a workshop at state offices on Perseverence Way on Thursday, the Barnstable County Council for Children, Youth and Families, and a representative from the Enough Abuse Campaign, a statewide grass-roots movements, urged local child-care professionals to create the task force.

The campaign, a program of the Massachusetts Child Sexual Abuse Prevention Partnership, would train facilitators from various organizations to teach volunteers to raise awareness of child sexual abuse. The partnership is a group of statewide child advocacy organizations.

Cape Cod was identified as a priority to the Enough Abuse Campaign about a year ago, but the campaign did not have the funds to do anything here until recently, said Lauren Titus, co-chairwoman of the county council.

About 20 professionals attended the workshop, including representatives from the state Department of Children and Family Services, Independence House, which works to prevent domestic abuse, and Children's Cove, which serves young victims of sexual abuse.

Beth Biro, forensic sexual abuse consultant at Children's Cove, stressed that investigative procedures and protocols should stay in place. She questioned how volunteers would be trained and whether they would know what to do if a child disclosed something, and if they would be able to train somebody else in proper procedures.

"We want to make sure there is a response component to the training," stressed Biro. She offered to attend every training to act as a consultant to the facilitators.

After the meeting, Jetta Bernier, campaign director of Enough Abuse Campaign, said, "I don't think we're looking for consultants; we're looking for partners. ... We want to make sure we work closely with Children's Cove," said Bernier.

The Enough Abuse Campaign was developed in Massachusetts nearly a decade ago in an effort to move toward results-based action, said Bernier.

"We decided there was no plan in Massachusetts to prevent child sexual abuse, and there was a big gap," Bernier said.

The council will hold a follow up meeting that will take place the first week of April.

Child Pornographers in Mass. not penalized enough, study shows

2012-02-15T12:06:00.000-05:00

Child Pornographers in Mass. not penalized enough, study shows
Written by Amelia Pak-Harvey
February 15, 2012

Recent rulings of child pornography cases in Massachusetts have given offenders a lighter sentence than the U.S. Sentencing Commission has recommended, a pattern that shadows other rulings nationwide.

The median decrease from the commission’s recommended minimum sentencing was 46.7 percent from Oct. 2010 to Sep. 2011 in substantial assistance departure cases, according to U.S. Sentencing Commission data.

Recent child pornography cases in Massachusetts are evidence of such statistics.

In January, Judge Patti B. Saris sentenced a Dedham man to 21 months in prison for possessing child pornography – 42 months less than the punishment issued in the commission guidelines, according to The Boston Globe.

Two years prior, Judge Michael A. Ponsor sentenced a Springfield man to four years of probation and community confinement for possessing child pornography, according to a U.S. Attorney press release. The minimum suggested punishment is six to eight years in prison, according to The Globe.

But a judge in Pennsylvania recently sentenced a tenth-grade teacher who possessed and distributed child pornography to 19 years and seven months in prison, a punishment within the commission’s guidelines and just five months less than the maximum penalty.

The debate arises amidst recent child pornography cases in the Boston area – former elementary teacher David Ettlinger, 34, from Brighton, faces charges of possession of child pornography and now for assault.

Last Thursday, a 54-year-old management company employee was arraigned and charged with possessing child pornography after his employers found material on his work computer.

Although the commission establishes guidelines of punishment for federal crimes, Supreme Court rulings have declared that judges do not have to follow the commission’s suggestions when sentencing offenders.

The commission holds a public hearing on child pornography crimes today in D.C. The hearing will include discussions on technology, sex offender treatment and perspectives from the law, victims and courts.

Jetta Bernier, the executive director of Massachusetts Citizens for Children, said people are trying to research if people who view child pornography go on to molest children, or if pornography deters people from actually going out and risking being caught with a child.

However, she said that just by viewing the material, people are creating a market for that material and kids somewhere are being sexually abused.

One of the fundamental problems of child porn is that children are being sexually exploited in order to produce the material, she said.

“We need to work to prevent child sexual abuse from happening in the first place,” Bernier said.

Some local laws, she said, have expelled offenders from communities, which means such offenders have no place to live.

“We find them clustering in trailer parks, for example, because it’s cheap to live there and because trailer parks tend to be out of the way,” Bernier said. “When you have that happen you have a concentration of those who are sexual offenders and that can be really high risk area for any child to live or visit in.”

Bernier said people need to listen to the judges and understand why they are not following the guidelines.

“I think at this point we have to really listen to what these judges are saying,” Bernier said, “and to allow the legal system essentially to make an informed decision about what the right penalty should be.”

"Enough Abuse" Campaign Focuses on Adults Likely to Offend

2012-02-06T12:04:00.000-05:00

"Enough Abuse" Campaign Focuses on Adults Likely to Offend
February 6, 2012
Contributor: Karen Brown
Listen here: http://nepr.net/news/enough-abuse-campaign-focuses-adults-likely-offend

Child advocates in Springfield are launching a coalition to identify and stop child sexual abuse – starting off by trainings at community agencies.

For many years, those trying to end child sexual abuse focused primarily on the children themselves – teaching them to recognize good versus bad touching, for instance, or to stay away from strangers. But a statewide campaign called “Enough Abuse” wants to shift the focus to identifying the adults most likely to commit abuse. Campaign trainer Jetta Bernier was in Springfield recently – at the invitation of the family advocacy center at Baystate medical center.

“People are thinking, if someone is abusive, i could figure out who they are. They would look funny, they'd speak funny, they would be weird, we'd all get a funny feeling. The fact that has been proven again and again is that those who abuse children are often very socially adept, they're very nice, they build this sense around them they are trustworthy. Everyone loves them. They do that purposefully bcecause they want cover. “

She was teaching these tips to a roomful of representatives from local youth-oriented agencies – from head start to the Springfield Housing Authority -- who spent several days poring over abuse case studies.

“The movie of the week version of rape is not what we're talking about here,” says Baystate pediatrician Stephen Boos, co-director of the family advocacy center.

“This is something that evolved over time. There's opportunities that need to be created and sought, victims need to be tested whether the abuser is going to get away with it. And then things progress slowly. So if you identify signs early, you can possible prevent the first abuse event.”

Boos says he evaluates two to three hundred suspected cases of child sexual abuse every year – about half of which are verified. He says high-profile abuse cases have brought attention to the problem of child sex abuse – including claims against jerry Sandusky at Penn state and the local trial of an Easthampton arts administrator accused of statutory rape.

“People start talking about it. But the other thing that happens is that pp look at the legal process as some arbiter of truth, and the fact is, most sexual abusers are not prosecuted, and many who are prosecuted are not convicted.”

