Balancing Acts

Background Information on Child Abuse, Pedophilia, and Sex Offenders

Childhood sexual abuse is a pervasive and devastating social problem. It is important as we consider these issues that we learn the facts about child sexual abuse, pedophilia, and sex offenders, and that we separate them from the myths that are held in the culture. The information in this section will provide the reader with a rudimentary understanding; readers are encouraged to contact the organizations listed in the Resources section of this document for more information, as well as reading the cited resources.

Definition

One sex offender treatment specialist defined child sexual abuse as “a sexual act imposed upon a child who lacks emotional, maturational, and cognitive development. Authority and power enable the perpetrator, implicitly or directly, to coerce the child into sexual compliance. The ability to lure a child into a sexual relationship is based upon the all-powerful and dominant position of the adult or older adolescent perpetrator, which is in sharp contrast to the child’s age, dependency, and subordinate position.”^[xxii] The abuse can be intrafamilial - between a child and a family member or person in the role of a family member - or extrafamilial - between a child and someone outside the family. Incest is a specific term for sexual contacts between persons who are prohibited to marry by virtue of their familial relationship.

Sexual abusive behaviors range from nudity, disrobing, exhibitionism, to oral, anal, or vaginal sex. Child sexual abuse can include:

• Touching a child’s breasts, genitals, and anus.
• Having any type of intercourse with a child.
• Encouraging a child to watch or hear adult sexual acts.
• Using an object, instrument, or body part to penetrate a child’s genitals or anus.
• Having a child touch another’s genitals.
• Using a child in erotica.
• Showing erotic or pornographic materials to a child.
• Photographing a child in sexual poses.

Prevalence

Sexual abuse of children is very common. According to a number of studies, between 17 and 25 percent of women report that they were sexually abused before the age of 18, and 10 and 15 percent of men were sexually abused before the age of 18. In a national study of adults aged 18 to 59, about 12 percent of the men and about 17% of the women reported that they had been sexually touched as children.^[xxiii]

Who is abused:

The prevalence of childhood sexual abuse is remarkably high, and the facts often run counter to the assumptions that many people have. Both boys and girls are sexually abused, but abuses against girls predominate. Experience with childhood sexual abuse does not vary by ethnicity, race, social status, or education background of the parents.^[xxiv]

• One in four girls and one in six boys will be sexually abused before they turn age 16.^[xxv]
• Children under the age of 12 account for half of the juvenile victims of forced sexual offenses.^[xxvi]
• Young people under age 18 make up over two thirds of all sex crime victims.
• Girls predominate as victims of sex offenses.^[xxvii] 82% of all juvenile sex crime victims under the age of 18 are female.^[xxviii]
• One of every seven victims of sexual assault reported to law enforcement agencies were under the age of six.^[xxix]
• Nearly five out of every six sexual assaults of juveniles occurred in someone’s home, not a public place.^[xxx]
• Most children do not tell anyone the abuse has taken place. In a study of adults who remembered being touched sexually as a child, only one quarter of the women and one in six of the men remembered that they had told someone about this sexual contact with an older person.^[xxxi]

Relationship of the offender to the victim

Many people believe that children are sexually abused by strangers or known sex offenders. The reality is that strangers account for a small proportion of the abuse.

• Children know their abusers well in 90% of the cases – they are parents, family members, neighbors, clergy, coaches, and teachers.^[xxxii]
• Family friends and relatives are the primary offenders; family friends are more likely to offend with boys and relatives to offend with girls. One in seven girls is abused by a father, step father, or mother’s boyfriend, although only 3% of boys are abused by people in these categories.^[xxxiii]
• One quarter of offenders of victims, ages 12 through 17 are family members.^[xxxiv]
• Only 7% of offenders of juveniles are strangers to their victims.^[xxxv]

Profile of the offender

The public image of the sex offender is a strange middle-aged man lurking at a playground eyeing potential victims. The actual profile of the offender is someone well known to the child, someone who may be a teenager, and for boys, more likely to be female than another male. The percentage of adolescents that inappropriately touch children is rarely addressed in congregational policies or screening.

