Here’s a video on ending child sexual abuse. This is a work in progress for anyone wanting to share their story.
About the Producer
Tracey Quezada is a Bay Area producer, writer and director. She serves on the screening committee for the San Francisco Women Film Festival. sector. As an independent producer Tracey has produced and directed promotional videos for the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, Patch, Community Bridge Video and Global Fund for Women.
Let us know if we can help you dealing with your family’s sexual abuse situation. For ideas to get started please check out our book on what to do during the early days after disclosure.
Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former IMF director, initially appeared to be the classic case of power abuse. It was a sex scandal worthy of the front page of CNN on many days. He event beat out Arnold on days where both of their sex scandals were news. Both involved a married man and someone in a domestic capacity. But DSK, as he is often labeled, seemed to be more newsworthy. The difference? Arnold admitted he did it and DSK did not. Also, and more importantly, DSKs actions were treated as a crime. If Arnold Schwarzenegger had been arrested on rape charges, it would have much more newsworthy. I think it’s along the same lines as people stopping to look at accidents, or watching reality TV. We want the drama even if it is at someone else’s expense.
Credibility
Now that the credibility of the alleged victim in the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case has been found to be less than credible, the whole case is falling apart and will likely go away. Or more likely it may flip and the accuser may become the accused. This is a defense attorney’s dream, since virtually all defenses are based on the premise that the accuser lied. Because of the magnitude of this event, many sexually abused woman may be reluctant to come forward for a while. This is unfortunate because false accusations are actually pretty rare. With the exception of coerced custody related issues, false accusations rarely occur in children who do not yet have a reference for sex in their life.
If people knew how often sexual abuse actually happened, the DSK case would probably be less noteworthy. But because sexual abuse gets buried in shame and the fear of being called a liar, we really don’t have a context for how common it is. We want the bad people to get punished. Unfortunately, the drama of the media distorts what is and is not true.
Let us know if we can help you dealing with your family’s sexual abuse situation. For ideas to get started please check out our book on what to do during the early days after disclosure.
As a man I honestly can’t ever remember taking a picture of myself and sending it to someone. How someone takes it to the next level and starts taking pictures of parts of themselves that people don’t normally see is beyond me. It does seem to be a popular trend though, especially among people have a lot to use. So what possesses someone in a position of power to do something this obviously stupid?
Rules are for others
The answer is pretty simple. The rules don’t apply to them. Just ask them – they will tell you. Maybe not directly, but actions often speak louder than words. They are in a position of power, so what better way to prove that than do something that others can’t do. This is an oversimplification for those of us who try to follow society’s rules. Combine this with enjoying the thrill of skating on thin ice and you have a unique cocktail for someone who has their own sense of morality.
People who don’t acknowledge society’s rules, tend also to not have a conscious about their actions. They can beat a polygraph and generally don’t understand what is wrong with their behavior. So whether it is pictures, or touching, or more, they believe they are entitled. As long as there is power, and people who feel this puts them in a different place relative to the rest of humanity, there will be abuse.
Let us know if we can help you dealing with your family’s sexual abuse situation. For ideas to get started please check out our book on what to do during the early days after disclosure.
A definitive report of over 150 pages by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops basically indicates that sexual abuse by priests is a problem from decades past, and was really a symptom of societal dissent from the Vietnam era. Also, any associations of priests to pedophiles is largely a misnomer. That’s the reader’s digest version.
Self Policing
Having done research studies in the past, this one is almost comical. It sites studies from the 1930s and 1940s and then casually states that contemporary studies have found similar results. Can you think of any area of contemporary study that would use information from over half a century ago as a primary reference? The study spends most of it’s efforts showing that sexual abuse in other areas of society is higher, or at least on par with that of the Catholic Church.
We spend a lot of time and energy convincing ourselves and others that we are safe from ourselves. The fact that it is not true doesn’t seem to stop people from trying to make it that way. Saying it doesn’t make it so. Fixing the problem will.
Let us know if we can help you dealing with your family’s sexual abuse situation. For ideas to get started please check out our book on what to do during the early days after disclosure.
If you are wondering if there is such a thing as police sex offenders, the answer is yes. This is probably the ultimate contradiction. Sadly, we are no longer surprised when another priest is found to be abusing children. When a police officer is accused of being a sex offender, it brings to mind a whole bunch of questions.
