Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, January 7, 1993 TAG: 9301070432
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Staff
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
THE REALITY OF CHILD ABUSE
IF YOU shock easily, don't read this.Sexual assault of children has become almost as common in Virginia as Little League games.
Often, the sex offenders are mere children themselves - victims of sexual abuse who become victimizers by the time they reach adolescence or young adulthood.
It is a vicious cycle that is cramping the state's prisons and youth-treatment centers. And it is leaving for society a wake of emotional cripples: prostitutes; drug addicts; alcoholics; chronically depressed, often suicidal, human beings who are marginally functional.
The extent of the problem stunned members of a study commission, headed by Lt. Gov. Beyer, who in the past year heard testimony from hundreds of Virginians, many of whom are adult survivors of child sexual abuse.
It sickened them, too - the stories of pain and terror inflicted on children.
A Tidewater mother told of discovering physical evidence in her daughter's diaper that the baby had been sexually penetrated. A Petersburg woman recounted childhood days in a trance - after her father had raped her.
In Wytheville, the commission learned of a father who had hanged his young daughter's cat by the neck from a tree, threatening to do the same to her if she told anyone of his years of sexual assaults on her. In Richmond, a 28-year-old man confessed to having sex with more than 200 women - in his desperate effort to prove his manhood, after he had been sodomized as a child by a family friend.
If those examples are too vivid, cut to the numbers:
As many as one out of every four girls and one out of every 10 boys will be a victim of sexual assault of some kind before they reach 18.
In 1975, 102 child sexual abuse cases were reported in Virginia. In 1990, 1,720 cases were reported.
In 1985, 40 percent of the state's victims of sexual abuse were under 18; 26 percent were 6 or younger. By 1990, 34 percent of the state's victims were less than 6 years old.
Of 935 Virginians arrested in 1990 for forcible or attempted rape, 101 were younger than 17; 29 were 13- and 14-year-olds. That same year, 320 juveniles were arrested for sex offenses other than rape or prostitution.
About 50 percent of juvenile sex offenders have a history of being abused as younger children; 80 percent of those were sexually abused. Significant numbers of adult offenders also were previous sex-abuse victims.
The commission's report ought to shock and sicken all Virginians, including members of the General Assembly.
This month, Beyer and others will ask the legislature to make a commitment to deal with this troubling and widespread problem. The commission's package of recommendations includes numerous changes in the state code, some sections of which clearly need updating. It also calls for a $15 million financial commitment to fund more treatment programs for young victims and young victimizers - and, most importantly, for a concerted prevention effort.
When you consider the multiplier effect - the victimized becoming victimizers of many - plus the fact that treatment for many offenders becomes useless after they have reached adulthood, the need and cost-effectiveness of preventive efforts and of teen treatment are startlingly compelling.
The political reality is that the state may not be able to do all the commission recommends this year. Regrettably, too, code changes and treatment programs won't offset powerful forces in society and within families that contribute to sexual exploitation and sexual violence.
But the reality also is that this horror is the dark secret of life for many children in Virginia, as throughout America. Legislators can't pretend it's not happening. They shouldn't turn their backs on the children.