• Girls are primarily touched by men, while the boys are touched more often by women but also by men. The risk to girls is greatest from adult men (63%), followed by adolescent males (28%). The risk to boys is greatest from adolescent women (45%), followed by adolescent men (25%) and then older men (38%).^[xxxvi]
• Ninety-six percent of all offenders in sexual assaults of all ages reported to law enforcement agencies were male.^[xxxvii]
• Adults were the offenders in 60% of the sexual assaults of victims under the age of 12.^[xxxviii]
• Forty percent of the offenders of children under the age of six were other juveniles under the age of 18.^[xxxix] Sixteen percent of juvenile offenders were under the age of twelve.^[xl]
• Six percent of the offenders who sexually assaulted juveniles under the age of 18 were female, with 12% of the offenders with victims under six were female.^[xli]

Pedophilia

Pedophilia and pedophiles are terms that are often used incorrectly to describe someone who has had sexual contact with children. This information is presented to increase knowledge of pedophilia and clarify the use of terminology.

Clinical pedophilia is not the same as child sexual abuse or offending; a person can be diagnosed as having clinical pedophilia without committing criminal sexual acts with children. Many pedophiles may not be child sex offenders (they are attracted to children but do not act on those feelings), and many people who sexually molest children are not pedophiles. In other words, they are people who are primarily sexually attracted to adults, but in a specific situation, may molest a child.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Sexual Disorders, or DSM IV-TR, defines a person with pedophilia as a person who:

1. Over a period of at least 6 months, has recurrent, intense sexual arousing fantasies, sexual urges, or behaviors involving sexual activity with a prepubescent child or children (generally 13 years or younger).
2. The person has acted on these urges, or the sexual urges or fantasies cause marked distress or interpersonal difficulty
3. The person is at least age 16 years and at least 5 years older than the child or children in Criterion a.

The DSM IV-TR notes that this definition does not include an individual in late adolescence involved in an ongoing sexual relationship with a 13-year-old. It also asks clinicians to differentiate based on the sex of the preferred child, whether the behavior is limited to incest (a family member), and whether the attraction is exclusive (attracted only to children) or non-exclusive.^[xlii]

Ephebophilia is a preferential sexual attraction to adolescents. It is not considered pedophilia, and given the proliferation of images of sexualized adolescents in the media, it is fairly common. Ephebophilia’s legality is determined by state sexual consent laws; in other words, once a young person reaches the state’s legal age of consent, it is not a crime to have sex with them. Nepiophilia is a sexual attraction to infants.

Pedophilic behavior usually begins during adolescence or early adulthood. Pedophiles are said to “groom children.” It is rare for their contact to be forced upon a child. Rather, “they may begin with flattery and gifts or take the child on “dates” (outings), while proceeding from intimate conversation to sexual talk and sexual touch, gradually getting the child accustomed to each new step.” Children who are lonely, depressed, or angry with their parents are most vulnerable to these special attentions.^[xliii]

Treatment and Recidivism

As noted above, most sex crimes against children are never reported, and most sex offenders do not come to the attention of law authorities. Eighty-four percent of sexual abusers are never reported, and the National Crime Victimization Survey found that two thirds of sexual assaults against persons 12 and older are not reported to law enforcement.^[xliv]

Nevertheless, since congregations need to know how to respond to people who have been convicted of sex offenses, this information is offered to clarify many of the myths around treatment and recidivism.

Although state laws and practices vary, in many states convicted sex offenders who are serving time in prisons are not granted parole until they have successfully completed a sex offender treatment program. And once granted parole, states generally require the person as a condition of their parole to participate for a length of time in a treatment program for sex offenders. State laws do vary, and congregations will want to find out what treatment is available in their county jails and state prisons as well as parole requirements for treatment.

Treatment for sex offenders typically includes “A cognitive behavioral approach, which emphasizes changing patterns of thinking related to sexual offending and changing deviant patterns of arousal; …a psycho-educational approach, which stresses increasing the offenders concept of the victim and recognition of responsibility for their offense; and the pharmacological approach, which is based upon the use of medication to reduce arousal.”^[xlv] According to the Harvard Mental Health letter, anti-androgen medications are “the only reliable way, proven in controlled studies, to suppress pedophiliac urges.”^[xlvi]

There is a generally held perception that sex offenders are untreatable. Indeed, when I conducted interviews with congregations about their experience with this issue, I heard repeatedly that the majority of sex offenders will re-offend. And in several cases, congregations voted to completely exclude the offender from the faith community based on this incorrect assumption. One church that dealt with these issues, wrote to their membership, “the social worker explained that while studies in the literature vary substantially on the issue of recidivism rates, she was inclined to accept that repeat offenses were rather likely.”

