We Can Break the Cycle

In the summer and fall of 1992, we unleashed a nightmare: the pain and terror of children violated by incest and other sexual assault. In four public hearings, brave Virginians told deeply personal stories of tragedy exploding from their experience as child victims of sexual assault. Many had contemplated suicide; some still do. Most had been hospitalized; some still are. All knew the men, and occasionally the women, who had assaulted them.

Their stories tear at the soul. One Tidewater mother told of discovering physical evidence in her daughter's diaper that she had been sexually penetrated. A woman from Petersburg recounted her days in a rocking catatonic trance and her eventual successful prosecution of the man who had raped her -- her father. In Wytheville, we learned of a father who hanged his young daughter's cat by the neck from a tree, threatening to do the same to her if she told anyone of the years of sexual assault she had endured at his hands. In Richmond, a 28-year old man confessed to having sex with more than 200 women in a frantic effort to prove his manhood -- and to having more than once had the sodomizer of his youth, a trusted family friend, in the sights of a high-powered rifle. One mother broke down before us as she recalled her three-year-old daughter's panic when her father innocently rested his head in her mother's lap as they watched television at home.

The sexual assault of children is a shockingly widespread, darkly secret, and powerfully destructive force today in Virginia and in America. We know that most adults find it hard to accept that such crimes are committed at all, much less in the numbers now being reported; denial is the automatic reaction of virtually everyone to the suggestion or the disclosure of the sexual assault of a child. We do not want it to be true. Yet we have learned that one in four girls and one in ten boys will be a victim of sexual assault of some kind before they reach the age of 18. The effects of such abuse are often crippling and always lifelong.

Though the human cost cannot be measured in numbers, the cost to society can. Child sexual assault, often unrecognized and untreated, exacts extraordinary costs from the Commonwealth. Twenty percent, approximately 3,000 inmates, of Virginia's adult prison population have been arrested for sexual offenses at some time. Research tells us that overwhelming number of them were themselves victims of child sexual assault. Childhood sexual victimization has direct causal links with prostitution, drug addiction, alcoholism, chronic depression and suicidal behaviors. Psychological dissociation occurs at a significantly higher rate for victims of sexual assault. Dissociative disorders include the "Three Faces of Eve" in which the victim develops multiple personalities to escape from the trauma of abuse. Victims of sexual assault also are at high risk of suffering from compulsive disorders, confusion about sexual identity, and crippling depression.

Paradoxically, given the horror at the root of the issue, the work of this Commission has been essentially optimistic. There are clear and achievable steps to be taken. We can break cycles of child sexual assault and incest which have persisted for generations, because we have learned how they work. We know that virtually all sexual offenders were first child victims. Most adult sexual offenders admit to having first acted out sexually as children or adolescents. Nationally, adolescents commit 30% to 60% of child sexual molestations, and 20-30% of rapes.

The clear, powerful answer to greatly reducing child sexual assault in Virginia is threefold: to change the structure of the legal system to hold offenders responsible for their actions and to prevent further child violation; to intervene with aggressive treatment for children who are victims, both to foster healing and to inoculate against later offender activity, and to intervene with rehabilitative correctional treatment for child and adolescent perpetrators to minimize repeat behavior; and to prevent child sexual assault in the first place by arming children with the information and the psychological tools to avoid becoming victims. We have long warned our kids to beware of a stranger with candy, but we do not know how to tell them that a loved and trusted family member or caretaker has no right to "secret touching" either.

Changing the legal structure, intervening aggressively with both victims and offenders, and teaching our children and our communities to recognize, prevent assault and disclose abuse -- this direct approach can have a marked and multi-generational impact on the incidence of child sexual assault.

CHANGING THE LEGAL STRUCTURE

We recommend a series of specific changes to the Code of Virginia; to the training regimens of judges, lawyers, and court personnel; and to the state constitution. Crimes against children must be taken as seriously as crimes against adults. The Code should be amended to make explicit that children are presumed to be competent witnesses.

The parental exception for child pornography should be eliminated, with commonsense safeguards, to afford protection to the child victimized by his or her own parent. "Inanimate" should be deleted from the offense of penetration with an inanimate object, recognizing the damage that results from digital and other sexual penetration. Juvenile and Domestic Relations Judges must be given authority to allow victim impact statements as part of pre-sentence investigations, to give families of the violated input into what happens to the offender. We support amending the Constitution of Virginia to make clear the General Assembly's right to enact retroactive legislation that enables adult survivors of child sexual assault to sue for damages for intentional personal injury.

We should amend the Code of Virginia to allow monetary damages of up to $100,000 for aggravated sexual battery. We recommend that a statute be enacted to allow for joint trial of defendants charged in "gang rape," the contemporaneous sexual assault of the same victim. And we offer a number of concrete proposals for additional training for law enforcement administrators, attorneys, judges, guardians ad litem, and court services officers to deal effectively with child sexual assault cases.

