Quadrant Magazine, Society, November 2002 - Volume XLVI Number 11

Child Sexual Abuse, Real and Unreal Geoffrey Partington

BY DEFINITION abuse is a bad thing, and sexual abuse of the young is particularly loathsome. However, misinformation, deliberate or unintended, about its incidence makes bad situations worse rather than better. Miriam Saphiras 1985 claim that almost half the girls in New Zealand had been sexually abused, or the estimate for Australia of 28 per cent by Goldman and Goldman in 1988, might lead us to fear that depravity is so extensive that little can be done about it. Exaggeration arises from two main sources: acceptance of phone-ins and other unreliable claims as actual evidence, and use of slippery definitions. The Adelaide Rape Crisis Centre was a prime abuser of phone-ins. One of its phony phone-ins was rewarded by massive funding by the then ALP government, in order to combat the incest allegedly suffered by one female in every four. The Rape Crisis Centre accepted every claim made by phone as true without investigation and defined incest as any explicit sexual behaviour that an adult imposes on a child under the age of seventeen. It admitted that by strict legal definition, incest in South Australia is sexual intercourse between a parent and child or a brother and sister. South Australian law does not recognise other relationships as incestuous. Nor did the law of any other Australian state, but numerous politicians and journalists were fooled by its ludicrous claims. Wendy Patton and Mary Mannison of the School of Learning and Development of Queensland University of Technology noted in 1996 that some surveys of child sexual abuse included harassment (e.g. catcalls, whistling) within their totals of offences. In 1988 Judith Cashmore and Kay Bussey of Macquarie University included in child sexual abuse any sexual act directed towards a child, from intercourse to unwanted kissing or fondling clothed parts of the body. Babies and very small children find it difficult to object to unwanted kissing, perhaps by elderly hirsute relatives, but such acts, if recalled by children in later years, were included by Cashmore and Bussey in their sexual abuse statistics. Cashmore and Bussey classified as child sexual abuse all uninvited sexual advances by persons eighteen or over to persons under eighteen, including passes made by eighteen-year-old males at seventeen-year-old females. In four separate studies in the 1980s, Di Vasto et al, James, Mims and Chang, and Sedley and Brooks, tried to meet criticisms of failure to distinguish between more and less serious types of child sexual abuse by arguing that it is inappropriate to try to erect a hierarchy of child abuse based on seriousness. Di Vasto et al asserted that non-invasive incidents, such as obscene phone calls and exposure, are as stressful as rape. It is very common for people engaged in research to exaggerate the magnitude of whatever problem they are confronting. Sometimes the explanation is greed for extra funding, sometimes an altruistic desire to alert public opinion to a real cause for alarm, but deceit is never justifiable. Even more dangerous than exaggeration of overall incidence of child sexual abuse is improper targeting of some groups as prime agents of child sexual abuse. And activists sometimes change targets very rapidly. During the 1980s many researchers, mainly female, into child sexual abuse, were convinced that males within families were the main source of child abuse. The main public targets today are clergy and teachers in church schools. During the 1980s researchers made war on the notion of stranger danger and concentrated their fire on intra-family sexual abuse by males. The patriarchal family was held to be the main source of childrens miseries. Failure to distinguish between distributions of children abused and child abusers helped this line of attack. Child sex abusers within families typically abuse one or two

