generationFIVE is a non-profit organization whose mission is to end the sexual abuse of children within five generations. Through survivor leadership, community organizing, and public action, generationFIVE works to interrupt and mend the intergenerational impact of child sexual abuse on individuals, families, and communities.We integrate child sexual abuse prevention into social movements and community organizing targeting family violence, economic oppression, and gender, age-based and cultural discrimination, rather than perpetuate the isolation of this issue. It is our belief that meaningful community response is the key to effective prevention.Joins us at www.generationFIVE.org and help to prevent child sexual abuse in your community and help make this our reality.
GENERATIONAL GOALS: 2000 to 2125These generational goals work as a guide to the changes we want to accomplish by the end of each generation. The strategies and methods to reaching these goals will be multi-faceted.
GENERATION ONE-YOU: year 2000-2025 Diverse Community Leadership and Solutions, Integration into other Social Justice Movements and Bystander Involvement.
Benchmarks:
A diverse and skilled leadership is prepared to end child sexual abuse (CSA).
Community-based solutions are translated into replicable models.
CSA is understood as relevant across social justice movements.
Bystanders and the community-at-large begin to see child sexual abuse as everyone’s issue and become part
of the solution for ending it.
GENERATION TWO-CHILDREN: year 2025 to 2050 Alternative Justice, Offender Accountability, and Public Systems Change.
Benchmarks:
Alternatives to the criminal justice system are widely available and include prevention and offender
treatment. Humanizing offenders is understood to be essential to ending CSA.
These alternatives are developed into replicable community-based systems of response.
The movement to end child sexual abuse collaborates with movements committed to public system reform, family reunification, prison abolition, and alternative justice in the development and implementation of strategic agendas.
Public systems undergo reform and transformation in order to offer real solutions.
GENERATION THREE-GRANDCHILDREN: year 2050 to 2075 We are accountable. Preventing social conditions that lead to child sexual abuse.
Benchmarks:
The general public assumes it is their business to know about, prevent, and address CSA.
The issue is widely discussed; preventative actions are well known and practiced.
We assume that if children are being sexually abused in our families or communities, it affects the wellness of the entire community.
We collaborate with various movements for social justice in addressing fundamental conditions of oppression, violence and strategies for liberation.
GENERATION FOUR-GREAT GRANDCHILDREN: year 2075 to 2100 End of child sexual abuse, healing continues.
Benchmarks:
There are no new cases of child sexual abuse. It has stopped.
Intergenerational healing from the impact of child sexual abuse continues.
Community values and social conditions support the wellness of youth, accountability and healing.
We are a part of an interconnected liberation movement that is collectively addressing negative conditions
and creating a vision of a changed world.
GENERATION FIVE GREAT GREAT GRANDCHILDREN: year 2100 to 2125 Restoration. Living the Vision.
Benchmarks:
Beliefs and practices of individuals, families and communities support mutual respect, well-being of children
and youth, and a world without CSA.
Community values, public systems, and social conditioning support this transformation.
The restoration and healing around CSA has implications for other major social movements and is part of a just and healed world that we continue to create.
10 FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE:Below are ten of the most frequently asked questions about child sexual abuse. Many of these questions come from the misinformation and stereotypes that we learn about the sexual abuse of children.
1. WHO GETS SEXUALLY ABUSED?Child sexual abuse affects people from a wide variety of backgrounds. The statistics show that child sexual abuse crosses boundaries of race, class, culture, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality - there is no one kind of person child sexual abuse happens to. Child sexual abuse affects boys and men, girls and women, and transgendered youth and adults. People from upper and middle class backgrounds as well as those below the poverty line all experience child sexual abuse.
While statistics suggest that girls are more frequent victims of sexual abuse than boys, it is unclear whether or not those statistics reflect the reality of sexual abuse or just the dynamics of reporting. While there are a wide variety of cultural beliefs about gender and sexuality, many cultures remain more comfortable perceiving girls and women as sexual victims than recognizing the sexual abuse of boys and men. Homophobia and sexism perpetuate the myth that "real" men are not sexually victimized, and because of this myth it seems highly likely that the sexual abuse of boys and men is under-reported across cultures.
