Child Abuse: Sexual, Physical, and Neglect

I recently read an article in the Post Chronicle written by Alan Burkhart with a title of "Modern Day barbarism: Protecting Our children", July 8, 2007. In his article he pointed out several types of abuse and the abusers of children, I am expounding upon what he wrote because the article fell far short of the seriousness of child abuse. Child abuse is happening around the world, but I will only focus on those abuses which occur here within the United States of America.

I will start with some facts from the Child Welfare Information Gateway from which all data and statistics in this article have been gathered, a repository of sorts of the prevalence of child abuse in the United States. The Child Welfare Information Gateway breaks abuse by type, namely: Sexual abuse, physical abuse, and neglect, and is categorized as maltreatment of children, a seemingly benign word that does not give one the feel or sense of great importance. Children suffer mental and emotional abuse as well but these abuses are integral to the three abuse types just mentioned, so let's focus on sexual, physical, and neglect. The scope of data that I will present is limited from one to several years in duration of studies that compiled the data we will be witnessing here. Let's get started.

Sexual abuse of children

According to the US Census in 2004, there were estimated 36.4 million children from 5 to 13 years of age, and in the age group of 14 to 17 years of age an estimate of 16.8 million children. Keep these figures in mind, we will arrive back to them in short order. According to child, sexual abuse statistics covering the period from 1992 to 2001 there was an average of 173 reported sexual abuses on a child per 100,000 child population, and in this same period, the percentages give us an average of 0.17% sexual abuses upon a child per 100,000 child populations. Returning to the numbers of children estimated in 2004 from ages 5 to 17, and doing some basic arithmetic it is easy to see that sexual abuses of children can easily give a rough approximation of 92,036 sexual abuse cases of children per 53.2 million giving an average percent of 0.17% sex abuse cases of children for a population of 53.2 million children. Sexual abuse of children is very low, but how does this abuse type compare to physical abuse and neglect?

The decline in America

Please take strong note that even before Megan's Law, there had been a steady decline in sex abuse cases against children for several years and the trend has not changed. We cannot attribute the beginnings of this decline to Megan's Law. I do believe it is very safe to say that since Megan's law there has been some unmeasured effect on that continued reduction, which has probably bottomed out. According to the US Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention "The number of sexual abuse cases substantiated by child protective service (CPS) agencies dropped a remarkable 40 percent between 1992 and 2000, from an estimated 150,000 cases to 89,500 cases" Megan's Law was signed into law September 2004 by President Clinton. Sex abuse of children in America, although something to look at and have some concern, is not the problem it has been made out to be by politicians who are pushed onward for more offensive sex offender laws by people such as John Walsh, Mark Lunsford, Ed Smart, Erin Runnion, Marc and Violet Klaas, Colleen Nick, Rebecca DeMauro, Magi and John Bish, Linda Walker, Mika Moultan and Mary Kozakiewicz ...

Of the majority of people who have committed what is deemed a sex offense against another person, most will not reoffend, why? Before Megan's law, punishment was a slap on the wrist, but now, punishment is almost debilitating, and all but the unbalanced mind lives in great fear of the law and its burdening consequences. Many who have gone through sex offender therapy have learned coping skills, and have learned the triggers that they set themselves up with to offend. Sex offender therapy works for the majority. It does not work in general for the habitual child contact molester, child pornographer, or child porn addicted personality.

Physical abuse and neglect of children

Child fatalities as gathered through the Child Welfare Information Gateway, under the heading of Child Abuse and Neglect Fatalities: Statistics and Interventions, June 2006 states The National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS) reported an estimated 1,490 child fatalities in 2004, translating to a rate of 2.03 children per 100,000 child population, and the rate has increased form 2001 to 2004. NCANDS further notes that Colorado and North Carolina have estimated that 50 to 60% of child fatalities go unrecorded as due to child abuse and neglect.

NCANDS data for 2004 "demonstrated that children younger than 1 year accounted for 45% of fatalities, while children younger than 4 years accounted for 81% of fatalities" makes these age groups the most vulnerable to physical abuse and neglect. Last but not least, NCANDS data in 2004 shows more than 35.5% of child maltreatment fatalities were associated with neglect alone, while physical abuse alone was cited in roughly 28.3 percent of reported fatalities, and another 30.2 percent of fatalities were the result of multiple maltreatment. Adding these percentages it is shown that roughly 94% of child fatalities were associated with maltreatment associated with neglect, physical abuse, and multiple maltreatment modalities.

Not surprising, NCANDS data identifies the perpetrators of child fatalities as one or both parents who are involved in 78.9% of child abuse or neglect fatalities, 10.7% resulted from maltreatment by non-parent caretakers, and 10.4% by unknown or missing information, whatever that means. This data has neglected to include maltreatment by siblings that went beyond curiosity. What is also not surprising is the percentage associated with someone the child knows 89.6% as compared to roughly 90 to 95% of sexual abuses against a child by someone the child knows.