children, but abusers outside families typically abuse about seventy children, before being apprehended. There was ample evidence of this difference available at the time. Abel et al reported in 1987 that the 561 self-reported non-incarcerated sex offenders they interviewed finally admitted to 291,737 previously undisclosed acts against 195,407 victims. These figures represented 520 offences, or 348 victims per offender, on average over and above the number to which they had confessed during trial. Then Suzanne Jenkins, Senior Therapist at the Gracewell Clinic in Birmingham, investigated in 1991 the sexual crimes of twenty-nine men in the clinics rehabilitation program. The twenty-nine had been convicted of 271 offences against 178 victims, but in discussion they admitted to 14,971 acts of sexual abuse against 1082 victims. Richard Read QC told the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs into the Crimes (Child Sex Tourism) Amendment Bill (1994) that Bill Allen boasted of having sexually molested hundreds of boys. The National Crime Authority Inquiry of 1995 noted that a child molester from Queensland, Clarence Osborne, claimed to have sexually abused about 2500 boys, not one of whom reported him to the police or any other authority. GIVEN WIDESPREAD concern about child sexual abuse for over a quarter of a century, reliable research on its incidence and distribution in Australia is surprisingly limited. The three most ambitious Australian inquiries appear to be those by Ronald J. Goldman and Juliette D. G. Goldman in 1988, Juliette Goldman and Usha K. Padayachi in 2000, and Wendy Patton and Mary Mannison in 1996. All three were based on questionnaires administered to university students. Goldman and Goldman had responses from 603 female and 388 male students.28 per cent of the females and 9 per cent of the males claimed to have been sexually abused when below the age of eighteen by adults aged eighteen and over. Of the 188 sexually abused females, 16 reported unwelcome invitations to sexual activity (these presumably went no further than invitation), 16 hugging in a sexual way, 30 showing genitals, 40 fondling sexually, 44 touching genitals, 18 simulated intercourse and 10 intercourse. The alleged intra-familial sexual abusers were distributed as follows: father/stepfather 13, mother 1, brother 76, sister 19, uncle 21, grandfather 8, male cousin 66, and female cousin 13. Unfortunately, abuses and abusers were not related to each other, so that there may have been no cases of intercourse between females under eighteen and their fathers or stepfathers. Juliette Goldman and Padayachi reported on a similar questionnaire in 2000 answered by 427 university students. Goldman and Padayachi defined a child as a person under the age of seventeen instead of eighteen. Child sexual abuse was again defined as unwanted contact or non-contact sexual experience perpetrated on a child. Contact sexual abuse was defined to include kissing, hugging or fondling a childs breasts or genitals, and/or simulated intercourse, and penetration of the vagina, anus, or mouth with a penis, finger or an object, although fingers in mouths were no doubt excluded. Non-contact sexual abuse was defined to include exhibitionism, taking pictures of the child in the nude or engaging in sexual experience in the presence of the child. Goldman and Padayachi included in incestuous abuse any unwanted contact or non-contact experience which is perpetrated on a child by a relative who is related to the child either by marriage or blood. Goldman and Padayachi claimed that 128 (45 per cent) of 287 females and 26 (19 per cent) of 140 males sampled stated they had been sexually abused as children. The alleged sexual abusers were broken down as follows: relative 54, someone in authority 8, stranger 22, family friend 39, and friend of victim 33. The incestuous perpetrators of females were listed as follows (they add up to above 54 because some females claimed to have been incestuously abused by more than one relative): 19 fathers, 7 step-fathers, 5 mothers, 2 stepmothers, 6 grandfathers, 8 brothers (step-and biological combined), 3 sisters (step-and biological combined), 15 uncles,1 aunt, 7 cousins and 2 other relatives. However, as in the earlier Goldman and Goldman report, we are not informed about levels of sexual abuse committed by different family relations. The researchers must have all those figures available, since they broke down abusive experiences into five categories: (1) took nude photographs of the child; exposed sexual organs to the child; engaged in sexual activity in the childs presence; (2) kissed the

child in a sexual way, hugged the child in a sexual way, touched or fondled the childs breasts or genitals; (3) made the child touch or fondle their (perpetrators) breasts and/or genitals; (4) attempted to insert a penis in the childs vagina and/or anus; (5) inserted a penis in the childs vagina or anus, inserted something else (finger or object) in the childs vagina and/or anus. In 1996 Patton and Mannison surveyed 253 female and 92 social science students in an unnamed university in an Australian capital city. The research claims to have discovered the following high levels of unwanted sexual experience as a child (to age thirteen): Being followed Being flashed at Request to do something sexual Being kissed or hugged in asexual way Being shown sexual parts Being fondled in a sexual way Being touched in sexual areas Intercourse % females 32.6 23.6 20.9 20.4 27.4 19.2 22.4 1.7 % males 18.2 2.3 10.3 10.3 13.8 3.5 4.7 1.2