2. DOESN'T SEXUAL ABUSE HAPPEN MORE IN SOME COMMUNITIES THAN IN OTHERS?Mainstream stereotypes tend to link race, class, and region to child sexual abuse. These stereotypes claim that sexual abuse happens mostly in poorly educated rural communities, low-income urban communities, or in communities of color or immigrant communities. These stereotypes are untrue. In addition, the media tends to focus on sensationalized cases of child abduction, which are statistically rare compared to child sexual abuse by someone close to the victim, and to minimize stories on child sexual abuse in stereotypically "normal" homes. But each community also maintains its own stereotypes about child sexual abuse, almost invariably projecting the problem into a community that is different from their own. For example, white communities may perceive child sexual abuse to be a problem for people of color, communities of color may perceive child sexual abuse to be a problem for white people, immigrant communities may perceive child sexual abuse to be a problem for local nationals (i.e., an American problem), and so on. On the whole, people tend to think of child sexual abuse as happening to people who are not like them.
But while child sexual abuse occurs across race, class and region lines, this does not mean that race, class and region are irrelevant to understanding child sexual abuse. Homophobia, racism, and sexism perpetuate the problem of child sexual abuse, making it difficult for children under the double and triple burden of those stereotypes to tell about what is happening to them. If disclosure is paired with racist or classist stereotyping, both children and adults are less likely to seek help, or in fact to have relevant help available to them. Offenders can deliberately target children who do not have access to resources, or are perceived as less likely to tell. Children with disabilities are, for example, twice as likely to experience sexual abuse than children without disabilities, and children from lower income backgrounds are more likely to experience sexual exploitation in addition to sexual abuse.
3. WHY WOULD SOMEONE DO THAT TO A CHILD?There is no simple explanation as to why someone would sexually abuse a child. Recent research suggests that a very broad range of adults perpetrate sexual abuse, so it is difficult to come up with a single profile (set of traceable behaviors and demographic) of a child sexual offender. If you looked at a graph that charted the profile and demographics of child sexual offenders in the United States, it would match the profile and demographics of the average men in the country. This does not mean that all men in the U.S. are sexual offenders. Rather, it underscores the fact that sexual abuse is committed by a wide range of people rather than by a stereotypical offender. But despite the fact that there is no single profile for a sexual offender, recent research in the field of sex offender treatment suggests that some key factors are often present: very low self esteem, feelings of extreme powerlessness, a tendency to relate more to children than adults, little to no empathic ability, and strong projections of accountability onto others (it is all someone else's fault). Reports of personal histories of abuse among sexual offenders against children vary. Current research suggests that only 1/3 of reported sexual offenders have experienced sexual abuse themselves, although research also suggests that a personal history of physical, emotional and sexual abuse acts as a risk factor for offending.
One common stereotype is that all adults who sexually abuse children are pedophiles, people whose main sexual attraction is to children under the age of puberty. This suggests that there is a specific class of adults who seek out sex with children, and that these people are different from adults who have sexual relations with other adults. But many of the adults who sexually abuse children are not pedophiles. They have ongoing sexual relations with adults, and sexually abuse children.
Professionals who work with sexual offenders argue that there are a few broad categories of offenders: some are adults who repeatedly seek out children to sexually abuse, often these offenders are pedophiles; others are considered opportunistic abusers, or those who merely act on opportunity or the proximity of children to abuse. These offenders may not seek out children to abuse outside of their immediate family or network. Many offenders do not show a broader sexual interest in children. Child sexual abuse is about having power over another person and using that power sexually.
4. WOULDN'T I BE ABLE TO KNOW IF SOMEONE I KNOW IS SEXUALLY ABUSING KIDS?Many people feel certain that they would be able to tell if someone they knew were sexually abusing children. This belief is often founded in stereotypes about sexual offenders against children: that they are creepy single men in trench coats hanging around playgrounds, or clearly dysfunctional adults unable to form meaningful relationships with other adults. People feel they will just "know" an offender when one walks into the room because of this stereotype from mainstream films and television. Holding on to this stereotype allows people to believe that they don't know anyone who is sexually abusing children, since the people they like and talk with day to day certainly don't appear to them in this way.