Boos says he’s assembled a group of community members – from the district attorney’s office to the school system – to launch the “Enough Abuse Springfield” campaign. He’s hoping they’ll learn not only to identify predators, but also to recognize the signs that abuse has already occurred.

“If you are a professional -- say a pediatrician or teacher or school counselor -- and you're dealing with a kid who's acting out….. You might be the person who surprising then finds out the child is abused. and prevents the next abuse.”

Those who attended the recent training have promised in turn to train others back at their agencies in how to identify – and head off – sexual abuse.

2012-02-06T11:52:00.000-05:00

Program Trains Adults to Stop Sexual Abuse of Children
February 6, 2012
Paul Tuthill
Springfield, MA (WAMC)

Listen here: http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/wamc/news.newsmain/article/0/0/1901918/WAMC.New.England.News/Program.Trains.Adults..To.Stop.Sexual.Abuse..Of.Children

Sexual abuse of children is disturbingly prevelant according to experts. Dr. Stephen Boos, medical director of the Family Advocacy Center at Baystate Childrens Hospital in Springfield, says surveys have found 1 in 4 women and 1 in six men were sexually abused as children, but 80 percent never reported it.

"We have been talking about sexual abuse prevention for a long time in this country but the focus has been on training children to protect themselves: 'just say no,' or 'tell somebody.' That's a heavy burden to lay on a child, and when they fail, that just compounds the guilt and keeps them quiet. It's time for the adults to stand up and say 'We're the adults, it is our responsibility to make our society safe for these children."

Getting more adults trained to recognize the consequences of child sex abuse from a public health perspective, how to identifty abusers, and keep children out of potentially risky situations is the goal of the "Enough Abuse" campaign. The initiative involves training community leaders, particularly people who work for, or volunteer with, youth service organizations. These trainers are then expected to work at the grassroots with parents and other adults who have regular contact with children.

Dr. Boos says child sexual abuse can be prevented, but it takes diligence:

"If you are running a youth serving agency you need to set up your agency to look for this problem. You need to screen your employees, you need to set up your physical plan so that the environment is safe, you need to kind of have a buddy system so that everyone is looking at everyone, and you need to train your people so that they know that if you're the assistant coach your watching the coach, if you're the coach you're watching the assistant coach. Everyone is watching out for the children, the children come number one and protecting the program and the employees is not the first agenda, I think that's the lesson of Penn State."

Massachusetts Citizens for Children, the nation's oldest state-wide child advocacy organization, is leading the state-wide initiative to train more adults to prevent, recognize, and stop child sexual abuse. The effort is supported by a 1.2 million dollar grant from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and is backed by dozens of community organizations. According to Eva Montibello communications director for the Enough Abuse Campaign:

"These are, not only people, but they're also community organizations that are taking a stand and fully committed to saying, 'you know what, enough child sexual abuse in our community.' You know, we want to do something to actively and proactively go out into the community and train as many people as we can in all different areas to prevent child sexual abuse."

Greater Springfield is the fourth area of the state to be introduced to the campaign. The pre-school program, Square One, is one of the campaign's local supporters. The organization's vice president of family services, Joni Beck Brewer, is hopeful for its success:

"We do take a lot of precautions about making sure that the kids are safe when they're in our care, and then concerns often will come up about whether the child is safe in their home and in their communities - so it really has to be a multi-pronged approach, you cant just look at parents or teachers, we really need the whole community to step up and really be aware of this - and that's what we're hoping to do here.

Other organizations supporting the child sexual abuse prevention campaign include Head Start, the Ms. Foundation, and the Springfield Housing Authority.

Reporting from WAMC's pioneer valley news bureau on the campus of Western New England University, I'm Paul Tuthill.

2012-02-02T10:43:00.000-05:00

After Filing Lawsuit, Alleged Sex Abuse Victim Speaks Out

Rosanne Sliney hopes to inspire sexual abuse victims to come forward.

By Ryan Grannan-Doll
Published in the Waltham Patch

February 2, 2012

After filing a lawsuit in Middlesex Superior Court on Jan. 30, a Burlington woman held a press conference on Feb. 1, speaking out against her uncle, a Waltham businessman she says sexually assaulted her between 1968 and 1977.

Rosanne Sliney, 48, says her uncle, Domenic Previte Jr., of Waltham, sexually assaulted and raped her hundreds of times, starting when she was five.

The lawsuit details the alleged abuse, which Sliney says continued until 1977, when she was 14. Sliney, who grew up in Waltham, also claimed in the lawsuit that Previte forced her to have sex with other men.

“Domenic, you took away my childhood, my adolescence. I have struggled my whole life,” Sliney said during Wednesday's press conference.

Sliney is asking for an undisclosed amount of financial compensation for her pain and suffering, as well as attorney’s fees.

The alleged abuse caused Sliney severe mental distress, she said, which resulted in multiple hospital stays starting when she was 24.

Previte, who could not be reached for comment following the press conference, owned a Cambridge car wash where some of the abuse is alleged to have occurred, according to Sliney’s attorney, Carmen Durso.

Other incidents also occurred at the former Maverick nightclub in North Reading in the 1970s, at Previte’s Waltham home (a different address then where he lives now) and the Showcase Cinemas in Woburn, according to the lawsuit.

Sliney said Wednesday she was speaking out to help inspire other victims of sexual abuse to come forward, and to call on state lawmakers to eliminate a statute of limitations on alleged victims reporting abuse and filing criminal charges and civil lawsuits. Sliney also called for lawmakers to eliminate the statute of limitations for filing a civil lawsuit.

“There should be no time limit, we should be able to obtain justice in our own time and out our own pace,” Sliney said, noting that alleged victims can be reluctant to file a lawsuit or charges at first because they are focused on recovery.

Durso said that in this case, the statute of limitations for criminal charges has expired, thus preventing Sliney from filing charges against Previte. However, the law allows for filing of this particular civil lawsuit because it states that a lawsuit can be filed up to three years from the point at which a victim understands they have been abused, according to Durso. In this case, Sliney's recent recollections of abuse, Durso said, allows the suit to be filed. Durso, however, acknowledged, the suit would be a "difficult."

SLINEY RECALLS ALLEGED ABUSE

Sliney, now 48, began recalling the abuse when she was in her early 20s, she said, and never told anyone about it while it was occurring.

Sliney, a former teacher and coach, said she had planned to tell her mother about the abuse during a meeting with a therapist in 1988, but her mother unexpectedly died that day before Sliney could tell her.

Recently, Sliney started recalling other memories of abuse in which she was forced to have sex with other men, she said, at the former Maverick nightclub in at the intersection of Main and Park streets in North Reading. She was 13 or 14 years old at the time, she said.