There was no explanation of how following for non-sexual purposes, such as robbery, was distinguished from sexual pursuit. It is not clear whether the one boy in the intercourse category engaged in anal or vaginal intercourse. All three studies may also seriously underestimate wrongful sexual acts committed by young children, below the age deemed necessary for criminal responsibility. Freda Briggs reported in 1986 that three South Australian twelve-year-old boys had anally raped seven and eight-year-olds over a twelve-month period in the toilets of a government primary school before detection. In a ghastly tale of continuity, eight-year-old boy twins who had been among the abused in the school toilets sexually abused their two-year-old sister four months later by inserting instruments in her anus and vagina. They used a tape-recorder to record her screams. There are some peculiar features in these questionnaires. Are all children in nudist families ipso facto victims of incestuous child abuse? If so, why are the nudist parents not prosecuted and why are mass media portrayals of nudity so widely available? Are all Indigenous Australian children, and many non-Indigenous as well, who see their parents or other relatives engage in sexual intercourse victims of incest? If so, why are the Indigenous adults not prosecuted? IN THE UNITED STATES 150,000 children were reported in 1963 to the authorities as victims of abuse and 1.7 million in 1985, but in the latter year 80 per cent of all cases were dropped for lack of evidence and never reached court. Many techniques, such as exposure of children to anatomically correct dolls and the anal dilation test, praised earlier by experts as incontrovertible evidence of child sexual abuse, proved to be misleading in case after case. The child abuse accommodation syndrome, by which children who denied having been abused were declared to be just as likely to have been abused as those who claimed to have been victims, was also discredited after its use had been critical in gaining some convictions. Richard Wexler concluded that 60 per cent of abuse notifications in the jurisdictions he studied were entirely false. As well as mistaken inferences of child sexual abuse made by teachers and others who work with children, there were many instances of false accusations made by estranged former spouses and partners against each other, mainly made by women. Children and young people frequently made false accusations as well, sometimes on their own initiative and sometimes at the instigation of a revenge-seeking parent. By the 1990s it was clear that baseless accusations of sexual abuse had broken up a large number of families. Adelaide played its part in this. Dr Marietta Higgs, a graduate of the University of Adelaide, within five months of her appointment in 1987 as a medical officer in Cleveland in the north of England, diagnosed 121 children as victims of child sexual abuse, compared with an annual average of ten before her appointment. All the children were taken away from their families a

real case of a stolen generation. Enormous damage was done, as Lord Justice Butler-Sloss noted when she presided over an official inquiry into the Cleveland witch-hunt. After the Butler-Sloss inquiry, zealotry diminished in Britain and greater care was taken before families were accused of child sexual abuse. Zealotry was far from ended, however. In 1993 two nursery-school teachers in Newcastle upon Tyne, not far from Cleveland, were accused of sexually abusing over thirty children, most of them less than four years of age. The allegations included insertion of objects into private parts, injection with drugs, rape and buggery. In danger of lynching, the accused fled their homes, changed their names and lost their partners. It did not help them that the Newcastle Crown Court found the evidence too weak for them to be brought to trial. A team of psychologists and social workers, appointed by the City Council, under pressure from parents and activists, to review the case found the pair guilty. Later they successfully sued the council and review team for libel and established their innocence, but by then their lives had been ruined. No two children seemed to tell the same tale, but foreknowledge that members of pedophile rings are adept at confusing their victims led the experts to conclude there could be no smoke without fire. It is now believed that the allegations sprang from one mother whose child told her that Lillie, the male nursery school teacher in the Newcastle case, had hurt him. Four days earlier another Newcastle nursery-worker had been convicted of sexual abuses of children to which he admitted and the local media had been full of the story. It seems almost incredible that so many children and their parents could have come to believe in events that apparently did not take place, but mass hysteria has occurred before and will no doubt do so again. Despite such cases, some Australian professionals employed in the field worry only about failure of authorities to act with sufficient vigour when sexual abuse is alleged. Chris Goddard, a regular contributor to Children Australia since the early 1990s, accused the services of being concerned with protecting the perpetrator rather than protecting the child. Among services he condemned were the Departments of Health and Community Services and the Directorate of School Education in Victoria. He accused them of apparent lack of empathy by administration and staff with the suffering of the victim and the parents and the inadequacy of counseling for victims. The only evidence for these charges seems to have been that these departments sometimes assumed that teachers and others were innocent until proved guilty. Statistical trends are, of course, no guide to guilt or innocence in any particular case. In England, as secretary of a large branch of the National Union of Teachers, as a teacher educator, headmaster and Education Officer of a Greater London Local Educational Authority, I came across several accusations of sexual abuse made by school students against teachers and student-teachers. Some accusations were true, others false. There were predatory teachers who deserved punishment. There were also girls just under the school-leaving age who tried it on with young male teachers, including student-teachers, who imagined that the girls found their manly charms irresistible. Some teachers were threatened with accusations of improper sexual conduct unless they conformed to the girls wishes. It became necessary to warn teachers, especially young men, against remaining in a room alone with a female pupil, and later the advice extended to being alone with a male pupil. There has been a steady increase in the number of cases in which adolescent boys have been seduced by or have themselves seduced young women teachers, but most cases still arise between female students and male teachers. Teacher vulnerability was illustrated at the start of the 2002 school year in Aspley High School, Brisbane, when both the male principal and the female deputy principal were alleged by widely circulated e-mails to be under official investigation for child sexual abuse. There has never been any evidence that either had any connection with such offences, but their employer, Education Queensland, passed the case over to the Crime and Misconduct Commission. The principal and deputy principal were advised to take stress leave. Had they not followed that advice, they might well have been suspended. They remained on stress leave in August 2002.