But in real life, sexual offenders don't appear as they do in the movies. In fact, the majority of child sexual offenders are perfectly "normal" seeming adults or adolescents. Many offenders are seemingly nice, responsible people who may in fact love and otherwise protect the children around them. Child sexual abuse can coexist with love and affection, and many offenders convince themselves that they are not doing anything harmful to the child. Often those around them do not realize sexual abuse is happening precisely because they don't appear to be hiding anything, or to be harmful people. But offenders in fact intentionally hide sexual abuse. The majority of offenders forbid the child to tell anyone and threaten them with dire consequences if they do. Unless bystanders are trained to notice the signs of child sexual abuse and are able to have open conversations about the issue with those around them, it is relatively easy for offenders to hide what they are doing (for specific information about how to notice signs of abuse, see "Now that I know, what do I do?"). Because of the stereotypes about offenders, most people just assume that they don't know anyone who would sexually abuse a child and therefore don't pay much attention to the signs that may surround them.
5. DON'T SOME CHILDREN WANT SEX OR ENJOY IT WHEN IT HAPPENS?Childhood sexual development is very complex. It is also a subject that makes many adults uncomfortable. Taken together, these two facts tend to make the question of what children want, and what they enjoy, very difficult to assess. Adults make the laws that say when children reach the age of sexual majority, or when they have the legal right to consent to sex or to have access to sexual information. Children have little say in defining what sexuality might mean to them, and they are on the whole given little positive information to inform them on this subject. But children do have phases of sexual development from the time they are born, and children's exploration of their own bodies and of their physical environment is part of normal childhood development. All too often adults lack the skills to understand and support age-appropriate sexual development for children, and instead tend to silence or shame children for exhibiting normal curiosity about activities that adults might label sexual.
While children are sexual beings with complex responses to the world around them, this does not mean that children want to have sex with adults. Many children desire comfort, connection, and touch, and many are also curious about their own and other people's bodies. Children seek out this connection and express physical curiosity without a clear sense of adult boundaries between sexual touch and friendly touch. With other children in their peer group, this natural curiosity can be part of age-appropriate exploration that is guided by a shared set of expectations and limitations. But sexual offenders often deliberately misconstrue children's openness to touch and desire for physical attention as readiness to participate in adult sexuality. Offenders will claim that the child initiated a sexual encounter or enjoyed the experience while it was happening. But children often find an adult's move to explicit sexual activity deeply confusing and harmful, and frequently they do not have a clear way to understand what is happening. While children's bodies do have the biological capacity to respond to sexual touch, it does not mean that the touch was wanted or that the child liked it. If a sexual response does occur during the abuse, many children feel doubly guilty and ashamed. Child sexual abuse is an adult's use of a child to satisfy his or her own needs for power or sex, disregarding the child's needs and sending a message that the child's wishes about his or her own body are unimportant. It is always the adult's responsibility not to misuse a child's own sexual development to meet the adult's needs.
6. AREN'T GAY PEOPLE MORE LIKELY TO SEXUALLY ABUSE CHILDREN THAN STRAIGHT PEOPLE?No. Adult sexual orientation is irrelevant to the sexual abuse of children. The vast majority of adults who sexually abuse children identify as heterosexual, even those men who sexually abuse boys. Child sexual abuse and homosexuality are linked by a series of odd and unsettling connections in the public mind. Heterosexism - the belief that heterosexuality is the only normal and natural form of sexual expression - tends to reinforce the belief that homosexual people are somehow sexually deviant. Once this belief system is in place, it is just a quick step to thinking that homosexuals might be more likely to sexually abuse children.