“They were pretty horrific and horrible,” Sliney said of the recent memories.

A FAMILY’S REACTION

The alleged abuse took a severe toll on the family, and Sliney said she no longer speaks with her aunts. Sliney said she and her brother and sister decided she should inform her aunts of the abuse, which elicited an unexpected response.

“The first thing they said was, 'We knew,' Sliney said. “They just didn’t want to believe it."

However, her aunts pledged to support Sliney and suggested she confront Previte. Their sentiments soon changed.

“Over time, it became clear to me that this family’s main concern was to keep me quiet and not support me,” Sliney said.

Sliney had a stern message for anybody involved in covering up the alleged abuse.

“To all the adults involved, shame on you for covering this up. Today, I can say that I am strong enough to speak out. I have suffered enough and I’m not hiding anymore,” Sliney said.

CONFRONTING PREVITE

Sliney, despite the suffering she sustained, confronted Previte more than two decades ago during a meeting at one of his businesses, she said.

“We sat in silence, it felt like a lifetime. Finally, we sat down… and I just looked at him and I said, 'I need to talk you about what happened sexually.' That’s when he put his head down and said ‘I never thought this would come back to me,’” Sliney said.

As a result of the meeting, Previte wrote a letter to Sliney in 1988 in which he confessed to sexually abusing her. In the letter, Previte said he was experiencing a rough time in his life when he abused her and that, 'temptation was mounting. My love for [you] degenerated into something I almost had no control over. I had confused my love for you with sex.'"

PREVITE’S PROMISE

In March 1991, Sliney signed a “Release and Settlement” agreement, in exchange for $26,500 and a promise that her medical expenses would be paid for the rest of her life, according to Durso. Sliney, however, claims her tenuous mental state left her unable to understand what she was signing, according to the lawsuit. During the press conference, Sliney said she has no memory of signing the agreement.

She also claims she felt pressured by her family to forgive Previte, another reason she signed the document, according to the lawsuit. She was also told the document was merely a formality, according to the lawsuit.

Previte, however, did pay her the $26,000, which Sliney said she used to pay off college loans. Previte, however, eventually stopped other payments, claiming making them brought back painful memories of the abuse he allegedly inflicted on Sliney, according to Durso. As a result, Sliney still has outstanding medical bills, according to the lawsuit.

2012-02-02T10:35:00.000-05:00

Professionals Learn How to Prevent Child Sex Abuse
By Ray Hershel - email
February 2nd, 2012

HOLYOKE, Mass. (WGGB)– The recent allegations of child sex abuse at Penn State by a former assistant football coach have brought the issue front and center.

On Thursday, a group of professionals was learning to how prevent this kind of abusive behavior.

It is called the silent epidemic, child sexual abuse.

The Baystate Health Education Center in Holyoke hosted a program to address child sex abuse.

Among the participants was Dr. Stephen Boos, Medical Director of the Family Advocacy Center at Baystate Children’s Hospital,” I’ve seen 200 to 300 kids a year, for every kid I see there’s another three out there who never come forward, so this is a real secret problems,” says Dr. Boos.

Community volunteers are training as trainers themselves in a campaign called “Enough Abuse.”

It is designed to recognize, stop and prevent child sexual abuse according to Eva Montibello, Communications Manager for the Enough Abuse Campaign,” The thing about child sex abuse is that it can be prevented, there takes a certain amount of diligence, but to have that diligence you really need to be educated, and that’s what these people are learning,” says Montibello.

The second part of the curriculum is learning how to identifiy abusers as well as how to identify children who have been abused.

Adults for example should look for changes in behavior among children, and if a child tells you something, listen, says Dr. Boos, ” Children generally do not lie about this topic, listen carefully to what they say, make sure you’re listening to what they say, not what you’re afraid of, and then you’ll have to explore it further, and when it’s time to explore it further, I would urge anyone to involve a professional,” says Dr. Boos.

Experts like Dr. Stephen Boos say the focus should always remain on the children and their needs first,” Everyone is watching out for the children, the children come number one, and protecting the program and employee is not the first agenda, I think that’s the lesson of Penn State,” says Dr. Boos.

The “Enough Abuse” campaign is part of a statewide initiative developed with the support of the Massachusetts Citizens for Children and is supported by health professionals like Baystate Children’s Hospital.

2012-02-01T10:32:00.000-05:00

Burlington Woman Sues Uncle, 10 Others For Past Sex Abuse

February 1, 2012 4:41 PM

WBZ NewsRadio 1030′s Bernice Corpuz reports:

[transcript]
Forty-eight year old Rosanne Sliney says her uncle and godfather Domenic Previte, Jr. of Waltham raped and sexually assaulted her hundreds of times when she was between five and fourteen years old but she kept it all a secret:
"I never talked about it in my family,"
Until she was in her twenties when she broke down and told relatives:
"They all acknowledged and understood the truth of what I had remembered."
But she says her family pressured her to forgive Previte, who agreed to pay for her medical and therapy bills. Sliney's attorney Carmen Durso says Previte has stopped providing financial assistance.
"Because every time he wrote a check it just brought back [for Rosanne] the painful memories of what had happened."
Sliney is seeking damages for her pain and suffering.
"I've suffered enough and I'm not hiding any more."
In the financial district, Bernice Corpuz, WBZ NewsRadio 1030.

After Penn State, states reconsider sex abuse laws

2012-01-25T10:14:00.000-05:00

After Penn State, states reconsider sex abuse laws

January 25, 2012By: Pat Eaton-Robb, Associated Press
Published in The Boston Globe

The child sexual abuse scandal at Penn State University has prompted state lawmakers across the nation to take another look at laws designed to protect children and punish child predators.

Thirty-eight legislatures are back in session this month, most for the first time since retired assistant Penn State football coach Jerry Sandusky was charged in November with child sex abuse and two school officials were charged with failing to properly report abuse allegations. At least 12 states are considering mandatory reporting legislation this year, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, and more are expected to craft bills as their sessions get into full swing.

In addition to measures to improve the reporting of suspected child sex abuse, bills have been drafted across the country that would increase or even eliminate the statutes of limitations for bringing criminal or civil cases against alleged abusers.

“The alleged incidents at Penn State I think awakened something in our national consciousness about protecting our kids,’’ said Mike Feuer, a California assemblyman and chairman of that legislature’s Judiciary Committee.

Feuer, a Los Angeles Democrat, is sponsoring a bill that would have employees at universities added to the list of mandated reporters in his state, which already includes teachers, doctors and others.

“If we were to fail to pass a bill like the one I have introduced in California only to have subsequent abuse occur, we will look back on this moment as a wasted opportunity to protect a child who will never get that moment back,’’ he said.

