New insight on child molesting and 'believe the child' (it's OK, nothing bad happens)

Great Debates
21

DDG, I would like to suggest this reading material from my personal library (yes, once upon a time, the Internet was not the only resource in my house!):

Jeopardy in the Courtroom by Stephen J. Ceci and Maggie Bruck.

An excellent “analysis of children’s testimony” as it relates to recent child abuse cases, especially where children tell tales that cannot be backed up by other evidence or even common sense. While I don’t want to diminish this book’s impact, my first thought after reading it was, “Is a book really needed to suggest that children have fantasies?” I made up stories as a child; all children do. It’s part of being a kid.

Another book, about the McMartin Preschool trial, The Abuse of Innocence, by Paul and Shirley Eberle. Detailed to the edge of boredom, but good.

And on a related subject, child abuse with the devil’s influence, Satanic Panic, The Creation of a Contemporary Legend, by Jeffrey S. Victor.

And on the subject of Freud, who saw sexual influence in everything around him without proof of any kind, read Madness On The Couch, Blaming the victim in the heyday of psychoanalysis, by Edward Dolnick.

I have often felt that accusations of such impropriety may reveal more about the accuser than the accused.

22

Another book I’ll add to that recommended list is Making Monsters: False Memories, Psychotherapy, and Sexual Hysteria, by Richard Ofshe and Ethan Watters. Thankfully, that breed of “therapy” peaked some years ago, but I don’t think it’s quite gone away yet.

Before reading that, I was often confused by people who didn’t think that children often lie and fantasize–I can only guess that they don’t have very good memories of being children themselves. Afterwards, it doesn’t confuse me as much, but it sure depresses me more.

23

Thank you, kellibelli, for saying that you were “lying” on the couch, I hate it when people don’t know that “laying” is wrong!! :smiley:

Er… but on the subject… I know that many children can’t tell the difference between reality and make-believe (I sometimes wonder if very small children know that their dreams aren’t real?), but can’t social workers tell from a child’s general demeanour how to interpret what they hear? For example, wouldn’t it have seemed unlikely that the young Guinastasia, readily and smilingly accusing her father of hitting her, was a victim of child abuse?

I don’t know much about abused children, but I have heard that the abused child sometimes tries to curry favour with the abusive adult, thus appearing to be overly affectionate towards that adult. I suppose this could be misleading for social workers trying to read a child’s behaviour for signs of abuse.

24

So, he’d told her to yell that, in a crowd of strangers? And struggle while she was yelling? Do I have that straight?

25

As part of my studies, I’ve been interested in the notion of perception, especially children’s preception of events and their ability to relate stories.

I’ve written countless documents for cops and shrinks on the topic of interviewing children, or talking to children. Kids make unreliable sources - their grasp of language and subtle elements of speech aren’t solidly internalised until they reach their teen years.

I’ve studied the Satanic Panic and other moral panics in depth, and in all cases, there were well-meaning parents who missinterpreted a child’s vision of events, or malingering parents who wanted to get even, parents suffering from Munchausen’s or other factitious disorders, or children (teens) who had ulterior motives for coming up with untruths.

Should we believe kids? Yes, likely - but should we climb the curtains? No. Let them talk, but don’t ask leading questions. I will always remember a study that we conducted in Canada with a group of 6 year olds. We let them play, twice a week, in one of our study rooms. We made a male student enter the room (in a labcoat, glasses, and a hat) say hi to the kids, pick up a toy train, and leave. Every time they played, he’d go in, pick up a toy, say hi, and leave.

When we questionned the kids (over 2 weeks) they all had VERY different descriptions of the man in question. Not only that, but by asking leading questions, we got them all to tell us things that would have been considered proof that he sexually abused them and held cool satanic parties. On week two, when we asked them again and started telling them they were “lying”, ALL the kids stuck to their story and got rather pissed at the adults who wouldn’t believe them.

Do gets get abused? YES. They do. Lots of them. We need to do something about that, even if we only have a suspicion that something’s amiss. This being said… a number of innocent people get roped into stories of events that never happened - many lives are ruined by headlines… and then, when it all comes down and is proven to be false, the story is burried on page E14… and there’s always lingering doubt…

Sorry for the hijack, DDG. :smiley:

If anyone’s interested in this kind o’ stuff, let me know, I’ve got all sorts of documentation… and a thesis.