The truth is that the sexual abuse of children has little to do with adult sexual preference. Child sexual abuse is more about the expression of sexual power than about the expression of sexual preference for one gender or another. Some sexual offenders have a preference for children of one gender or the other, but this preference is not necessarily reflected in their adult sexual choices. This stereotype is part of broader cultural homophobia, which not only scapegoats gay men as sexual offenders but also makes it difficult for boys to disclose sexual abuse by men for fear of being labeled gay. This type of homophobia also makes it difficult for gay men and women to disclose child sexual abuse because it might be used to explain their sexual orientation.
7. IF CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE HAPPENS SO MUCH, IS IT REALLY THAT BAD?Many people get confused when they find out more information about child sexual abuse. If 1 in 3 girls and 1 in 6 boys experience child sexual abuse, then large portions of the population must be directly impacted by sexual abuse in their families and communities. But the very scope of the problem often makes it difficult for people to fathom what the statistics mean. Often upon learning about the high prevalence and negative impact of child sexual abuse, many people try to find a way to shrink such an unbearable reality into something more manageable. It can be difficult for people to know how they should feel or what they should do about such a serious social problem. In order to minimize the problem, most people tend to go back and forth between two beliefs about the impact of child sexual abuse: either child sexual abuse is absolutely devastating, or else it really isn't all that bad. If they believe it is completely and totally devastating, people find it hard to believe that it happens so much. If they believe it is not all that bad, then they are more able to tolerate the statistics. The harm of child sexual abuse gets measured in relation to its prevalence - people can only bear to know one part of the picture, so often either the harm or the prevalence are minimized to make the picture more bearable.
Child sexual abuse has a difficult and lasting impact, and this shows up differently for different people. Survivors experience a wide range of responses to the abuse, from severe post-traumatic stress disorder to less permanent forms of pain, stress and confusion. Survivors of child sexual abuse experience a range of effects, including dissociation or "checking out," feeling isolated and alone, hyper-vigilence, and a difficulty or fear of intimacy and closeness with others. Survivors also often experience distrust of themselves and others, shame, anger, grief, betrayal, a sense of losing themselves or being "tainted," and a low self-esteem. Many report a higher use of numbing devices including drugs and alcohol, and lots of confusion with boundaries.
For children who are abused sexually, a sense of safety in them and with others is often broken. People have a variety of ways to try and cope with and repair this breech. How a child's family or community responds to sexual abuse also has a deep influence on their health and recovery. The more supportive people are to the victim, the greater the victim's likely resiliency and recovery from the abuse. Research suggests that a child's resilience is also supported by having other positive relationships in their lives, by their connection to a broader sense of meaning or purpose, by a connection to nature or animals, and/or by having a way to express themselves creatively. At a broader societal level, a supportive community and family who can acknowledge the abuse, an offender who is able to take accountability for their actions, and survivor participation in the public response to the offender can all help to lessen the long-term harm of child sexual abuse.
8. AREN'T THERE ALREADY LAWS THAT TAKE CARE OF THIS PROBLEM?There are already laws that prohibit child sexual abuse. Sex with a minor under the age of consent is illegal in all states in the United States and most countries internationally, and most states have specific laws against child sexual abuse, incest, molestation, or lewd and lascivious conduct with a minor. Most countries in the world (the United States excluded) have ratified The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of the Child, which states a child's right to grow up free of sexual exploitation and abuse. But these laws have done little to actually stop child sexual abuse from happening. Legal courts are often ill equipped to work with complex issues of child sexual abuse. Most professionals in these setting are not trained in the dynamics and statistics of abuse. Judiciary discretion does not frequently lead to well-informed, effective decisions about child sexual abuse.
Because of the often close relationship between offenders and their victims, most cases of child sexual abuse do not ever enter into the legal system. People are loath to report child sexual abuse to the authorities, and when they do those cases involving incest or abuse by a family intimate are unlikely to be prosecuted. Only 10% of all estimated child sexual abuse cases go through the legal system. Those most likely to be prosecuted for child sexual abuse are those who have the least relationship to the child (stranger abductions). It correlates that the closer you are in blood relation to the child, the less likely you are to be reported and prosecuted legally. Even when cases do enter the legal system, the system itself operates through a punitive model that receives very mixed reviews from victims, offenders, affected family members and the broader community impacted by child sexual abuse. Victims are often re-traumatized by the system, offenders rarely receive treatment, and families frequently do not feel served by the experience.