Forty-eight states currently require at least some professionals to immediately report knowledge or suspicion of child sexual abuse to some authority, according to the NCSL. Eighteen of those states require every adult to be a mandated reporter.

New Jersey is another state looking to expand its mandated reporter law, and is also considering legislation that would remove a two-year time limit for bringing civil lawsuits against alleged abusers.

Assemblyman Peter J. Barnes III, D-Middlesex, the chairman of his chamber’s Judiciary Committee, said he and others have been trying to get the legislation passed for years. He said now seems to be the perfect time.

“I think Penn State will be the watershed moment,’’ he said. “Many states are going to be prompted to strengthen not only their criminal laws, but their civil laws as well, which is what we’re doing.’’

States, including Pennsylvania, are setting up task forces or holding informational public hearings in an attempt to draft comprehensive legislative packages that might address several concerns.

Connecticut lawmakers held a hearing this week as mourners gathered at Penn State for a series of public memorial events honoring former football coach Joe Paterno, who died Sunday of lung cancer. Penn State’s board of trustees fired Paterno after he was criticized over his handling of the child sex abuse allegations against Sandusky.

As the Connecticut legislature considers how to move forward, it will consider mandated reporting, setting standards for youth camps and programs at the state’s public college, said state Rep. Diana Urban, co-chairwoman of the Select Committee on Children.

She said the key is making sure the proper authorities have all the information they need.

“We don’t want information to go awry and to have children exposed to situations that will impact them for the rest of their lives.’’

Sandusky, 67, is accused of sexually abusing 10 boys over a 15-year period. He and the two school officials maintain their innocence.

Advocates for abuse victims are pushing hard for legislation to be passed this year, recognizing that the Penn State scandal presents an opportunity to cut through the government’s red tape.

“It is a mobilization time. But just as important, it is a public information time,’’ said Jim Hmurovich, chief executive of Prevent Child Abuse America. “We need to get the message out that sex offender registries and treatment services for victims and mandatory reporting requirements are important, but they’re not the whole picture. Let’s think about way up the river so the child never gets hurt in the first place.’’

Jetta Bernier agrees. A national child-abuse expert who runs Massachusetts Citizens for Children, she said the lessons learned from the recent scandal involving the Catholic church is that it doesn’t help to have stiff penalties, if the warning signs of abuse are ignored or go unnoticed. She supports legislation like a bill being considered in West Virginia that would spend $1.1 million in public funds to increase child-abuse education and prevention efforts.

“’’It’s good to begin strengthening reporting requirements, but if people don’t know what to look for, the reporting just isn’t going to cut it,’’ she said. “People need to know how to identify and how to prevent. That’s a piece that I have found missing in a lot of these attempts to push legislation forward.’’

2012-01-13T16:30:00.000-05:00

Can do: Lawmakers urged to prevent child abuse

OP EDITORIAL appearing in The Charleston Gazette

Dawn Miller – Editor

January 13, 2012

When the news broke that children had been sexually abused and assaulted fordecades under the noses of powerful people at PennState University,it wasn't really a surprise to Jetta Bernier and her Boston colleagues.

It was 10 years ago this month that the public first learned of sexual abuseof children by priests in the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston. The abuse spanneddecades and eventually led to resignations and imprisonment of those who wereguilty or who had ignored it.

If Children's Hospital of Boston let prominent pediatrician Melvin Levinepractice for years despite sexual abuse complaints, or if a staff member at aCape Cod camp was allowed to abuse children summer after summer, why besurprised at the next example, Bernier asked West Virginia legislators and childadvocates while in town this week.

"It tells us that institutions sometimes make choices to protect theirreputations, to protect their key leaders, or to protect their financialassets, and those decisions are made on the backs of children," Berniersaid.
She directs the Enough AbuseCampaign, a project MassachusettsCitizens for Children helped develop after the Catholic priest scandal. TheU.S. Centers for Disease Control put out a request for proposals for how adultscould prevent child sexual abuse, the first request of its kind by the CDC.

The Bostongroup got $200,000 a year for five years. They knew they couldn't cure sexualabuse in five years, Bernier said, so they concentrated on building local andstate organizations that would continue to work after the grant money ran out.

They surveyed adults in their region and learned:

Half the people said they would participate in trainings to learn how toprevent child sexual abuse.
Two-thirds of the people already knew that a child was more likely tosuffer sexual abuse from someone they knew than from a stranger.
70 percent believed adults and communities, not children, are mostresponsible for preventing sexual abuse of children. That number later rose to93 percent.

They pulled together public and private groups and people from all kinds ofprofessions. They developed accurate and clear training materials, anddiscovered they needed different curricula for different audiences.
They teach parents how to recognize and respond to various situations, butthey will also coach any employer, youth service agency, school or otherorganization. They help groups assess policies and even to evaluate theirphysical spaces for safety.

Bernier spoke in Charlestonthis week at the invitation of Prevent Child Abuse West Virginia, a groupurging the Legislature to invest $1 million to prevent child abuse and neglectof all kinds across the state.
As you have read in the Charleston Gazette many times in many forms, most ofWest Virginia'smoney available to deal with child abuse comes from the feds, and that systemnotoriously favors costly out-of-home care of children after abuse hasoccurred, almost to the exclusion of anything else.

A better way is to prevent child abuse from happening in the first place, tohelp parents who are able to be the kind of parents they want to be, to keepfamilies together when possible. It's better for children, who show it inschool and in their own health and in adulthood. It's better for families andcommunities, and it's better for the collective pocketbook.

The Massachusettseffort did outlive its federal grant. The three pilots are still going strong,and additional towns and communities have also organized. Last spring, withfunding from the Ms. Foundation and Prevent Child Abuse

America

, New Jerseylaunched the program, and Marylandwill do so later this month.
"West Virginiais considering embracing this effort," Bernier said.

After a recent training for parents in a low-income community, a child toldher mom about a sexual abuse attempt by an employee in the large apartmentbuilding where they live. The mom and other adults knew what to do. The man nowfaces 40 counts of abuse involving other people who have come forward, and nolonger has access to young people.

"That is prevention in action," Bernier said.

*Article with corrections

Child-on-Child Sex Abuse Poses Complex Challenges

2012-01-07T16:17:00.000-05:00

Child-on-Child Sex Abuse Poses Complex Challenges

By DAVID CRARY AP National Writer

January 7, 2012

Recent high-profile cases of child sex abuse have roused national revulsion against the adults who perpetrated them. Rarely mentioned is the sobering statistic that more than one-third of the sexual abuse of America's children is committed by other minors.

