Dumb "Experts" Weigh in on Why Folks Don't Report Sexual Violations Done to Children

Why Penn State Officials Didn't Call the Police | Yahoo!

Having a Ph.D does not make anyone an expert. I find more wisdom in the folks who come to take my class on reporting suspected child abuse than the so-called experts, like the one in this report.

From the news article:

"You’ve heard the allegations: In 2002, now–assistant coach Mike McQueary witnessed former Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky, then 58, sexually violating a 10-year-old boy in the coaches’ locker room shower. McQueary told his father as well as head coach Joe Paterno, who passed the buck to athletic director Tim Curley, university vice president Gary Schultz, and university president Graham Spanier. Sandusky’s “punishment”: He wouldn’t be permitted to bring kids onto campus anymore."

First of all the question should have been asked: Why didn't McQueary stop the assault he was witnessing? It was an assault. An assault to a ten year old boy. He was there. He was witnessing it as it occurred. He was witness to a crime.

One out of three girls and one out of six boys are sexually violated.

The expert was quoted as saying: “Organizations are also very self-protective,” adds Dr. Lubit. “The number-one rule is, Don’t embarrass the organization. Whistle blowers are often treated very badly.”

Denial is not just a river in Egypt. Replace his comment with "Don't embarrass the family" and we may begin to help folks lift the veil on denial of sexual violation to children in this country (and other countries).

If it's one out of three (3) girls and one out of six (6) boys it's happening and has happened to a lot of people in this country. There are many people who have had to repress the memory of being so horribly violated, sexually and emotionally. It's devastating to children. For the really horrible sexual assaults 38% of those young children will totally repress the memory.

But what one doesn't consciously remember will manifest in some fashion. One of the biggest possible manifestations is denial. If you're in denial you won't "see" an assault. Another possible manifestation is acting out the abuse on others.

Most children if they are going to be sexually violated are sexually violated by age five. When I was a child protective services investigator, sure we'd get some referrals from school districts but no where close to the statistical reality of children who have been sexually abused. If you have a classroom of thirty children, it's likely ten have been sexually assaulted to some degree.

When I worked group care for six years with severely emotionally and behaviorally disturbed adolescents (is that not a long label or what?), everyone of those kids had been terribly sexually and emotionally abused as children.

We have to have the conversation to make it stop. Only three (3%) of sex offenders are ever caught, convicted and put in prison. So where are the other 97%? Only three to ten percent are strangers. Yes, it is people around us that we know.

Even if we caught the other 97% there's no room in prison for them. We have to stop it by talking about it. And for goodness sake, if you see someone assaulting a child, stop them!

From the micro to the macro and back again. Please start talking about sexual violations that happen to small innocent sweet children; and don't stop until it stops. Sex offenders go where no one asks the questions and no one talks about the subject matter thus the problems of not telling in our various institutions schools, churches, girls and boys clubs, classes and political organizations.

Experts like this one, in my opinion, reinforce the behavior of not telling.

And we have to ask what portion of the rioting students have that background in their own families or that when they were children they suffered such abuse but now are not consciously connected to that abuse? One way to keep the memory of a sexual assault at bay is to self-medicate; and there can be quite a bit of self-medicating going on around college.

Rather than rely on "experts" I encourage folks who come to my class to trust their intuitions. Sometimes in my classes when folks are feeling comfortable and they self-disclose, it matches the statistic...one in three girls.

Maybe they aren't "dumb", maybe they are in denial. 

Please have the conversation and sex abuse will stop.