UPDATE 1: CHECK OUT THIS TIMELY REMINDER OF THE PITFALLS OF FORCED CHILD ABUSE REPORTING FROM PHILADELPHIA CITYPAPER
UPDATE 2: IN CASE ANYONE STILL BELIEVES THE HYSTERIA OVER REPORTING CHILD ABUSE WON'T CAUSE PEOPLE TO DO SOME REALLY STUPID THINGS: APPARENTLY, IT ALREADY HAS
UPDATE 3: IN THE CASE DISCUSSED IN THIS STORY, THE CHILD REALLY WAS ABUSED. IMAGINE WHAT IT'S LIKE FOR A CHILD WHO WAS NOT.
● The myth that “children don’t lie” is back
UPDATE 2: IN CASE ANYONE STILL BELIEVES THE HYSTERIA OVER REPORTING CHILD ABUSE WON'T CAUSE PEOPLE TO DO SOME REALLY STUPID THINGS: APPARENTLY, IT ALREADY HAS
UPDATE 3: IN THE CASE DISCUSSED IN THIS STORY, THE CHILD REALLY WAS ABUSED. IMAGINE WHAT IT'S LIKE FOR A CHILD WHO WAS NOT.
● The myth that “children don’t lie” is back
● The hype is back: One “expert” suggests that two-thirds of Americans either were victims of child sexual abuse – or have a sibling who was.
● The 1980s witchhunt mentality may be making a comeback, too – and it’s children who really have been abused who are going to suffer most.
As I listened to the end of a segment of NPR’s Tell Me More on Tuesday, I felt as though I’d been transported back in time. Suddenly it was the 1980s again, when a bizarre, hyperbolic, myth-fueled reaction to the serious and real problem of child sexual abuse led to a whole series of tragedies of its own. In the wake of the Penn State horrors, it looks like those myths are making a comeback.
Anchor Michel Norris was leading a discussion of “how to teach children to be alert to potentially abusive behavior and how to get them to speak up …”
At the very end, Norris raised an issue that, as far as I know, no other journalist has had the courage even to mention since the Penn State story broke:
There is an awful other side to this and there have been examples of false accusations … a group of girls were angry at a gym teacher because he had punished them for passing notes or talking and so they made up an accusation which turned out to be false. So how do you recommend that parents navigate such a thing?
This is where the trip through time began, led by Dr. Leslie Walker of Seattle Children's Hospital. It was 1980s mythology all over again as Walker declared:
I think you have to remember that one in three girls under the age of 18 do get sexually abused. And it's no different, it's the same number of boys under, before puberty. So when someone says that they have been abused you have to assume that it happened immediately … One in three people have been abused …”
The one-in-three number is utter nonsense, and I’ll deal with it in a post on Monday.
For now, consider the fact that, though she didn’t use the exact words, Walker was leading us back to the era of those 1980s catchphrases “children don’t lie” and “believe the children.”
It’s been such a long time since those phrases were all the rage, and such a long time since the hyped numbers were in vogue, that I had to go back to the book I wrote in 1990, Wounded Innocents (Prometheus Books, 1990, 1995) to review what happened and how much harm was done to children.
“CHILDREN DON’T LIE”
The issue of the truth of claims attributed to children wasn’t simple then, and it’s not simple now.
Of course, it is extremely unlikely that a very young child would make up out of whole cloth a story of being sexually assaulted.
In other cases, there is strong evidence that the children are not only telling the truth, but showing extraordinary courage in coming forward – courage for which they deserve wholehearted support. I would put the Penn State cases in that category.
But many allegations of sexual abuse involve situations that are far less clear-cut. So, for example, in Upstate New York, authorities concluded that children who had heard one of the now-ubiquitous “good touch / bad touch” lectures that supposedly prevent sexual abuse wound up falsely accusing their substitute teacher. But the children weren’t lying. They had confused normal affection with “bad touching.”
In addition, young children aren’t the ones who pick up the phone and call child abuse hotlines. Adults do that. And by that time the child might have been questioned repeatedly by a concerned parent or a therapist, or someone else who asked so many leading questions that what gets phoned into the hotline may bear little resemblance to what the child actually said.
Or the children are rewarded with praise for “disclosing” abuse and badgered if they don’t – a common problem in the “mass molestation” nightmare cases of the 1980s – cases that produced some remarkable allegations.
● If children don’t lie about abuse, then Bakersfield California was a hotbed of cannibalism.
● If children don’t lie about abuse there was a secret underground amusement park near Fort Bragg, California. You got in from the ocean by submarine.
● If children don’t lie about abuse, then they were being flown from day care centers all over the country in planes to be molested, then returned in time to be picked up by their parents. Some of the molesters didn’t need a plane. They could fly through the air all by themselves.
● If children don’t lie about abuse, some children in El Paso Texas had their eyes removed – and then put back,
Or the allegation may not come from a child at all. Consider this actual report to a child abuse hotline in Rochester, New York, about a young girl in the 1980s:
The victim and the suspect have been seen holding hands and walking while the suspect had his arm around the victim. The source also stated suspect used to live with the victim’s mother and the victim. He had moved out in the recent past but visits the home every day. The source also stated the victim goes away with the suspect for long periods of time. Source stated victim wears dresses, tights, and shoes. Source said it is rumored by children that the victim may be sleeping with suspect. No other information is available…
That was enough to prompt both Child Protective Services and the police to investigate. Here’s what they found out:
● A doctor found no evidence of sexual abuse.
● The man was a friend of the family.
● According to both mother and child, when he slept over he slept on the couch.
Why was the little girl so nicely dressed when the man took her out? Because he was taking her to church.
And of course, older children may, in fact, have all sorts of reasons to lie, as in the case cited by Michel Norris (and notice how Walker simply ignored the case in her “answer.”)
Another key element of the “children don’t lie” myth was the claim, made with equal certainly, that in one situation children are always lying: when they recant. Any notion that a child could recant because the allegation was not, in fact, true – perhaps it had been the result of a coercive interrogation – is dismissed out of hand. Children only recant, it was said, to cover up for the abuser.
And sure enough, Walker revived that claim as well. Walker claimed she never, ever had a child claim abuse when it wasn’t true. But, she said,
I have seen kids recant, though. And kids back down from what really happened a lot of times because they feel like they're breaking up the family. They feel guilty. They feel that it's overwhelming and the community and people are all coming against them and they recant, but it doesn't mean that it didn't happen. I would always err on the idea that it did happen.
Too bad it’s the children themselves who often pay for that kind of error.
On Monday: Phony claims bolstered by phony numbers, and how it all hurts children