For many of the therapists and attorneys who deal with them, these juvenile offenders pose a profoundly complicated challenge for the child-protection and criminal justice systems. It's a diverse group that defies stereotypes, encompassing a minority of youths who represent a threat of long-term danger to others and a majority who are responsive to treatment and unlikely to reoffend.

"There's a long continuum, from kids who will never do it again to a kid who probably will be an adult rapist/pedophile," said Steve Bengis, executive director of the New England Adolescent Research Institute in Holyoke, Mass. "It's not a 'one size fits all' yet we end out with public policy that's geared toward the worst 5 percent."

That public policy includes a federal law, the Adam Walsh Act, with a requirement that states include certain juvenile offenders as young as 14 on their sex-offender registries. Many professionals who deal with young offenders object to the requirement, saying it can wreak lifelong harm on adolescents who might otherwise get back on the track toward law-abiding, productive lives.

Some states have balked at complying with the juvenile registration requirement, even at the price of losing some federal criminal-justice funding. Other states have provisions tougher than the federal act, subjecting children younger than 14 to the possibility of 25-year or lifetime listings on publicly accessible registries that include photos of the offenders.

Delaware recently had a 9-year-old child on its registry. Several other states have registered 12- and 13-year-olds.

"We're bringing down a very heavy hammer on the head of kids, with significant life-altering consequences," said Marsha Levick, deputy director and chief counsel of the Juvenile Law Center in Philadelphia. "It's a knee-jerk reaction that's foolhardy beyond imagination."

Nicole Pittman, a Human Rights Watch researcher, has been analyzing the impact of registration on the children who get listed, and says states should halt the practice. But she knows it's a longshot quest.

"Most legislators do not believe children should be on the registry — yet it's the kiss of death for most politicians to vote against any sex offender law," she said.

Basic data about child-on-child sex abuse is detailed in an authoritative, Justice Department-sponsored analysis of crime data from 29 states. Conducted by three prominent researchers, the 2009 analysis found that juveniles accounted for 35.6 percent of the people identified by police as having committed sex offenses against minors.

Of these young offenders, 93 percent were male, and the peak ages for offending were 12 through 14, the researchers found. Of the victims, 59 percent were younger than 12 and 75 percent were female.

The report referred to a popular misconception that juvenile sex offenders are likely to reoffend, and said numerous studies over the years have shown the opposite — that 85 to 95 percent of offending youth are never again arrested for sex crimes.

University of Oklahoma pediatrics professor Mark Chaffin, a co-author of the 2009 report, says efforts to deal constructively with juvenile sex offenders are complicated by the tendency of some legislators and others to lump them together with adult sexual predators.

"That used to be the message — that we should apply the template from what we know about adult pedophilia," Chaffin said. "Now that the data has shown most of those assumptions were wrong, it's difficult to undo those messages that people in the advocacy and treatment fields were putting out a generation ago."

Experts say the young offenders differ from adult sex offenders not only in their lower recidivism rates, but in the diversity of their motives and abusive behavior.

While some youths commit violent, premeditated acts of sexual assault and rape, others get in trouble for behavior arising from curiosity, naivete, peer pressure, momentary irresponsibility, misinterpretation of what they believed was mutual interest, and a host of other reasons. Some cases involve sibling incest; sometimes the offenders have autism or other developmental disorders that lessen their ability to self-police inappropriate conduct.

"There needs to be a highly discriminative response system," said sociologist David Finkelhor, director of the University of New Hampshire's Crimes Against Children Research Center. "It needs to differentiate between the kids we should stigmatize as little as possible, who are probably going to be fine with some kind of education, and others who need a lot of intervention, including maybe incarceration, because they pose a tremendous risk."

"We run a big risk if we get it wrong," he added. "We fail to protect the public on one hand, or we ruin the lives of young people who might otherwise be headed in a healthy direction."

In most cases of child-on-child sex abuse, the public never hears about it. Experts say many incidents are never reported in the first place, due to the shame or embarrassment of victims and their parents, and most of the cases that are reported are handled confidentially through the juvenile justice system.

An exception was the highly publicized case of Gabriel Myers, a 7-year-old foster child in Florida who hanged himself in 2009. Post-mortem investigations determined that he had been a victim of sex abuse perpetrated by an older boy, had touched some of his classmates in sexually inappropriate ways, and was on several powerful psychotropic medications.

In response to his death, Florida formed a task force which concluded that Gabriel's problems with sex abuse were not addressed effectively by the long chain of adults who dealt with him. The task force recommended upgraded training about child-on-child sex abuse and development of an alert system to better monitor children with sexual behavior issues.

"With Gabriel Myers, the big thing was lack of training," said Robert Edelman, who has worked with many abused children as a mental health counselor in Gainesville, Fla. He said investigators, counselors and case managers involved with child-on-child sex cases should be required to get special certification.

The ripple effects of such abuse were evident in another case that Edelman became engaged in, involving a man now in his 20s who was molested at age 8 by an older boy, and later — at 15 — was charged with molesting his half-sister.
During a counseling session after that arrest, Edelman noticed slashes on the youth's arm — he'd tried to kill himself out of remorse for abusing the sister.

In his early 20s, the man was arrested for a domestic violence incident involving his wife, Edelman said, and at one stage faced the possibility of having his children removed from the home because he'd been labeled a juvenile sex offender.

"Something that happened to him when he was 8 was still being carried around 15 years later," Edelman said.
Veronique Valliere, a psychologist with a counseling practice in Fogelsville, Pa., has worked with numerous youths implicated in sex offenses, ranging from those she deemed highly unlikely to reoffend to others who posed a clear long-term menace. One such case, she said, involved a youth who began molesting younger children when he was 12 or 13 and was showing signs of developing pedophilia.

"By 14, he was so sophisticated that he could sexually assault a child sitting next to him in church — or in the backseat of a car," Valliere said.

Despite extensive attempts to treat the young man, the abuse continued, and Valliere said he is now serving a 30-to-60-year prison sentence for child sex abuse he committed as a 22-year-old.

"He was a rare case," she said. "He had every opportunity to get better. We did everything we could do, but he just wasn't willing to manage himself."

Looking nationwide, experts differ as to whether sex abuse by juveniles is proliferating or abating.

The latest juvenile crime data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics indicates that arrests of juvenile sex offenders declined by about 25 percent from 2000 through 2009. That would mesh with a decline in child sex abuse committed by adults, as well as a decline in the overall juvenile crime rate.

But data from New York City, Florida and elsewhere indicates that the prevalence of child-on-child sex hasn't dropped noticeably.

In any case, forms of abuse evolve with the times as sexting becomes a common youth activity and easily accessible online pornography affects some children.