Not all child abuse or neglect results in a child fatality, but does result in impaired emotional growth if there is no treatment. To properly balance this information I draw data from Child Maltreatment 2005 report, U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, Administration for Children and families, Administration on children, Youth and Families, Children's Bureau, Letter from the Associate Commissioner:

The letter states that nationally 62.8% of child victims experienced neglect, 16.6% physical abuse, 9.3% sexual abuse, and 7.1% emotional or psychological abuse. I submit that emotional and psychological abuses are integral to all other forms of abuse mentioned in this article. The greatest abusers of children are not those whom you call sex offenders, for in this group there are a growing number who have not abused any person, child or adult, based on the offense for which an alleged offender plead guilty, no they are child molesters and people the child knows who physically abuses a child. The child molester is under watch, and in my opinion so should be parents and caretakers who physically abuse and neglect their children, or the children in their care. They are the ones whose actions have not yet been seriously criminalized. They are the greatest danger to the well being and safety of a child. They are the ones who have continued access to children for which they should be legally barred.

Abusive families and restorative justice

Recently there has been an upsurge of interest in the concept of "restorative justice", which has been proffered as an alternative to our current criminal justice system. "One of the first difficulties in exploring these issues is that there is no clear consensus on what is restorative justice. Restorative justice seems to hail from a variety of backgrounds and perspectives. These include mediation programmes (particularly in North America)". "Some writing on restorative justice focuses on the offender (e.g. alternatives to prison, and facing victims as a means of promoting reform), while other writing focuses on victims (e.g. empowering victims, assisting closure of victimisation, overcoming fear of crime, getting answers to questions and obtaining restitution for victims)". Currently this is where restorative justice stands, in the argumentative and development stages. Proper use of restorative justice particularly with regard to bringing families back together must involve the entire family, and in particular immediate family, which includes perpetrator and victim. Not all families will be amenable to restorative justice. Under the umbrella of domestic violence restorative justice can bring back wholeness to a family to some measure. It must not be neglected in lieu of the administering of criminal law.

In families where the perpetrator, victim, and other immediate family members are involved, restorative justice therapy can educate all concerned, and can formulate a methodology for forgiveness, and mental and emotional restitution. It is a long process of clearing the air of anger, vengeance, confusion, and hatred. There are families that wish to remain together, and this wish is even on the part of the victim. When it is feasible to bring willing family members together, all effort must be made to help these willing families restore themselves. After an offense it should never be expected that a family can be made 100% whole again, but what can be expected with willing families is to learn the reasons behind the offense, the dynamics of the family that may have played a part in the offense, and the boundaries that must be applied. The offender or perpetrator through hard love therapy - the carrot, and the legal system - the stick, must be willing to change his or her thinking that led them to being an offender of a family member.

Constructive guilt and constructive shame must allow an offender to recognize their mental and emotional errors, and to correct them. This as I have said is a long process, and if family members are willing to work through the restorative process, they must be allowed to do so. Outsiders other than child welfare and the legal system must be barred from interfering with these families. Currently though we do see people who think primarily with their emotions when they are shown dramatized events of real life happenings on television, and who then only think in terms of vengeance and retribution, as having too large of a role in preventing families from the restoration they want and deserve by insisting upon lawmakers to enact laws that separate these families such as residency restriction laws, in which the family offender is forced to remove himself or herself from the family. This is not good, and this is not smart lawmaking.

There are writers and professionals who wish to make the proposition of restorative justice a difficult to understand and apply concept, but this is where I disagree with such people. When child welfare and the legal system are brought into the life of a family because of child sexual, physical, or neglect abuse in the family, the actions professionals in child welfare must do if they are any good at all, is to work with the family through child welfare protection, therapy programs, and the legal system to define how best to help apply restoration principles to a willing family, and then perform the roles of moderators and overseers during the long process, which includes several modes of restoration tailored to that family. The umbrella law or umbrella oversight will not work simply because there will be no specific individualization of a family from other families. Out of convenience the state gravitates to blanket rules and regulations which are unfitting in many ways to successful reintegration and restoration. The state in its involvement must only apply oversight while the willing family is made legally bound to work through the restoration it wants, and believes it deserves.

The panacea of lawmaking

Across the public services, and in other areas of society and the economy, people have become used to the realization that one size does not fit all. Not many expect it to. In addition, when it does, the assumption that people make is that the system has not been designed with sufficient care. What this means is that we need a system that is focused on speed and simplicity. In addition, that, as the most elementary principle of systems design, we need to ensure that the solutions we use are proportionate to the offense or behavior being addressed, looking at increasing the use of conditional cautions. If taking the offender to court will not solve the underlying problem, and a different, tailored solution is required, then the method(s) for obtaining that solution must be pursued. Moreover, when equally in the prosecutor's judgment, society still needs an assurance that if the offender repeats the criminal behavior, then there will be criminal consequences.

