More learning on abuse

[drwex]

Last time, I noted that there's a lot I don't know about the laws around abuse - today's post is more of the same.

In her column today "2011’s Lessons on How We Can Better Protect Children From Sexual Abuse", (law) Professor Marci Hamilton reviews some of the abuse cases that have been made public in the past year and lists 10 "lessons learned". I'll excerpt here:
10. Organizations cover up child sex abuse.
9. The pattern of the cover-up of child sex abuse is the same, regardless of the institution.
8. It takes all of us to cover up child sex abuse.
7. The information about ongoing child sex abuse is all around us and needs to be put to constructive ends
6. Abuse is a lot more prevalent than anyone wants to believe
5. Those who come forward to allege that they were the victims of child sex abuse rarely make up their claims.
4. States must enact better laws if our children are going to truly be safe from sexual abuse.
3. We need better mandatory reporting laws
2. We need to eliminate the statutes of limitations for child sex abuse
1. Politicians are behind the learning curve on these issues

I think I grok all of these except #4. Assuming we improved the mandatory reporting laws (point 3) and fixed the statute-of-limitations problems (point 2), what other legal changes are necessary, particularly to protect children? Are other experts on child abuse calling for changes in states' laws?

Ms Hamilton wrote a book in 2008 on this topic. Do I need to read this book to understand the point of legal failures?

As an aside she notes on point 6 that the rate of abuse is 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 5 boys; I didn't realize the rate in boys was that high.

Comments

[rmd.livejournal.com]

Note that often when abuse is revealed, people blame the whistle-blowers rather than the organization.

[selenite.livejournal.com]

I don't think the rate is that high:
http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb/pubs/cm10/cm10.pdf#page=9
has a child abuse/neglect rate of 9.2 per 1000, with sexual abuse being less than a tenth of the total cases.

As for the other points I'll just dispute #2. Statues of limitations reflect that it can be difficult or impossible to get adequate evidence or testimony a long time after the event. Eyewitnesses are often confused the next day, after twenty years the testimony is very unreliable. In child sexual abuse cases the well has also been poisoned by the damage done by the "recovered memories" fad.

It has however

[sweetmmeblue.livejournal.com]

There are some forms of therapy where memories are recovered that are admissible and have proven reliable. the EMDR therapy that I'm trained in is one of them.

[unseelie.livejournal.com]

I slept with 7 people before I graduated before I graduated high school. I knew that 2 of them had been abused by family members when i was with them. I have since learned that 5 of my first 7 lovers had been abused. Since then, the rate is about the same; if you are one of Richard's lovers; the likelihood of you being an abuse survivor is around 2 in 3.
It has been pointed out that many abuse survivors have certain behavioral patterns and that perhaps I am drawn to them. It has also been pointed out by many of my ex's that I am one of the few people they felt safe sharing this information with*. IE: that my Ex's other lovers didn't know.
It has made me very vigilant when around children these days. I watch for the signs. And thank Crawling Chaos that I have not seen the signs in any of the children I interact with regularly these days.

*It has also been pointed out that I have some of the signs; and given that my childhood was... more interesting than most, it is not unlikely that I have blocked somethings out in my head as well.

[c1.livejournal.com]

Regarding #4, I wonder if mandating that child abuse identification be taught to schoolchildren (I'm thinking aloud here, so I have no idea about how this would play out) might help. I think once you know what to look for, perpetrators will have fewer places to hide. Besides that, children who aren't sure if past behaviour they've experienced (or witnessed) rises to the level of abuse can make more informed decisions about whether to report.

Also, what, exactly, is abuse?
How do you define abuse, such that true abuse is shut down, while benign behaviour isn't? Many abuse laws require Justice Potter Stewart ("I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description... and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it...") in order to filter out the bad guys from the good. Given that recent history is rife with overzealous prosecutors concerned more with their own reelection campaigns than true justice, it's important to look closely at the laws and replicate the ones that work and weed out the one's that don't.