The aggregate effect of the many legal structural changes, large and small, will be to create a more secure, fair and equitable system for the successful prosecution of child sexual offenders and for ensuring that the seriousness of the crime is reflected in the penalty.

INTERVENING WITH CHILD VICTIMS AND JUVENILE OFFENDERS

We recommend a series of initiatives to improve the management and availability of intervention services for both victims and juvenile offenders. All child victims do not become offenders, but an overwhelming number of offenders were victimized as children. There is evidence that any healing intervention offered to a child who has been sexually abused may be sufficient to inoculate that child from later offending activity.

Too often, child victims have no access to critical intervention and mental health services. Others do not receive available therapies because there is no knowledgeable adult - parent, counselor, or designated professional - to guide them through the process. In addition, private health insurance does not provide adequate mental health coverage for the intervention and therapy needed by survivors of child sexual abuse.

The Commission heard conflicting evidence on the effectiveness of rehabilitation services for adult offenders, but we affirm the obvious wisdom of breaking the cycle of sexual assault at the earliest opportunity by investing in all necessary treatment for child and adolescent offenders. The success of Virginia's residential adolescent treatment centers in preventing recidivism among sexual assault offenders has been significant.

Specifically, we propose that Virginia:

• Ensure that every child sexual assault victim has a trained case manager, who is a member of a local multi-disciplinary team, to oversee the case coherently and aggressively;

• Determine the steps necessary to expand the responsibilities of Child Protective Services to include alleged child sexual assaults perpetrated by persons not in caretaking roles;

• Make major new investments in mental health treatment services for sexually abused children and adults molested as children, through local Community Services Boards and private providers;

• Make new budget commitments to expand Victim/Witness Assistance Programs, Court-Appointed Special Advocates (CASA), and sexual assault crisis centers directly serving the victim of sexual assault;

• Expand community-based intervention and treatment services for juvenile sexual offenders to reduce the likelihood of their becoming adult offenders;

• Expand by 30 beds the Department of Youth and Family Services residential offender treatment programs;

• Support a university-based research consortium to study, among other issues, the efficacy of biomedical treatment interventions for juvenile sex offenders; and

• Encourage judges to mandate treatment and long-term follow-up for adolescent and child sex offenders, involving their parents when appropriate.

These investments will give Virginia an intervention structure with the greatest potential for interrupting the multi-generational cycle of these secret crimes against children, by providing therapy which can heal the trauma of child sexual assault and prevent recurring adolescent and later adult sexual assault activity.

PREVENTION

The pain of child sexual assault stirs in us such disturbing and powerful feelings that we are startled by the comparative simplicity of the answer: prevention through education.

The world in which our children live throbs with messages of exploitative sex, violence, abuse of power, child sexuality, and negative or stereotyped attitudes about male-female roles and relationships. But the same powerful forces which have shaped these destructive images -- television, movies, advertising -- can become powerful, positive educational tools. And we have in our communities the institutions -- schools, universities, public and private agencies -- through which the message can be disseminated and the training provided.

Identifying the most positive and effective message is more complex -- we· must understand the dynamics of child sexual assault before we can educate ourselves and our children to recognize and prevent them.

We know that education means prevention. In hundreds of performances in schools across Virginia, "Hugs & Kisses," the child sexual abuse prevention play produced by Theatre IV of Richmond, has never failed to elicit from an audience of school children at least one disclosure of sexual abuse.

We propose the following prevention recommendations:

• Create a separate sexual abuse prevention component in the state's Family Violence Prevention Program.

• Launch a major media campaign to educate the public about sexual assault and establish local "media watch" monitoring efforts.

• Provide information and training on recognizing the signs of sexual abuse and the early signals of deviant sexual behavior to parents, teachers, police, court and social service workers and others who work with children.

• Increase funding for the play "Hugs & Kisses" to support 340 performances in one school year.

• Ask the Department of Education to ensure that all school divisions implement the Family Life Education Standards of Learning on child abuse.

CONCLUSION

Denial and silence are the allies of child sexual assault. Terror, shame and crippled lives are its legacy. Many courageous women and men shared their pain and their hopes with us. They asked us to bring their stories out of the shadows and into the light. They told us to believe the children.

Many caring and committed professionals and public servants helped us to frame the issues and shape our recommendations. In the months and years ahead, we pledge to bring the tragedy of child sexual abuse before the people of Virginia and their leaders. We are confident that they will see the wisdom of intervening in the cycle of child sexual abuse and that they will be willing to commit the resources and the good faith of the Commonwealth to that end.