"There's a fear of technology — parents don't think they can control it," said Marsha Levick, who has been working with colleagues to dissuade prosecutors from criminalizing commonplace teen sexting activities.

For parents, it's often hard to discern warning signs about potentially dangerous sexual activity or to identify youths who might pose a threat to their own children.

"It would be less scary if we could come up with a stereotype ... so as a parent we could say, 'Stay away from this type of child,'" said Nancy Arnow of Safe Horizon, a New York-based victim services agency. "There is no typical youthful offender. They come from all backgrounds."

Safe Horizon serves adult victims of rape and sex trafficking, but Arnow said the child-on-child sex abuse cases are among the most difficult.

"We have to distinguish between sexualized behavior that might be pretty normal — experimenting, touching each other — versus molesting, subjecting another child to harm," she said. She recalled investigations of children as young as 7, and the arrest of an 8-year-old.

In New York City, sex offenders aged 7 through 15 usually end up in family court, where the main goal is rehabilitation, not punishment.

"We're supposed to consider needs of juveniles and the need for public safety, so it's balancing act," said Thea Davis, chief of the family court's Sex Crimes Prosecution Unit. Cases often end with plea bargaining and probation. The most severe outcome is an 18-month placement in a secure state-run facility for juvenile offenders.

The hardest cases, Davis said, are intra-family cases where a cousin or brother abuses a younger cousin or sibling.
"Immediately you have to separate the perpetrator from the victim and make sure the victim is safe," she said. "But you also have to think that in the long run you're dealing with a family, and you're not going to keep them separated forever."
Virginia White, a family counselor with Pittsburgh Action Against Rape, deals with young victims of sex abuse, including those targeted by siblings.

"The parents are in a tough place — they feel guilty a lot," she said. "And the victim is often torn, because the other sibling may be removed from home."

Ideally, parents as well as the offending child should be involved in treatment, according to Jay Deppeler, president of an agency called Edison Court in Doylestown, Pa., that runs a residential treatment program for adolescent male sex offenders.

However, Deppeler said stigma and fear of consequences probably deter some families from telling authorities about cases of intra-family abuse.

"The family may circle the wagons, and the abuse may persist," he said.

Another challenging type of abuse cases involves youths who are autistic.

Lawrence Sutton, a psychologist from Pittsburgh, recently assessed 37 youths in a residential sex-offender unit and found that 60 percent were autistic. He said these youths, many of them past victims of sexual abuse, can be treated successfully if the reasons for their behavior problems are understood.

Many don't know who to form relationships, "how to make friends," Sutton said. "Most of them have done to others what was done to them at some point."

Deppeler recalled one autistic young man who came through Edison Court as an outpatient. He had committed a sex offense as a 14-year-old and later — after turning 18 — committed a property-related offense that sent him to the adult criminal justice system. As a result, the young man became obligated to apprise prospective employers of his full record, including the juvenile sex offense — making him "virtually unemployable."

"Long term, I fear his prospects are quite bleak," Deppeler said. "What do we end up doing with a guy like that?"

2011-11-16T14:46:00.001-05:00

An Open Letter to Massachusetts Citizens About the Penn State Scandal and How We Can Prevent Child Sexual Abuse in Our State

November 14, 2011

While the Penn State child sex abuse scandal and cover-up grab national attention, the fact is that cases of child sexual abuse continue to be exposed with unrelenting regularity in every state and community across our country. In Massachusetts alone just in the past six months, we have learned about the decades-long sexual abuse of boys treated by renowned pediatrician Dr. Melvin Levin of Children's Hospital, the revealed boyhood sexual abuse of Senator Scott Brown by a counselor at a Cape Cod summer camp, the sexual abuse of young female tennis players by former Massachusetts coach and International Tennis Hall of Famer Bob Hewitt. Many more current incidents of child sexual abuse involving less well-known abusers appear weekly in local newspapers all across our state.

Predictably, the Sandusky/Paterno case has prompted the media to focus on who knew what and when. Legislators rush to file bills to strengthen reporting requirements, the alleged abuser is arrested and charged, and we all express sorry for the children who have been violated and for their families who are distressed beyond what we can even imagine.

But the truth is that these after-the-fact responses are insufficient to address what the American Medical Association has labeled "…a silent, violent epidemic." It's time to support efforts aimed at preventing child sexual abuse from happening in the first place. This is what Massachusetts Citizens for Children (MCC), lead agency for the Enough Abuse Campaign, has been working to do since the Campaign was launched in 2002.

A public opinion poll conducted in 2007 by the Campaign documented that:

80% of citizens believe child sexual abuse is a serious problem in our state
75% said they believe it is preventable
64% said they would be willing to participate in local community trainings about child sexual abuse and how they can prevent it – up from 48% in a poll conducted four years earlier

Clearly, citizens like you are critical partners in getting the word out that child sexual abuse can be prevented and that in Massachusetts, through the Enough Abuse Campaign, we have the tools and the tested strategies to get the job done.

As a parent, grandparent, or concerned citizen, we are asking you to:

Educate yourself about the real facts of child sexual abuse so that you can be an informed advocate for your children and all the children in your family and community.
Get involved with the Enough Abuse Campaign, a Massachusetts effort that has been recognized nationally as an effective model to mobilize communities and educate parents, youth, and a range of professionals and other adults about child sexual abuse and how to prevent it.
Support the Campaign with your dollars so we can achieve our goal: By 2015 every city and town in Massachusetts will be actively engaged in learning about child sexual abuse and preventing it.

Here are the details.

The Enough Abuse Campaign is overseen by the Massachusetts Child Sexual Abuse Prevention Partnership, a collaboration of twenty statewide public agencies and private organizations. The Campaign was formed in 2002 under a 5-year grant from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, our nation's leading public health agency. The Campaign is now operating in Greater Gloucester, Newton/Waltham, Orange/Athol area, Greater Lowell, Springfield, and in western rural counties. Efforts are currently underway to expand the Campaign to Cape Cod and other communities.

The Campaign's work has caused the CDC to call Massachusetts "one of the first states in the nation to lead a trailblazing effort to prevent child sexual abuse…." The Ms. Foundation for Women has called the Campaign "an effort that breaks the mold on child sexual abuse in many ways. Its emphasis on community collaboration truly sets it apart from previous efforts.” The Campaign was selected earlier this year by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services as one of 12 exemplary projects in the country working to end child maltreatment.

