Devan Filchak, additional reporting by Rebecca R. Bibbs and Stuart Hirsh Broken Trust investigative team, Herald Bulletin Staff Writers
Third of three parts
Editor's Note: In some articles in the Broken Trust series, The Herald Bulletin is not using the real names of child sex abuse survivors who’ve asked not to be identified.
Julie Coon hit the button on the remote control to bring up a PowerPoint slide with contact information and asked whether any of the 90 sixth-graders at Highland Middle School wanted to talk about their body safety. “This is for you to contact us any time you think you need to,” said Coon, a child advocate from Kids Talk.
“Staying Safe in a Digital World” is one of the programs used to help prevent sex crimes against children and to give youngsters a safe way to report anything that might have happened to them.
Child sexual abuse is considered by some experts to be a preventable public health problem, and officials at Kids Talk in Anderson hope their program does just that.
Over the past nine years, Madison County, Indiana’s 13th-most populous county, had the fourth-most convictions in the state for sex crimes against children.
The program has been presented at many schools across the county since its inception in 2016.
Highland’s Jason Stecher, assistant principal for operations, said the interactive program helps students recognize when they are in danger and understand what to do about it.
“The kids are more aware of the resources that they can use. They’re more aware of inappropriate situations and where to report them,” Stecher said.
Officials and experts across a spectrum of youth-serving agencies, from schools to courts, remain in a constant struggle to prevent sex crimes against children and to deal with such crimes more effectively when they occur.
Though children can be empowered to safeguard themselves against sexual assault and to report inappropriate behavior, experts agree the burden for the safety of children lies with adults – parents and other relatives, teachers and administrators, police officers and judges, and social workers and therapists.
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The Child Molestation Research and Prevention Institute recommends a three-pronged approach to prevention:
• Widely sharing the facts about sex crimes against children
• Focusing on the primary cause, which CMRPI defines as a persistent sexual orientation toward children by offenders and potential offenders
• Early intervention “Professionals – physicians and therapists – can never put an end to sexual abuse; neither can the police or the courts,” the CMRPI website states. “Why? Because they come on the scene too late. By the time they get there, the children have already been molested.”
CMRPI officials believe the public profile of the typical molester is inaccurate. Though most abusers target children in their own families or children they otherwise know well, 90 percent of the effort to protect children is geared toward warning them about strangers, according to CMRPI.
“To save the greatest number of children in the shortest possible time, we must turn the current focus of our efforts upside down,” the website notes.
Additionally, CMRPI reports 95 percent of sex crimes against children are driven by an ongoing sexual attraction toward them by offenders or potential offenders. As a result, the organization said, treatment of those who pose a threat to children is the first line of defense.
“Most patients pose considerably less threat to the children around them, once they are involved in a sex-specific program that includes medicines, sex-specific therapy and various levels of supervision,” states CMRPI, which is based in California.
Sandy Runkle, director of programs for Prevent Child Abuse Indiana, said the key to stopping molestation is to understand who might be inclined to sexually molest a child and to cut off the person’s access to the child. Doing so requires recognizing signs of potential molestation, she added.
For instance, offenders tend to plan the molestation of a child, rather than it happening on the spur of the moment without premeditation.
“Many, many perpetrators are good at manipulating and ingratiating, especially when they perceive that the family is more vulnerable, like if the mother is desperate for child care,” Runkle explained.
More than 80 percent of crimes against children happen when the victim and abuser are isolated from others, she said.
“You want to gain the trust of everybody, so you can stay with the child alone,” Runkle said of a predator’s mindset. “Really, the best thing to do is to eliminate (the contact between the child and the potential abuser) and not have the one-on-one isolated interaction.”
Child molesters often favor a certain child by giving gifts, Runkle said. Their misbehavior escalates as they groom the child, often starting with inappropriate jokes to desensitize the child, then progressing to showing child pornography to their target.
One strategy for keeping children safe in the care of others, Runkle said, is to be blunt with child care providers.
“Some parents are very clear with their baby sitters and say, ‘I have talked to my child about child abuse, and they have been taught to tell,’” Runkle noted. “Obviously, that can be off-putting to somebody, but it’s better for that person to think twice.”
Parents and other adults also should realize that not all sex crimes involve physical touching. Voyeurism, exhibitionism and showing child pornography are also considered sex crimes.
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As Coon addressed students during the digital safety program at Highland, she acknowledged that students might not be accustomed to hearing such frank language about body safety.
That’s because discussing the topic with children can make parents, teachers and other adults uncomfortable.
“I am not at all uncomfortable, and I think you’re smart enough to receive this information,” Coon told the Highland students.
Dr. John Parrish-Sprowl, director of the Global Health Communication Center at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, said that teachers, in particular, must become comfortable with the language necessary to identify and deal with sex crimes against children.
Without children recognizing that a problem exists and understanding that there is a safe place to report it, sex crimes against children will continue to be underreported, he said.
Runkle estimated that two-thirds of child sexual abuse incidents go unreported.
“There is no question that there is stigma attached to this. It’s scary, and it’s hard to decide whom to tell,” Parrish-Sprowl said. “What, presumably, is our safe place is (often) the scene of the crime. As a consequence, who do you go to?”
The problem, he said, is not only that children don’t know how to talk about their bodies and what has happened to them, adults don’t either.
“What we found is the adults are not really prepared to have those conversations,” Parrish-Sprowl said. “In some cases, teachers are afraid to have those conversations, so they avoid them.”
Holly Renz, one of two pediatric sexual assault nurse examiners in Madison County and an Anderson Community Schools board member, noted that some parents teach their children proper clinical terms for their anatomy, and others don’t.
She has a strategy for dealing with the wildly varying language used by children during exams.
“We call it what they call it. What I think of as my privates may not be what they generally associate with their privates,” Renz explained.
She suggests that parents and other adults be direct but age-appropriate in responding to inquiries about sex.
“As (children) ask questions and become inquisitive, we should answer their questions,” she said, noting that it’s important for teachers and care providers to understand family culture.
“In some cases, sexual abuse is so prominent in the home, they think it’s normal and are surprised to find out it doesn’t happen to their friends twice a week,” Renz said.