Best,

Elly

26

Oh, have I got a story for you guys!
My oldest son went to his sperm donors house for his weekend of I want to play parenting and such.
Well, I got a call from Jerky telling me that Josh had tossed a stuffed animal in the air that had one of those voice box things, and it came down on his eye and now he had a black eye, please don’t panic when I bring him home kind of thing.
No big deal, things like that happen and at least he called and didn’t just drop him off without explaination. See, I used to have fits because his nieces were biters, and Jerky would bring my son home with bite marks and not tell me until I found them at bathtime.
Anyway…
Josh went to school the next day, and when he went down to the nurse to take his meds, she asked him about his eye.
Now, being an emotional child he started crying.
He told the nurse that that morning while my husband was walking him to school he hit him in the eye for not walking fast enough.
Next thing I know I’m getting a call from the school nurse telling me that she call DHS because she is a manditory reporter of child abuse.
Well, they come in and investigate and lo and behold when they question Josh he fesses up and tells them that he said his step-father hit him because he didn’t want to get in trouble. You see he knew that it was wrong to throw toys in the house.
He thought the school was going to punish him for misbehaving.

27

Matt, I know that your fears are well-founded and I just hate that. Even if you DO work for the F.B.I., instead of D.Q. like we all thought-- :rolleyes:-- we still love you and trust you. Why should you be afraid to have the same level of enjoyment and physicality with kids who may be a part of your life, as anyone else might? I find it despicable.

My kids’ day care providers are a lesbian couple. Not for one second in the EIGHT AND A HALF YEARS that the kids have been going to their home, have I ever ONCE considered them as anything but the most amazing, loving, caring adults that they are. Flawed, troubled- like anyone else I know- but incredibly great child care providers. Fucking homophobics. :mad:

Now then, as to the theme here. Am I now not permitted to put suntan lotion on my daughter’s legs at Cape Cod? She loves to crawl into my office chair and curl up in my lap and hug me so fiercely that she takes my breath away, when she comes to kiss me goodnight each night. Am I no longer permitted this?

Should she feel like she cannot be affectionate with her own father? Or, any other man who she grows to love and trust? How else do kids learn to HAVE trust and a decent sense of comfort that develops- when they become adults- into a sense of intimacy that they are comfortable with?? They learn it in their own families- and since we’re lucky this way, they learn it from seeing the day care ladies who also have a gentle and loving relationship. The kids see them kiss goodbye just as they see my wife and I kiss goodbye in the morning.

I can’t imagine being accused by any child of something like the things described in this thread, and yet we all know it could happen to anyone. The virulent AND violent reaction would make any community pillory the accused far before any proof was presented, or trial occurred.

I can’t live in mortal dread of that, I like kids and kids like me. If a kid at my daughter’s soccer game is hurt, I should keep my hands off of her rather than tend her injury-whether or not mom and dad are there?

What I find to be most upsetting is that litigiousness has changed the subtleties of society. YES, I’m not an idiot, children are molested and killed. But the ratio of accusation to true event is a slippery one, as the O.P. here proves most articulately.

The more the layers of civility and gentility are stripped away, the less I love the way the world works.

Cartooniverse

28

Some things absolutely spin my wheels, and this subject is one of them.

Picture this; (male) friend and I standing outside a local business. I’ve got my hands full with phone, notebook, coffee and cigarette, his hands are free.

Child falls over in front of us, gets up, realises she can’t see her mother any more, turns around very fast, falls down again and starts howling, partly in fear, partly because she’s now got two scraped knees. I rapidly offload phone, notebook, coffee and cigarette and pick the kid up from the ground; kid’s mother comes sprinting up (she’d been looking in a store window, set slightly back from the main line of windows and so not visible to the kid), gives me a dirty look, as though I’m about to kidnap her child.

Friend hands phone, notebook, coffee and cigarette back to me and says, “If a woman helping a kid got a look like that, can you imagine what she’d have done to me?”

It’s sad that I got an evil look for picking a kid up; it’s even sadder that my male friend doesn’t dare to help.

29

Not to mention that kids ARE naturally affectionate.

I saw it when I did student teaching. They go up to each other and put their arms around each other’s shoulders, they hold hands, they link arms and skip along the playground, etc etc.

The little kids were always crowding around me, trying to hold my hands. That’s kids.

Hey, when I was a toddler, and my dad would take a bath every morning, because we didn’t have a shower, I would run in and jump in with him-I was maybe two at the oldest. I mean, Jesus Christ on a stick, people!