While the Campaign mobilizes communities and trains their leaders to deliver free in-person community workshops and presentations, a new effort has been launched to educate concerned citizens in the privacy of their own homes and offices. By "Joining the Movement" on the Campaign's homepage, members receive by email our "10 Conversations" series; a new short educational piece is sent twice each month for five months filled with critical information every concerned adult should know and can use to prevent sexual abuse. Topics include:

What is Child Sexual Abuse? Touching and Non-Touching Offenses
Who are the Abusers? How Can We Identify Them?
Grooming Tactics used by Sexual Abusers
Behavior and Physical Signs that Might Indicate Child Sexual Abuse
Sexual Behaviors of Children: Typical or Problematic?
Responding to Sexual Behaviors of Children: Building Skills to Respond Appropriately
Talk to Your Children: It's Easy if You Begin Early and Communicate Often
Impact of Child Sexual Abuse on Children
Keeping Children Safe on the Internet
The Public's Opinion on Child Sexual Abuse

The series is followed with regular email updates about the latest information in the field, activities of Campaign communities, special events and trainings, and profiles on outstanding prevention advocates.

So please take these actions today. Go to www.enoughabuse.org and view our brief video, "a silent epidemic." (Many have called it "powerful", "compelling", "a real eye opener.") Then be sure to "Join the Movement" on the homepage so you can begin immediately receiving our "10 Conversations" series online. Tell family members, friends and colleagues about how they, too, can get educated and encourage them to join.

Make an online contribution now to fund our cutting-edge work. Currently, the Campaign is funded solely by a $75,000 grant from the national Ms. Foundation for Women. If we could double or triple that amount, we could reach more communities and youth-serving organizations with our trainings sooner.

Let's protect Massachusetts children and our communities from a tragedy like the Penn State scandal. We can do it. We have already begun. Are you with us? Our children are waiting…

Sincerely,

Jetta Bernier,

MCC Executive Director
For the Enough Abuse Campaign

The Key is to Pour Resources into Preventing These Crimes

2011-09-14T11:56:00.000-04:00

The Boston Globe
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR | LIVING AMONG SEX OFFENDERS

The Key is to Pour Resources into Preventing These Crimes
September 04, 2011
IN HIS column “Follow evidence, not gut feeling, on sex offenders’’ (Op-ed, Aug. 28), Gareth Cook writes, “The question we must answer is, what do we want for these people, after they have been released?’’ Given that of every 100 sex abusers, 70 percent or more are never reported; of those who are, only two-thirds face criminal charges, and less than 15 percent of those are convicted and serve prison time, the better question is: What can we do to prevent these crimes from ever happening?

The public has already responded. In a 2007 poll, 650 Massachusetts residents were asked how state dollars to address child sexual abuse should best be spent. Thirty-seven percent said that we should invest in educating adults and communities about how they can prevent child sexual abuse in the first place. Only 20 percent said funds should be used to publicize the sex offender registry.

The work of the private-sector Enough Abuse Campaign prompted officials at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to hail Massachusetts as “one of the first states in the nation to lead a trailblazing effort to prevent child sexual abuse by building a movement of concerned citizens, community by community.’’ Let’s use our resources on programs working to prevent child sexual abuse, not on public notification efforts that research has shown to increase recidivism and make our communities and children less safe.

Jetta Bernier
Executive director
Massachusetts Citizens for Children
Boston
The writer directs the Enough Abuse Campaign.

An answer to "Why don't kids just tell somebody?"

2011-05-31T13:02:00.000-04:00

by Jetta Bernier, Executive Director of Massachusetts Citizens for Children, lead agency for the Enough Abuse Campaign

Details of Donald's heart-wrenching story spill out in strings of voice messages he leaves on my office phone when he can't sleep from wondering how to prevent other kids from experiencing the trauma that ended his childhood long ago at age 7. His experience of rape by the man down the hall, the group home counselor and others, underscores how different reality is for those who believe we could fix this problem if only child victims would tell, and for those who as adult survivors of child rape understand why they often can't.

These differences are highlighted by the public's reaction to Senator Scott Brown's story of boyhood sexual abuse by a camp counselor. While praising him for the disclosure, many wonder why he didn't tell anyone at the time it happened or why he isn't naming his abuser now. In fact, the Boston Globe's April 23^rd editorial ("Brown needn't say more") rightly supported the position that he should be left to deal with the trauma in his own way and in his own time. It went further, however, to capture a prevailing but flawed belief: "Camps, schools, and other institutions that work with young people would be safer places if more sexual abuse victims felt emboldened to tell their stories."

This focus on after-the-fact reporting places the burden of responsibility for preventing future sexual abuse on the small shoulders of child victims rather than on those of adults and communities where it belongs. It ignores the powerful forces that cripple the ability of many child victims to tell. Since most sexual abuse is committed by individuals within the child's family or extended circle of trust, disclosing abuse can be a complicated and scary option. Threats, shame, and blame are powerful tools that cunning abusers use with finesse to exact silence from their victims. For many children, denying the impact and seriousness of the trauma, often into adulthood, can seem like the best way to survive it. Waiting for child victims to come forward, therefore, cannot be the fix. Without solid efforts to prevent sexual abuse in the first place, we will never achieve the goals of safety and protection which are the right of every child and so fundamental to their healthy development and psychological well-being, both as children and as adults.

When victims do tell, institutions often do not know how best to respond. The recent case involving sexual abuse of an 8-year old Brockton student allegedly by a school tutor is instructive. The main reaction of these school officials has been a rush to correct backlogs in their CORI system. Since up to 90 percent of child rapists are never caught, relying on CORI to pronounce school workers "clean" should not boost anyone's confidence about safety. Those who commit sexual crimes against children are experts at fitting in, and many excel at creating a caring, trusting, and even socially charming persona. This cover allows them to groom their targeted victims, as well as parents, colleagues and the community. Once an abuser makes it past the hiring process, the guard is down and the prevailing attitude is that everyone on the inside is a safe person - only those on the outside could pose a potential risk.

CORI would not have revealed the crimes against children that spanned the 30-year career of a Maynard school employee. Nor would CORI have red-flagged the recent alleged abuse of children by a summer camp employee on the Cape, or the alleged abuse of children across decades by a former Children's Hospital pediatrician.

Establishing policies, practices and trainings aimed at preventing child sexual abuse and not simply reporting it after it's discovered, therefore, must be the priority for schools and youth-serving organizations. Most aren't clear about how to proceed. A guided policy assessment process, prevention trainings and technical assistance are available through the Enough Abuse Campaign, whose work has prompted federal CDC officials to call Massachusetts "…one of the first states in the nation to lead a trailblazing effort to prevent child sexual abuse by building a movement of concerned citizens, community by community.”

We are all deeply grateful when victims of child rape find the strength to name their abusers. However, the ultimate responsibility and power to change the culture in our communities and institutions that has allowed abusers to act with impunity for so long, remains squarely with us – the adults.