9. WHY DON'T WE JUST PUT ALL THE OFFENDERS IN JAIL?One of the proposed solutions to the problem of child sexual abuse has been to increase incarceration rates and terms for sexual offenders. Like domestic violence, child sexual abuse has not always been taken seriously by the police or by the courts. Stranger offenders are far more likely to be penalized by the legal system than offenders who know the victim are, and incest offenders are often the least likely to serve jail time. Some victim advocacy groups feel that increasing the legal penalty for child sexual abuse would help to prevent the problem, sending a strong message to potential offenders that our country has zero tolerance for child sexual abuse. But locking the offenders in jail will not necessarily solve the problem. The sweep and impact of child sexual abuse is large enough that it is just not a feasible solution to put all offenders in jail. In addition, incarcerating individuals has proven relatively unsuccessful in preventing abuse, changing behavior, or making restitution to those impacted by child sexual abuse.
While it is crucial to have means of accountability that stop the abuse and offer effective solutions to victims and families, a criminal justice approach alone is unlikely to achieve these goals. Instead of increasing offender accountability, greater criminal liability and stricter sentencing threatens to drive child sexual abuse more underground, leaving offenders, victims, and impacted communities without effective means of intervention or redress. A more varied approach to justice may be needed to be truly effective in preventing the sexual abuse of children. Offender accountability is one of the key components to preventing and responding effectively to child sexual abuse. Effective models need to hold offenders genuinely accountable and also provides appropriate treatment options to the victim, offender, and affected bystanders (such as the family). In general, people impacted by child sexual abuse seem more willing to use options that do not immediately criminalize the perpetrator. Other solutions can include removing the perpetrator from the home rather than the child, and providing effective treatment for all involved, and community accountability for offenders. Lastly, in interviews done with hundreds of convicted sex offenders, many offenders said they would have sought help if there were someone they could have talked to or a volunteer sex offenders program they knew about (Stop It NOW).
But many child sexual offenders also operate with high levels of denial and secrecy, and offender programs spend the first year of treatment breaking down the denial and constructing offender accountability. It is important that we are attentive to the real threat of repeat offenders while we also look for viable models that will address the vast majority of child sexual abuse. Special sexual violence courts that have been established to understand the dynamics of sexual abuse and foster offender accountability and treatment has shown to be more successful than incarceration alone in truly ending abuse and preventing further abuse.
10. WHAT DOES CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE HAVE TO DO WITH ME?If you asked them, most people would tell you they think child sexual abuse is wrong. Most people would also tell you they have experienced concern at some time or another about the possibility of child sexual abuse - perhaps they saw a news story that disturbed them, or spoke to a friend who had a personal experience with child sexual abuse, or found themselves a little uncomfortable with someone's behavior around children. But despite such ready admissions that child sexual abuse is a problem that touches their lives, many people would also assure you that there is no child sexual abuse in their own home or in their immediate community. The majority of the population believes that child sexual abuse is a terrible crime that happens to someone else, somewhere else. And they hope that it stays that way -- someone else's problem.
But child sexual abuse is everyone's problem. Given the statistics, each of us knows someone whose life has been directly impacted by child sexual abuse. Many people have friends and colleagues who are survivors of child sexual abuse but may not have ever discussed the issue. And many people have friends and colleagues who are offenders of child sexual abuse but do not disclose this fact. Both survivors and offenders are every-day people you know, live near, and work with. Because of the silencing and shame that surrounds child sexual abuse, frequently neither survivors nor offenders disclose their experience to those around them. Child sexual abuse continues at an enormous cost to society, not only in terms of public health but also in terms of personal relationship. To address and prevent child sexual abuse we must each develop our ability to face it and respond to it effectively.