Understanding and Preventing Childhood Sexual Experiences

1. Understanding and Preventing Childhood Sexual Experiences Jon R. Conte, Ph.D.

2. Thank you • Great honor to come here to share with you my life’s work • Professor of Social Work • Spend my life listening to victims of sexual abuse • Share with you what I have learned from them

3. Phases of Professional Development • Denial • As long as humans have walked the earth • Freud, late 1890’s to 1979 • scattered reference in professional literature • secret everyone knew but did not talk about

4. Decades of denial • incest is a love relationship gone wrong • sexual abuse has no ill impact/good for children • incest daughters & mothers cause abuse • Rare and uncommon

5. truth is overwhelming • large number of children sexually abused • offenders are members of their families or friends • less than 10% are strangers • 70% of children abused more than one time • many children abused for years

6. Children do not tell • bribed, threatened, promised • protect the offender • do not know it is wrong • shame, guilt, responsibility

7. First stage of development • Awareness encourage victims to come forward research challenging old ideas • How to get disclosures? • Sexual abuse is about sex. • captured public attention forced new theories, approaches, laws

8. Second stage preventing system trauma • Professional development • multidisciplinary nature of intervention • role of each discipline • increasing multidisciplinary cooperation • Children’s Advocacy Center movement • team buidling & mutual respect • conflicting roles: police and therapy • prosecution vs. treatment • support for victim & family • therapy for victim & offender

9. Stage three: recognizing new forms of denial • merging of child abuse & trauma fields • denial of overlap • Domestic violence and CSA • Incest & pedophilia • manage impact on the professional

10. Professionalization • Professional societies • specialized vs. general discipline • Journals • knowledge explosion • Every segment of society has a role • schools, service organizations, churches • youth groups, disciplines

11. What have we learned? • Offenders do not stop on their own • Children will disclose • Children can give reliable testimony • When faced with a society which believes & a child who makes a disclosure, offenders will confess • Help cannot come without reporting • Every member of the family has needs

12. More of what we have learned • Some offenders are treatable • Families can be helped • Victims can be helped

13. Interviewing children about abuse • Protocols • Developmentally sensitive • Interviewer objectivity • Number of interviews • Interview funnel • Leading & suggestive questionning

14. Critieria for evaluating reportsEmerging ideas only • Sexual abuse description • detail • advanced sexual knowledge • sexual behaviors in abused/not abused children • child’s perspective • contextual information • emotional reaction of child

15. Research on children as witnesses • young children can give reliable testimony • children over six or seven are no more suggestible than adults • all humans are suggestible • children make errors of omission vs. commission • suggestive or leading questioning is problematic • false reports are rare

16. Risk factors for getting abused • Race/ethnicity • Gender • Age • Child capacities/incapacities • Family problems • Parental capacities

17. Effects of childhood sexual abuse • Post-traumatic effects • Cognitive distortions • Altered emotionality • depression • anxiety • Dissociation • Impaired self-reference • Disturbed relatedness

18. Intimacy disturbance • altered sexuality • assumptions regarding aggression in relationships • adversariality and manipulation • aggression • Avoidance • use of psychoactive drugs • suicidality • tension-reducing behaviors

19. Complex PTSD: Judith Herman, Trauma & Recovery, 1992 “In survivors of prolonged, repeated trauma, the symptom picture is often far more complex. Survivors of prolonged abuse develop characteristic personality changes, including deformation of relatedness and identity. Survivors of abuse in childhood develop similar problems with relationships and identity; in addition, they are particularly vulnerable to repeated harm, both self-inflicted and at the hands of others...”(p. 119)

20. What causes impact? • Isolation • Betrayal • Fear • Threat • Force • Violence • Sexualization

21. Characteristics of sexual offenders • What are the characteristics of childhood sexual abuse? • General population studies • Parent/parenting figure: 6% to 16% • Clinical Samples • Parenting figure: 24% to 33% • All family: about 50% • Strangers: 5% to 15% • Offenders • 40% offenders are teenagers • Overwhelming percent are male

22. More characteristics • Multiple Episodes50% non-clinical75% clinical samples • Completed or attempted oral, anal, vaginal penetration25% non-clinical50% or more clinical

23. Still more • Average age 9 • Range infancy to end of childhood • Duration varies greatly

24. Characteristics of offenders continued • Social skills • Sexual preference • Denial • Arousal • Cognitive distortions • Emotional needs

25. Lessons from the USA • Over-loaded system • Limits of prosecution and punishment • Abuse specific psythotherapy • Vicarious trauma • Coordinates systems response • Public and Professional cooperation

26. For Your Own GoodBy Alice Miller “When Galileo in 1613 presented mathematical proof for the Copernican theory that the earth revolved around the sun and not the opposite, it was labeled ‘false and absurd’ by the church. Galileo was forced to recant and subsequently became blind. Not until three hundred years later did the church finally decide to give up its illusion and remove his writings from the index.

27. Now we find ourselves in a situation similar to that of the Church in Galileo’s time, but for us today much more hangs in the balance. Whether we decide for truth or for illusion will have far more serious consequences for the survival of humanity that was the case in the 17th century. For some years now, there has been proof that the devastating effects of the traumatization of children take their inevitable toll on society- a fact that we are still forbidden to recognize. This knowledge concerns every single one of us, and - if disseminated widely enough - should lead to fundamental changes in society; above all, to halt in the blind escalation of violence.”