A Movement to End Child Sexual Abuse, Community by Community

2011-01-06T10:07:00.000-05:00

New "Enough Abuse Campaign" Website Launched

This article was republished by MCC from the Ms. Foundation for Women's Blog, "Igniting Change". The new website can be found by going to www.enoughabuse.org

Bringing an end to child sexual abuse (CSA) is a cause all of us should be able to get behind. Since 2009, the Ms. Foundation and NoVo Foundation have been working to build a new movement to end CSA that looks beyond the criminalization of offenders (which experts agree will never fully solve the problem), and seeks instead to advance a comprehensive, community-based prevention model that encourages individuals and organizations to collaborate in unique ways to protect children from CSA before it occurs.

One exciting example of how groups are working to craft new solutions to the problem of CSA comes courtesy of a campaign and website recently launched by Ms. Foundation grantee partner Massachusetts Citizens for Children (MCC). Developed as part of the MA Child Sexual Abuse Prevention Partnership (of which MCC is the lead agency), the Enough Abuse Campaign and website are designed to provide clear, usable information that can help protect children from child sexual abuse -- and according to Monique Hoeflinger, Senior Program Officer at the Ms. Foundation for Women, theirs is an advocacy effort that breaks the mold on CSA in many ways.

In the first place, the campaign places its focuses on an adult responsibility model for preventing child sexual abuse -- which is a significant shift from the vast majority of prevention programs that focus on educating children. And the strategies the campaign offers focus on abuse closer to home, emphasizing that abuse happens most often among people who are known to and trusted by the child. This, too, is a departure from the dominant "stranger danger" message that that continues to inform policy and media representations of CSA. Additionally, Hoeflinger notes, the campaign's emphasis on community collaboration truly sets it apart from previous efforts. While the majority of campaigns tend to focus on training individuals in the service sector, the Enough Abuse model locates itself within communities, and goes beyond a limited set of trainings to foster the building of real and lasting relationships among diverse stakeholders. (At present, the campaign involves 26 different organizations.) “Massachusetts Citizens for Children is building a grassroots movement across the state of Massachusetts, community by community," Hoeflinger says. "They represent a unique collaboration that has shifted the conversation about child sexual abuse and provided new avenues for people to get involved.”

At EnoughAbuse.org, parents, professionals and others who have children in their lives can find the information they need about,

Behaviors that might indicate that an adult poses a risk to children;
How to differentiate between sexual behaviors of children that are "developmentally expected" and those that are inappropriate, coercive, abusive, or pose a risk to other children;
Physical and behavioral signs that might indicate a child is being abused;
Specific ways parents can talk to their children to keep them safe.

This new version of the website, which was made possible by a grant from the Ms. Foundation for Women, also offers visitors an opportunity to connect with communities involved with the campaign throughout Massachusetts; access advice and information for victims and abusers; sign a pledge to Join the Movement; and post their own testimonials about the importance of ending child sexual abuse.

For more information about MCC and the Enough Abuse Campaign, watch the following video, produced by the Ms. Foundation as part of the 'Voices From the Field' archive.

Letter sent to Amazon by Prevent Child Abuse America

2010-11-24T12:21:00.000-05:00

Recently, Amazon.com made available for purchase through their site a book for pedophiles that supported the sexual abuse of children. The public's outrage was quickly expressed and Amazon finally relented in eliminating the book from its selection list. Here is a letter sent to Amazon by Prevent Child Abuse America, urging the nation's largest online bookseller to take this action and explaining why. Prevent Child Abuse America is a partner of the Enough Abuse Campaign.

posted by Jetta Bernier, Executive Director, Massachusetts Citizens for Children

Mr. Jeffrey Bezos

Founder, Chairman and CEO

Amazon.com

1200 12th Ave, Suite 1200

Seattle, WA 98144

Dear Mr. Bezos,

I am writing today on behalf of the Board and staff of Prevent Child Abuse America (www.preventchildabuse.org), our 47 state chapters and our Healthy Families America network to express our deep and profound concern that the book "The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure: A Child-Lover's Code of Conduct" was recently made available on Amazon.com.

Our ability to grow and succeed as a country depends on how well we foster the health and well-being of our children. Healthy child development is the foundation of community development and our country’s overall, long term economic development.

This type of book, while obviously deplorable for its content, is more than just a disturbing piece of propaganda. It promotes the normalization of something that is destructive to children and something that negates the important investments we make in the healthy development of our children. The people who will act upon this book’s content, and the effect of their actions, can lead to significant issues in a wide array of areas including crime, substance abuse, mental health, lost productivity and even our competitiveness in the global economy. As Mission Readiness: Military Leaders for Kids (www.missionreadiness.org) has declared, denying children a healthy childhood can even compromise our national security because it impedes our ability to mobilize a stable, healthy and qualified military for generations to come.

While we appreciate your subsequent removal of the book from the site; the fact that it was even available through Amazon.com indicates an inconsistency in how the corporation approaches standards and guidelines. Many comments are restricted and filtered, but content such as this book was made available. We need to understand what corporate processes are in place to determine what is to be advertised and sold on Amazon.com and how could a culture even exist in the organization that does not continuously and without fail, ensure that all actions and products first do no harm to our nation’s children?

We would be happy to support you in creating criteria and strengthening the controls that should prohibit this type of decision from ever happening again.

Please have someone in your corporation contact me so we may work together to prevent the abuse and neglect of our nation’s children. My direct telephone number is (312) 663-3520, extension 810.

Sincerely,

James M. Hmurovich, President & CEO

Prevent Child Abuse America

Enough Abuse Blog

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Each Child Should be Cherished: An Interview with Massachusetts Citizens for Children

Advocates trying to start child abuse task force

Child Pornographers in Mass. not penalized enough, study shows

"Enough Abuse" Campaign Focuses on Adults Likely to Offend

After Filing Lawsuit, Alleged Sex Abuse Victim Speaks Out

Burlington Woman Sues Uncle, 10 Others For Past Sex Abuse

February 1, 2012 4:41 PM

WBZ NewsRadio 1030′s Bernice Corpuz reports:

After Penn State, states reconsider sex abuse laws

After Penn State, states reconsider sex abuse laws

Child-on-Child Sex Abuse Poses Complex Challenges

The Key is to Pour Resources into Preventing These Crimes

The Boston GlobeLETTERS TO THE EDITOR | LIVING AMONG SEX OFFENDERS

An answer to "Why don't kids just tell somebody?"

A Movement to End Child Sexual Abuse, Community by Community

Letter sent to Amazon by Prevent Child Abuse America

The Boston Globe
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR | LIVING AMONG SEX OFFENDERS