My opinion FWIW
The debate regarding the prevalence of predatory child abusers, like the debate regarding the prevalence of human trafficking for the purposes of forced / coerced prostitution, easily becomes polarised in such a way that intelligent debate and attempts at thinking often degenerate into emotive name calling people clinging on to their respective entrenched positions.
I'll just say a little bit about myself, here. I was abused as a child, not as terribly as some children were abused, but abused nonetheless. I do not want to go into details, but the issue of abuse divided my family, basically my brother and I were clear that we had been abused (and were were abused more than my sisters) whereas my 2 sisters decided that what happened was sort of abusive but not to the extent that my bro and I experienced it.
Obviously over the years people's perspectives changed a little, one of my sisters now acknowledges that we were abused, but my other sister refuses to think about the issue and starts to cry and get angry if anyone so much as tries to discuss the issue. Obviously it is cruel to try to make someone think about something that they cannot cope with so the subject is effectively off limits.
Now, my brother and me, we have an ability to sense / notice abuse to the point that it's frankly a bit of a burden.
If something nasty is happening somewhere I detect it almost instinctively, same with my brother. He is a senior social worker and one of the first things he achieved when he first started work as a social worker working with vulnerable street drinkers, was to expose an undercover ring of predatory child abusers in positions of authority who had been abusing children for decades.
My sister on the other hand, frankly people could be getting shot / kidnapped / raped under her very nose and she would remain cheerfully oblivious to what was going on. Her attention would be fixated on the beautiful blue of the sky or the prettiness of a bird in a tree. Everything is "lovely" in her world.
The point I want to make when talking about my family is that although we had the same parents, we all subjectively had different parents. Also, the effects of the abuse and how we all dealt with it left 2 of us being very aware of abuse, possibly to the point (in my case) of hyper-vigilance, one sister in a state of confusion and one sister maintaining that everything was lovely.
As an adult I have worked with various charities and community groups all working with adults who had been abused as children.
One thing that is incredibly frustrating for anyone working in the field is that, over time, you become familiar with countless testimonies of people who were abused as children, under the noses of teachers, doctors and social workers and somehow, over the years, nobody ever noticed.
The other thing that becomes apparent is that there is no shortage of predatory child abusers. It is probably true that there are more abusers abusing within their own families than "stranger" abusers, however some of the "stranger" abusers are horrifically prolific in their abuse.
IME most people who work professionally with either abused children or adults who were abused as children inevitably are burdened with a loneliness arising from the knowledge of understanding that there is a hidden epidemic of abuse that many people would rather not be aware of.
Then we have a vile and hypocritical gutter press here in the UK that reports on child abuses cases in a sensationalist and salacious manner, avoiding any analysis of the complex and difficult issues involved and instead simply firing up mob hatred for "them" (child abusers / social workers / any other overworked stressed professional who can be scapegoated for a collective inability to think about the issue).
If you work in the field you soon start to feel as if a sizable minority of adults are involved in the sexual abuse of children.
The proclamations, from some quarters, that there is a media created panic about paedophiles and that the "stranger danger" message is an exaggerated response to a fictional problem, feels hurtful, insulting and misinformed.
The horrible truth is that is is impossible to accurately determine the prevalence of child abuse and child sexual abuse simply because;
- it is hidden
- children / adults abused as children find it difficult to talk about the abuse
- children who do tell are sometimes disbelieved
- it is difficult to comprehend and think about
- professionals dealing with it are often inadequately trained / supported
- some academics / clinicians (e.g. Valerie Sinason) are so attached to their own bizarre theories that they effectively bring their professions into disrepute, thus creating further impediments to victims of real abuse being believed.
- sensationalist, salacious and completely insensitive press reporting
- boundaries between abuse in the family and abuse by strangers are not always clear (e.g. some abusers pimp out their own children).
- adult survivors of child abuse often make for unreliable witnesses
- memory is not an exact thing and memories change over time
probably lots of other reasons too....
It seems to me that we can never know the prevalence of children sexually abused by people who are not members of their immediate family. We will never know, for example, the percentage of children abused by strangers as opposed to by members of their immediate families.
Is the subject one that generates immense salacious media excitement? Undoubtedly.
However it is unhelpful and very hurtful to people engaged in the difficult work of dealing with this stuff, to suggest that there is "exaggerated concern" or that the media response has been blown out of proportion.
As someone who was abused as a young child, I then went on to be targeted by flashers, perverts and child abusers throughout my childhood and into my adult life.
I know that this is not unusual. Once someone has been abused they can give off some kind of vibe that other abusers can detect and exploit. It is not uncommon for people who were abused sexually as kids by a parent, for example, to go on to be targeted by other abusers unrelated to that parent.
For many people who have had that kind of experience, the world seems to be teeming with predatory paedophiles and, in their world, it is.
Arguing about the prevalence of predatory paedophiles seems to be to be a pointless pursuit as nobody will ever have accurate data on the subject and our own subjective perspective will be coloured by our own experiences in life.
The most we can achieve is to accept that there are countless impediments to accurate research re this issue but to all do our best to think about the difficulties, to try to ensure that professionals in the field are adequately supported so they can do their jobs properly and to be sensitive to the fact that this is a horrific issue that needs to be handled with maturity and sensitivity.
I wonder whether the wish to reduce everything to quantifiable terms is a wish to be able to "know where the edges are" regarding a subject that is hard to quantify and "get a grip on"?
) but the way we implement the ones we've already got.
) means that, since they're guaranteed to fail, as they are in the US, there's plenty of opportunity for a "use a bigger hammer" followup campaign in a few years.
)
