Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, February 18, 1993 TAG: 9302180246
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JAY TAYLOR CORRESPONDENT
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
BOTH VICTIMS, ACCUSED IN ABUSE CASES SKEPTICAL
Charges against the Rev. William C. Mattox Jr. of Clifton Forge Baptist Church come amid a growing number of reports of child abuse and sexual abuse in the ministry - as well as skepticism and anger from those who side with both the victims and the accused.Advocates for victims, when faced with questions about the accuser's past, ask who is being tried: the victim or the assailant? When faced with closed hearings for juveniles, sympathizers for the accused wonder what has happened to the right to due process.
Anne Seymour at the National Victim Center in Arlington said that even if the identities of the accusers are not revealed, the accuser "had a lot more constitutional rights than the women who allege these charges have. . . . They are not trying the victim's innocence or guilt."
Some people scoff at the notion that many women suddenly are remembering sexual abuse decades later, and suggest that this is an identifiable phenomenon called "false memory syndrome."
"I think their premise is absolutely ridiculous," Seymour said. "It is not based on any sound research. It shows that child abuse is a serious crime, and these people are trying to demean that fact."
A backlash against the increasing charges of child abuse has spawned groups such as the Child Abuse Defense and Resource Center in Holland, Ohio. Barbara Bryan of Roanoke, a spokeswoman for the national group, says a "child abuse industry" is nurtured by self-serving psychiatrists and plaintiffs' lawyers.
Therapists too often coax preordained answers from patients, she says. "Even adult eyewitnesses to traumatic events, depending on how they are questioned, may change many, many details," Bryan said.
Bryan asserted that in "false memory syndrome," most allegations are made by women generally aged 25 to 40 who are in counseling or in some sort of group situation for various problems.
The payoff for the therapist is continued income from patients for treating a dubious problem, Bryan said.
But Sylvia Clute, a Richmond lawyer who has won one of the largest jury awards for child sexual abuse, says the trauma of uncovering molestation hardly can be faked; it is "agony" for the victim.
Clute won a $3 million jury award in Petersburg for a man who was suing his father for molesting him. The son was 18 when the case went to trial, and he knew he would testify in open court. Clute advised him, like her other clients, to speak up and go public.
"It was like telling that you had been a participant in the worst sin in the world," she said. "To bring the words up was enormous agony."
A subset of child abuse revelations is sexual impropriety among the clergy, which has become grist for talk shows, lifestyle pages and clerical conferences.
Much attention has been given to abuse by Catholic priests. A group called VOCAL - Victims of Clergy Abuse Linkup - held a conference in Chicago in October, drawing about 300 people from across the country.
The director of VOCAL, Jeanne Miller of Palatine, Ill., says studies show that 3 percent to 6 percent of 52,000 Catholic priests - between 1,500 and 3,000 - are pedophiles. A pedophile, she has noted, typically abuses 237 children in a lifetime.
In his book "Lead Us Not Into Temptation: Catholic Priests and the Sexual Abuse of Children," New Orleans writer Jason Berry documented 400 cases in which he says priests have sexually molested children. Berry contends the church has paid a half-billion dollars in court awards and settlements in cases involving sexual abuse by priests.
Most large denominations, such as the Catholics and Presbyterians, have instituted policies to deal with sex cases in the ministry. Power has been given to regional church leaders to eject or demote fallen preachers.
In Baptist denominations, however, national organizations have little real power over local congregations. Power is vested in local churches, which are run by boards of deacons, as is the Clifton Forge Baptist Church.
"Our policy makes it very difficult for the church, the denomination, to do anything, because the minister is both ordained and called by a local church," said Tom Halbrooks, a professor of history and dean of the faculty at the Baptist Theological Seminary in Richmond. Still, Baptists take sexual battery seriously, he said, and a convicted minister would be removed.
State laws limit when someone can sue for sexual abuse. A victim has two years to sue in Virginia, starting from the time a therapist establishes a link between childhood sexual abuse and injury. Adults can sue for abuse that occurred when they were minors, but they must file suit before age 20.
In 1991, when the General Assembly passed the law, it included provisions in it to open courtroom doors for older women who had recalled abuse before the law went into effect. Clute, the Richmond lawyer, was planning to file as many as 10 lawsuits. But the state Supreme Court then threw out the retroactive provisions.
So Clute has joined state Sen. Joseph Gartlan Jr., D-Fairfax, in pushing a measure in the General Assembly to override the court and make the law retroactive again with a constitutional amendment. To be successful, the measure must pass both houses this year and next, and then pass in a statewide election. It has cleared the Senate and is in the House now.
If the measure were to succeed, Clute said, the statute of limitations would allow the six Jane Does accusing Mattox of sexual battery to file suit for civil damages.