30

The problem with not believing kids about being molested is
that it does happen. And how many molesters are going to admit they do this ?

Yes there are cases where kids lie when nothing happened, sadly there are also many (too many) cases where kids don’t speak up when it is actually happens. I never told anyone in my family about my dad and my grandfather molesting me when I was a kid until I was 27 years old. I didn’t tell because I was afraid, I was afraid of what my dad would do to me (he was also very abusive) and I was afraid of my family hateing me because of it. Like many people I belived it was my fault.

So please don’t dismiss all claims of a child being molested, if I must make a mistake I would rather be mistaken on the side of the child. I would never forgive myself if I didn’t believe a child and said nothing when this was really happening to that child. It takes a lot of courage for an abused child to speak up.

31

I once was dating a girl who had an adorable 4 yr old boy. This kid being an only child was good at amusing himself. I remember one time, he went out to the back yard to play a while and when he came back into the house, told me a great story about how a huge wolf came up to him and he rode the wolf into the forest and saw all these sights and fought beasties of various kinds and so on. The kid had quite an imagination but what struck me was the sincerity on his face convinced me that he actually believed all that he was saying. I don’t put this in the same category as lying so much as living out his own reality.
Here’s another example. I remember when I was about 5 and as I was falling asleep, this little black spot on my pillow grew to be this HUGE freaking spider that was about to eat me. I screamed and the spider shrunk back down to that spot (which turned out to be a piece of lint) but I kept screaming until my parents came into the room and calmed me down. I’m sure my imagination just got the better of me but it seemed real and I could not tell that it wasn’t.
My point is that we shouldn’t think of the kid as lying so much when it’s very likely he’s just relating his reality. Imagination is so much more a part of children’s reality than it is for adults and lying is such a harsh word to describe this.

32

I used to babysit regularly. I remember once, playing with a three year old named Becka. We were rolling a bar back and forth on the floor. All of a sudden it bounced off her ankle and rolled softly between her legs. She started giggling and said, “It hit me in the bagina!” All at once I had visions of the cops at my door to question the babysitter who “hit her in the bagina” :eek:

My uncle is currently under investigation for child abuse, he smacked my (15 year old) cousin after getting into an argument about her going out and getting drunk and sleeping around.He has never raised a hand to either of the girls before, I guess he just lost it.

But when I called CFS about my best friend getting the crap kicked out of her by her parents, they did nothing.

33

I’ve avoided opening this thread because I was worried it would be too personally upsetting to me.

My uncle spent time in jail due to an accusation. I wasn’t there, so I cannot say for a fact that he didn’t do what his foster daughter accused him of. But I believe he was utterly innocent and this was her disturbed way of getting back at him for some preceived offense to herself. He has four daughters of his own, and when I was a pre-teen and teen I went and lived with them for a week in the summer. I know this man. I would trust him with my own kids. And it kills me what he went through.

I now try very hard to not rush to judgment when I read about yet another case of suspected abuse. I know it happens, and I know there are guilty people out there who were caught and stopped only because a little kid was brave enough to tell. But oh how my heart aches for the other ones, and I hate how we simply cannot discern what the truth is sometimes.

34

  1. The other day one of my coworkers jokingly called me a pedophile (I mentioned that I thought that a particular young man was attractive) and I flipped out at him. He honestly couldn’t figure out what I was on about until I explained it to him; in fact he had jokingly said the same thing to a straight friend who had ogled a girl who looked much older than she actually was.

  2. Why is it that if a straight guy talks about “a cute girl”, referring to a young woman, it’s innocent (if sexist), but I’m totally afraid to be caught referring to “a cute boy” in reference to a young man? I mean, I’m 19 for heaven’s sake.

35

I’m not saying this was your source of information, but that scenario is one of my favorite episodes of Quincy.

36

One of my school friends made a false allegation against her father, and was removed from her home. She didn’t 'fess up for years. Now that she’s come clean, her parents have forgiven her and they’re all cosy and friendly again. Except that they now live in a different state - no matter how many times you get someone to retract a statement like that, people will still believe the worst. The difference is that my friend was about 14 when she made up her story.