The problem is that it isn’t true. The review of the literature for this monograph actually shows that with treatment, the majority of sex offenders will not recommit a sexual offense. [It is important in reviewing research on sex offender recidivism to separate child molesters from other sex offenders such as rapists and exhibitionists, as well as subsequent sexual offenses from all possible criminal offenses committed. Note in some studies sexual and nonsexual re-offenses are grouped together, leading to much higher re-offense rates. For this paper, only sexual re-offenses are considered. It is also important to recognize that studies are limited because they are only based on reported offenses, not those that might go unreported.] Even with the offenders who are pedophiles, treatment can help change behavior even if it does not change sexual attraction patterns. In a 1998 evaluation of 61 research studies on sexual offender recidivism (known as a meta-analysis), sexual offense recidivism was very low (13.4% of more than 23,000 offenders). The sexual offense recidivism of child molesters was slightly lower - - 12.7% for 9,603 abusers.^[xlvii] In another study, one in five of the extrafamilial child molesters recidivated.^[xlviii] The Bureau of Justice Statistics of the U.S. Department of Justice reports that 5.3% of sex offenders were rearrested for a sexual crime within three years of release.^[xlix] Another study found that child molesters with female victims had a 10 to 29% recidivism rate while child molesters with male victims ranged between 13 and 40%, but this study included non-sexual offenses in its data. Other criminals had higher rates of recidivism – for example, 38% of those convicted of a violent crime had another offense, as did one third of those with a property offense. In other words, in each of these studies, the majority of child molesters are never reconvicted for a sexual offense. It is also important to note that many of these studies include all sex offenders, not just child molesters or pedophiles, and that they are based on reported cases. According to the Harvard Mental Health Letter, “arrests and confessions don’t necessarily indicate the true numbers of repeat offenders.”^[li]

Treatment makes a difference. According to Stop It Now!, “there is a credible body of evidence that suggests that with specialized treatment, some sex offenders can take responsibility for their own behaviors, learn how to identify and control their triggers, and go on to lead healthy, safe, abuse-free lives.”^[lii] In a 2000 study in Kentucky, fewer than one in five (17.6%) of treated non-family offenders committed another sexual offense. But, untreated offenders commit more than twice as many sexual offenses as those who have had treatment.^[liii] According to the above referenced meta-analysis of 61 studies, offenders who fail to complete treatment are at higher risk for re-offending than those who complete treatment.^[liv] In one study of child molesters in treatment, 18% of those receiving cognitive behavioral treatment recidivated compared to 43% who did not participate in a program.^[lv]

There are also other factors besides completing treatment that are believed to reduce the risk of re-offending. These include “realizing the enormity of what they have done, admitting their responsibility and the harm their sexual violence has caused; support from family and friends on release; establishment of a social network; avoidance of situations involving contact with children; and participation in ongoing treatment and agreement to monitoring.”^[lvi]

There are people with a history of sex offense(s) who have demonstrated that they are able to control their impulses, avoid triggers, and thus eliminate any subsequent sexual behavior with children.

Further, involvement with a faith community may actually lessen the chance that a person will commit another sex offense. To quote the Methodist Church of the United Kingdom, “for many sex offenders, social isolation and a failure to integrate into an adult community contribute to an emotional lovelessness and poor self esteem that serve to increase the risk of re-offending.”^[lvii] To offer them appropriate support and involvement in a congregation reduces isolation and increases accountability.

An excellent review article, that is accessible to non-professionals, is “Recidivism of Sex Offenders” by the federal Center for Sex Offender Management. It can be read at www.csom.org/pubs/recidsexof.html

Conclusion

The issues addressed in this manual are complex and difficult. But if we are to honor our commitments to providing a safe place for all to worship, learn, and socialize, these issues must be addressed seriously and with integrity. We can keep our children, youth and vulnerable adults safe from sexual abuse and we can offer ministry and a congregational home to people who have been treated successfully for sexual offenses. We can honor our most basic principle that every person has inherent dignity and worth, and balance justice, compassion, accountability and safety. We are called to do no less.

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