Society confronts a national disaster
When I first became involved in planning for the May 24 child-protective seminar Signs of the Crimes, I assumed that the overriding concern would be the tragedy of child-abduction by strangers. Within three hours of such abductions, three-fourths of the young victims have been sexually abused and then murdered, according to national law enforcement findings.
About 100 children are murdered each year in sexual predator attacks, according to a 1997 study by Washington state’s Office of the Attorney General.
While these heart-breaking tragedies overwhelmingly command the public’s outrage and sympathy, they actually represent a very small fraction of the total number of sex crimes against children. The vast majority of child rape and molestation cases have as perpetrators a family member, more distant relative or a known individual such as a friend or unmarried domestic partner.
In any event, these are cruel and inhuman crimes against the most vulnerable and defenseless of our citizens. Statistics show that one in five girls and one out of 10 boys will be sexually exploited before they reach adulthood. Fewer than 35 percent of child sexual assaults, however, are reported to authorities. This gross underreporting continues despite state laws punishing those knowing of such crimes but failing to disclose them. (Such reporting may be done confidentially, officials emphasize.)
In the years since that 1997 Washington state study, the Internet has vastly expanded our access to information and images from countless sources, many of them anonymous, from all around the world. Like many scientific and technological advances, this new world of unlimited, online access presents to us both good and evil. Enter the Internet sexual predators, typing away with single-minded determination to lure your 11-, 12- or 13-year-old daughter into an online relationship of trust, leading possibly to a secret, tragic rendezvous.
The menace of the ever-present, 24/7 online predator should not be underestimated, investigator Tom Evans of the Knoxville Police Department told the Signs of the Crimes audience at Warren County Middle School last Tuesday evening. On the huge wall of the school auditorium’s stage, Evans projected pictures of freshly-arrested Internet sex-offenders, almost all of whom appeared as clean-shaven, nicely-groomed model citizens and neighbors.
Pedophiles can be extremely cunning and effective when ensnaring young, innocent and unsuspecting children, warned Warren County elementary school counselors Barbara George and Kay Brownyard. If the child physically survives the attack, the emotional devastation often remains for a lifetime, they said. (Printed information, including a roster of Warren County’s registered sex offenders, is available free at the Warren County Sheriff’s Office, which was among the supporting organizations in the Signs of the Crimes program.)
My involvement in Signs of the Crimes was to serve as host for the live broadcast on Public Radio WCPI. But during the planning process, I learned that the national disgrace of child abduction and sexual molestation and abuse was more appalling than I had imagined. Success in countering this threat can be secured only if citizens and their public agencies act in unison.
Unified, forceful action against child sexual abuse and abduction by strangers is frustrated, however, by an oddly Victorian mindset against talking openly about this national disgrace. (This attitude is one of the strangest of all contradictions, given the huge appetite for sex and sleaze in popular culture.) The estimated 125 parents, grandparents and other interested adults who showed up for Signs of the Crimes last Tuesday represented some of the more forward-thinking and pro-active of our citizens. I am convinced that many more of the concerned parents would attend a future seminar of this type—after the stigma of child sexual abuse has been better resolved in the public mind.
The Signs of the Crimes forum was scheduled to coincide with the start of the summer recess for Warren County school children. Released from the protective cocoon that enveloped them for a third of their day over the past nine months, youngsters are now in a period of increased vulnerability. They’re playing in the back yard or along the streets, visiting friends several houses or blocks away, joining in sleepovers—most often out of the watchful view of parents and sometimes in places unknown to those parents.
The forum was held on the eve of National Missing Children’s Day, an annual event launched with a proclamation by President Ronald Reagan in 1981. One of the day’s leading promoters, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (www.missingkids.org; hotline 1-800-843-5678) emphasizes that “74 percent of abducted children who are murdered are dead within three hours of the abduction.”
Also on the day of the local sex-crimes-against-children forum, news broke that 100,000 or more convicted sex offenders have gone missing from law enforcement tracking in the United States. These sex-cons have successfully slipped out of their registration and reporting requirements and are living anonymously among us.
Signs of the Crimes and other child-protective programs are offered not to alarm the public or sensationalize an issue, but to inform and motivate. Armed with information and inspired to vigilance and action, our society can reclaim our neighborhoods and communities, making them safer and more secure for our children.