On the other hand, my SO’s grandmother’s boyfriend molested her youngest daughter, a few of her granddaughters and some of her nieces. She’s still with him now that he’s out of jail, and the unaffected daughter can’t understand the hostility from the mother of the molested girls. It burns me up to sit there and listen to them saying ‘Why does she think Mum owes her an apology? This isn’t about taking sides.’ I would love my SO’s grandmother except for this - what is wrong with her? He raped her daughter, her granddaughters and her nieces! Yet she forgives him, and wonders why that causes a huge family feud.

I’ve always found that getting people to believe is the hardest thing. So many of my girlfriends were abused by their father figures, yet their mothers stood by the men who were supposed to be their fathers. In the worst case I remember, creepy Andrew was accused of molesting his sister, Amanda. She was taken from the home and put into foster care, and her parents refused to believe he’d done it! He continued to live in the family home while Amanda was basically disowned by her mother. I remember seeing Amanda at school, and she’d have scabs all over her arms, because she used to cut herself up with a razor - she said she liked scars. She wasn’t a normal girl, and finding out about what her brother had done explained a lot. Meanwhile, her little sister Alison was still stuck in the family home.

Alison and my brother decided they were “an item” when they were fairly young, about 13. This meant that they hung out together, but they weren’t into kissing or anything - they were a little young for that. Anyway, Alison would come to our house to visit, and then beg not to be sent home. The mother of her best friend told my mother that she had the same problem, Alison always wanted to come to their house, and never wanted to go home. She’d cry and beg to be allowed to stay longer. As a sweet and fairly quiet kid, it was out of character for Alison to create a scene, and it worried all of us. Her “romance” with my brother came to an end in a short time, and off she went.

About 6 months later, Alison finally went to the authorities and confessed that her brother had been molesting her too. She couldn’t take any more. She was removed from the family home and placed into foster care. Instead of saying “Gee, both my daughters say Andrew did this to them, maybe it’s true”, Alison’s mother said “Another lying little b*tch! She got this idea from Amanda. Well, I have no daughters!”. Later, she decided that Alison had been sexually abused, but she said it must have been my brother that did it, and that Alison was lying to protect him! She showed up at the school one lunch time and went around asking all the kids if they’d ever seen my brother hurt Alison, or if Alison had ever complained of him hurting her. Of course this got back to us (my brother’s classmates were ready to lynch him for hurting that little girl), and my mother was furious. She contacted the school, the school banned Alison’s mother from coming back, and that was pretty much the last we heard of it.

The stupid cow couldn’t see that her son was a freak and a pervert. To me, it was obvious at a glance that there was something really wrong with that guy. I know that Alison also claimed that one of her uncles had molested her, so I presume that uncle may have hurt Andrew too, but try telling that to their mother. She was an utter moron, and should never have had children. I suspect she was borderline retarded by the way she spoke and the things she said. She worked at the school canteen at one stage, and the other people serving would have huge queues while no one would line up in front of her - this is because she couldn’t remember more than one thing at a time, and couldn’t count. She would always give the wrong change, and it would take most of lunch break for her to finish serving one customer. I hated that woman with a passion. Her daughters were nice girls, and their brother should have been strung up for what he did to them.

37

matt, don’t know if it’ll make you feel any better, but i’m 20 and a straight chick, andi wouldn’t call a guy my age, or slightly younger, a “boy.” it just seems like an insult. like, guys don’t want to be thought of as boys, but men. but girls, well, i wouldn’t mind if people thought i was 20 for the rest of my life. :wink:

so i really don’t think that has a lot to do with you being gay, just the differences between guys and girls and how old they want to appear.

38

Sinister goatee? Liked to be left alone? How do you look like a pedophile? I’d just like to know so I don’t look like one.

39

Well, Eternal, it’s hard to define… but I’m sure you’ve met people who just weren’t right. He was one of them. I afraid my wording looks bad - like his mother should have known he was wrong just by his looks - but that’s actually not what I meant. I meant that there were a lot of things about this guy’s manner that just weren’t right, and it was no surprise to discover he’d been messing with his sisters. He was creepy and weird.

40

This is an inexactness of English, possibly based in patriarchy. In English as it’s been spoken in most of my life, a male young child is a boy and a female young child is a girl. A teenaged or older male is a ‘guy’ and a teenaged or older female is… a girl. Inexactness of language, like I said.

So the appropriate counter to, “I saw this cute girl” is “I saw this cute guy” not “I saw this cute boy.” On a larger scale, what should we do about this ambiguity of the term ‘girl’? Well, that would probably deserve its own thread. I like the Australian term ‘sheilas’ but I don’t think it’ll catch on.

–John