The panacea is to apply law without distinction, the method of convenience, the law of default lawmaking. Default lawmaking considers time, efforts, and cost. If any one of these is considered exorbitant, the law of default lawmaking takes effect. Default lawmaking applies law blindly and without due consideration of differences. States and federal legislatures are in my opinion incapable of themselves to efficiently and effectively handle the varied complex problems of domestic or abuse within families, this is where the use of the private sector must be used. The private sector for the most part is based on a profit model of doing business, and thus a state or the federal government must make it financially viable for the private sector to handle and work with sexual, physical, and neglect abuse within families. The states and federal government must also make it viable for an abuser to work within a model of restorative justice without criminal penalties for divulging information within a restorative justice therapy environment. Criminal punishment must be a right of action to be imposed when a perpetrator of abuse within a family demonstrates that the perpetrator is best criminally confined because the perpetrator is not changing course, and the safety of a family member might be in danger.

Conclusion

Familial sexual abuse ought to be handled and treated differently from the sexual abuser who abuses the children of other people. If the two are the same because the familial abuser is also an abuser of children belonging to other people, then there should be no difference in the application of law as applied to the second type of abuser. The familial abuser who demonstrates no capacity to change must also be treated no differently than the abuser of other people's children.

Physical abuse of a child and neglect, other than sexual abuse, are the most prevalent forms of child abuse and child fatalities. Today's American societies with the pressures and worries they have are producing an alarming number of families that are out of control. The default method of lawmaking must be challenged, and lawmakers must have the political courage to support not only criminal laws to protect, but support restorative justice where families and the perpetrator demonstrate potential for restorative justice to work. Restorative justice is currently applied in a small way through sex offender therapy and legal boundaries upon the offender until the offender has demonstrated genuine remorse, and the capacity through therapeutically training to reform unbalanced thought processes. The therapist must be highly educated in their field, and must have the ability along with the education to perform valuable therapy oversight. There are no certainties, there are only possibilities. Default lawmaking without mandatory restorative justice and therapy efforts is in itself a failure, and in my opinion, such lawmakers who prefer such default or panacea laws are a failure in the lawmaking process.

All the human monsters of the world were born from a family whether functional or dysfunctional, and whether there were one or more parents, or another caregiver. There are people falsely accused. The Scarlet In the 1850's adultery was the social stain on one's reputation. At that time, a person found to have been an adulterer was required to wear a scarlet letter "A" on their clothing. They were then branded for life in their community and were made the subject of scorn, ridicule, and disdain. Nathaniel Hawthorne in his book "The Scarlet Letter" wrote about the cruelty and hypocrisy of this practice.

Today our system of branding is much more sophisticated. A person convicted of a sexual offense even when there is no contact or victim, just an offensive act in the public view is required to register as a sex offender for life in a growing number of states. The registration was originally designed as an aid to law enforcement and was not available to the public. The Sex Offenders Registry has become the new Scarlet Letter, a means of abusing the constitutional liberties and protections of individuals. As Hester Prynne (the central character in The Scarlet Letter) could not remove her "A" from her clothing, today our legislature has made it nearly impossible to remove one's name from the registry. This is true even if the registrant is rehabilitated. This is true even if decades of living an exemplary life have passed.

John Walsh, Mark Lunsford, and others have built careers scaring the public into believing that everyone even children labeled as a sex offender is a danger to children, which means anyone seventeen years of age and younger. These monsters of fear tactics are no different than the Neocons, President George W. Bush, Vice President Cheney, and the shadows behind them. As child fatalities increase from physical child abuse these monsters divert the publics attention from the paramount dangers of children to focus on the fear that has the most popularity, and which bring in huge sums of money to John Walsh, Mark Lunsford, and their associated ilk. People with the most minor offenses are made to pay for the abduction, abuse, and death of the child of John Walsh, Mark Lunsford, Ed Smart, Erin Runnion, Marc and Violet Klaas, Colleen Nick, Rebecca DeMauro, Magi and John Bish, Linda Walker, Mika Moultan and Mary Kozakiewicz...

What can be done to balance these fears? Keep the pressure on these people and their irrational supporters, identifying them for what they are, agents of fear for profit and gain. The only person who has stepped up and publicly decried the blanket laws promoted by the group above is Patty Wetterling, a courageous soul. If you believe this group, their supporters, and their political backers have gone too far, then support Patty Wetterling in her efforts to make people understand how wrong it is to support politicians who are stripping people of their constitutional liberties and protections. Help this author to bring public awareness of the people's loss of constitutional liberties and protections, for these constitutional losses for those labeled as sex offender, are the same losses that will be suffered by anyone, and anyone's child who does something that meets the broad criteria of sex offense. You see it happening everyday, children in school no longer allowed to be playful with one another in fear they will be labeled a sex offender for unintended touching of another child that may be seen by a teacher, or a fear based parent as inappropriate. Mere children being made into criminals.

Teens having consensual sex whether morality was developed in the home or not, labeled as sex offenders, torn from their homes by residency restrictions. Normally it is the male who will suffer the consequences, for society has inappropriately deemed the female as incapable of giving consent. Help put a stop to the madness that has spread over this country like a dark ominous cloud of doom. Contact your representative or senator and put the pressure on them to change their lawmaking ways. Do something good for America for a change.