For the last year and a half, I've worked on a number of child sex abuse cases on behalf of a practitioner who does has a lot of these cases. This isn't where I thought I'd do a lot of work - the one sex abuse case I worked on in law school made me drink. (OK, just for one night. But still.) Most of what I'd known about sex abuse came from Law and Order: SVU. Now I can talk about sex abuse in really graphic terms, without even realizing I'm doing it. My summaries of fact in memos can turn your stomach, and frankly, they should. This is sick stuff.
For whatever it's worth, this is how my career has shaken out, and now it's something I think and talk about frequently, mostly with great passion and mostly with great anger. Because the victims are fucked up. Fucked up like Vietnam combat vets are fucked up.
Sometimes these are adults whose lives have been completely wrecked by the sex abuse. Sometimes they're kids whose lives are just starting to be completely wrecked by the sex abuse. The cases involve Boy Scouts, or ministers, or church volunteers, or family, or employers. (Sometimes they're all of the above.)
The one thing they all have in common? Someone knew the guy (yeah, they're all guys) was a molester. And that someone didn't say anything.
(And about the "my life was ruined by false accusations" people? I know -- especially in the context of bitter custody disputes -- that sometimes false accusations are made. In a perfect world, prosecutors and police would have much better tools to get to the truth of the matter - like, for example, what is ordinary sexual development and what is hypersexual, victim behavior. People who do make those groundless accusations should be criminally prosecuted and/or lose custody to the blameless parent. But frankly, there are so many molesters out there crying "my life was ruined by false accusations" that I have a hard time taking that line seriously.)
In a church, sometimes the guy molested a kid before, and no one thought to restrain him from "spending time" with other kids. Or sometimes the church leadership didn't want to "punish" other members of the molester's family by making a big deal of the molestation. Or sometimes the molester was a minister who the regional leadership knew was a molester, and yet decided to place in a church without warning the church beforehand.
Ditto Scouts.
Ditto volunteers.
Ditto foster parents.
Ditto employers.
Ditto neighbors.
And we all know what happens next, right? Because child molesters don't just stop if you pray about it, or if they promise they'll never, ever do it again, or if you give them a second chance, or if you just hope they'll get better. Because they don't, or they can't, or they won't. They just move on to another kid - and then that kid is fucked up, too.
So here's my helpful tip of the day: if you know that that guy diddled a kid, no matter how long ago it was, TELL EVERYONE YOU KNOW. And then call the police. He's not entitled to have a good reputation - as far as I'm concerned, he's not entitled to be around other people, period. He's not entitled to teach Sunday School, or lead a troop of Scouts, or act as a foster parent. It's not OK to say "he can volunteer as long as his own kids are there, too." (Often he's diddling his own kids, too.) It's not OK to say, "We are keeping our eyes on him." The guy is a molester and he will find some way to molest. If you know he's a molester and he's spending time around kids, it is your absolute moral duty as a human being to turn his ass in. Period.
If the guy gives you a creepy feeling but you don't have any "real" information? For God's sake, keep your kid away from him. You really think your kid's entire future happiness is worth sparing some creepy guy's (or his wife's) feelings?
And if you think someone might have molested your kid? Whatever the hell you do, don't ignore it and hope it goes away. It won't. Call the cops. Get your kid in therapy that day. And sue the bastard(s) who made it possible for the molester to have contact with your kid.
Sometimes it's the only way to make sure.
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