IN AUSTRALIA the prime suspects of child sexual abuse have changed very rapidly from family members to clergy and teachers, especially in church schools. As recently as 1996 Patton and Mannison listed as perpetrators of sexual abuse against females, fathers, uncles, family friends, through to boyfriends and relationship partners, but made no mention of strangers or teachers, child-carers or clergy. The current anti-clerical tendency is widespread in the Western world, but it may be especially strong in Australia because John Howard nominated a leading cleric as governorgeneral of Australia and because the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Sydney is identified as a foe by many radical groups. There is, of course, no doubt that professions and voluntary activities that facilitate frequent and close contact with children and young people are of particular attraction to pedophiles and pederasts, or that clergy and voluntary church workers include such people among their number. Kenneth Lanning terms people who enter these professions and activities in order to molest children preferential child molesters. In Lannings typology, situational child molesters, mainly intrafamilial, find that they are in a domestic position to commit child abuse and do so, but typically as only one among other sexual activities. In contrast, preferential molesters strongly prefer sexual use of children to any other sexual activities and often seek employment or influence in places where large numbers of potential victims are available. Furthermore, male intra-familial situational molesters generally target girls, but preferential molesters typically target boys. It is just as important to protect children and young people from sexual abuse outside the home as in it, but the same absence of clear definition of sexual abuse and willingness to accept accusation as evidence is now rife in anti-clerical campaigns as it was in the 1980s anti-family ones. Although there are contrary instances such as that in Aspley High School, teachers in schools linked to Christian churches seem to be targeted rather than teachers in secular schools and workers in child-care centres. The response against abuse of children in government institutions brought to light in the 1999 Forde Commission in Queensland was muted compared with outcries about abuses alleged in Christian institutions. Activists such as Hetty Johnston, president of Bravehearts and a leading persecutor of the Governor-General and Archbishop Pell, claim that false accusations by children against teachers or parents are very rare. This is true, but about the same proportion of children as adults do lie. However, teachers are more likely to voice suspicions of sexual abuse that prove to have no foundation than to be themselves falsely accused. The South Australian Department of Human Services is typical in its instructions to teachers, medical persons, social workers, police and others, who are all mandated notifiers. It notes that in recent years the number of reported suspicions of child abuse and neglect in South Australia has increased markedly in line with national and international trends but fails to note that there has been no corresponding increase in the number of convictions. Failure to notify suspicions is an offence under the Childrens Protection Act 1993 and carries a maximum penalty of a $2500 fine. All reasonable suspicions must be reported without delay. Notifiers do not have to be able to prove that the abuse has occurred and are immune from civil liability for reporting suspicion in good faith. Abuse may be inferred in good faith if it is suspected that the child / young person has had their self-esteem and social competence undermined or eroded over time. There may be something to be said for these provisions, but new abuses may be in the process of creation when potential notifiers are told they must tell the child / young person you believe him or her, irrespective of what the accusation may be. Children must be told that it is not their fault and he or she is not responsible for the abuse. A child is defined under these regulations as a person less than eighteen years of age. Of course, there is no equivalence of responsibility between teacher and students, or between priest and child. The young are in statu pupillari, and the teachers and priests in loco parentis. One case of child sexual abuse is one too many and children deserve our every protection, whether in home, school or church. Nonetheless, accusations against teachers, clergy, child-care workers and

others who interact with children ought not to be accepted at face value without proper inquiry, any more than accusations of rape or other sexual misconduct should be accepted without evidence. Questions should be raised about the reduction of the age of consent to sexual intercourse in several states of Australia since the Wood Royal Commission into the New South Wales Police Force released its final report in 1997. How can we reconcile legitimate concern with child sexual abuse with increasing the vulnerability of young Australians to sexual predators? Given the close association between pedophilia and other extreme forms of child sexual abuse and availability of pornographic magazines and films, why are child protection agencies not more active in restricting dissemination of such material? Furthermore, it is very rare that any defence of consent can be made in respect of pornographic representations of children of the type advanced in adult pornography. Consistent and uniform definitions of sexual abuse are needed. There is at present considerable legal toleration of acts committed during initiation rituals of Indigenous youths that would incur legal action if carried out in suburbia. Some multiculturalists demand protection for female circumcision as practised by immigrant groups, whereas far less painful acts are ranked among the most severe forms of sexual abuse of girls in mainstream Australia. Wide-ranging inquiry is needed and committed activists must not dominate it. Geoffrey Partington is a South Australian educationist. Footnotes to this article are available from the Quadrant office.
Source: http://quadrant.org.au/php/article_view.php?article_id=315