Don’t they screen police officers? Of course they do. But only based on known activities and how you might do on various standardized tests. Most sex offenders do not have the same sense of social conscious that the rest of the population has. They are much more likely to beat polygraphs and not feel remorse about their actions. Sex offenders generally feel entitled to their personal pleasures regardless of social norms, laws, or the impact on those around them.
Justifying Abuse
Imagine you were given a gun and told you could cure cancer, but you would have to kill a room full of kindergarten children to do it. Most people would have difficulty justifying murder for the good of society. Sex offenders regularly craft their world so they can make a positive impact on the world around them. They teach children, they volunteer for charities, they are active in their church, they raise money, and they hold prominent positions in their community. In their mind, this veil of public trust gives them the rights to take liberties from time to time. And why not, they give back far more than they take. Such is the logic of a sex offender.
So back to the police issue. Earlier this week, the captain of our police department was arrested on child pornography charges. He was a 30-year veteran of the police force as well as husband and father. By most accounts he was a pillar of the community and a model police officer. Then he made a mistake that opened him up for an investigation, which has mushroomed into a Pandora’s box. The encrypted files on his home and office computer held over 100,000 sexually explicit images and videos of infants and children.
Why?
It makes you wonder why someone would risk everything to do something that is totally unforgivable in the eyes of most people. A larger percentage of the population would be able to accept them killing the kindergarten students. Since I do not have an advanced degree in psychology, I am not even going to try to explain it. Trying to understand this behavior will just make your head spin. The thing to understand is that sex offenders are the best and worst of us. They can be anyone, and it is much more common than we would like. Once people can stop pretending it doesn’t exist, we can start having constructive discussions about how to address the problem.
Let us know if we can help you dealing with your family’s sexual abuse situation. For ideas to get started please check out our book on what to do during the early days after disclosure.
April is National Sexual Abuse Prevention Month. Perhaps you didn’t get the memo. I hadn’t heard of it prior to about 8 years ago. I thought I hadn’t been paying attention, but sadly it is 1/12 of the year that goes by largely unnoticed. Breast cancer and Autism get 100 times more pr than sexual abuse. Once you have been around it a while, you learn why.
Sexual abuse scares people probably more than anything else. It’s something we don’t talk about, and people who have never experienced it try to convince themselves that it is something that happens to other people. There is a whole psychology of how people re-frame sexual abuse to shield themselves from the possibility that it could happen to them. It ends up being a viscous cycle. Every parent of an abused child probably thought it couldn’t happen to them. Your first step in making your kids safer is simply acknowledging that sexual abuse can affect anyone. If you aren’t up to speed on the numbers – 1 in 3 girls and 1 in 5 boys will experience some form of sexual abuse by the time they are 18. If you were worried about a car accidents, meningitis, or autism they are actually lower on likely list. If you want your kids to be safer, the first step is to accept that it is something that can happen to your children.
The Myths
The second step is getting beyond the main myth of sexual abuse. And that is that it’s something that is done by strangers. We have been drilled with this concept since before we can spell. Don’t talk to strangers. Don’t take candy from a stranger. But the reality is that 0ver 95% of all sexual abuse is committed by someone we know and trust. In the case of sexual abuse of children under the age of 10, there is almost always a 3 way trust relationship. The abuser is a person the parents trust, and that the child trusts. There is also the dual aspect of this that since parents trust the person, the child should trust them as well. When things start to become abusive this inner conflict drives children not to disclose the abuse because they know it is someone their parents trust.
And the third thing you can do towards making kids safe is to talk to them about sexual abuse, preferably before you have the “sex talk” with them. Age 9 is the average age of an abused child. Talking to your child about good touch and bad touch as early as pre-school is a good idea. It’s also important to discuss it with them every couple of years because it is something that needs to be reenforced over time. Encourage your children to tell you when things are bothering them. And let them know that any touching that someone (anyone) does that bothers them that they can tell you about it.
Fears with Making Kids Safe
If you are worried about screwing this up, you probably will. We’re parents – it’s what we do. We do the best we can with what we have. This is scary stuff, but isn’t that part of being a parent? We try to learn from others, educate ourselves the best we can, and try to beat the odds. If you have learned something new here, you have one more piece of information that you can leverage to keep your kids safe. Spread the word!
Let us know if we can help you dealing with your family’s sexual abuse situation. For ideas to get started please check out our book on what to do during the early days after disclosure.
