Child Abuse - Why Do They Target Kids

Child Abuse Page

Why do they target kids?

Police and volunteers searched the length and breadth of Citrus County for little Jessica Lunsford. But when they finally found the 9-year-old's body March 19, it was in a 2-ft.-deep grave, wrapped in a plastic bag, just 150 yards or so from her Homosassa, Fla., home. "It's very hard for me to realize that all this was happening right under my nose," Jessica's father, Mark Lunsford, told PEOPLE while sitting in his living room. "I'm sad. I'm angry. There's a small part of me that is relieved we have some closure, but I was hoping for another outcome." (Meadows et al.)

Then on March 17 they arrested registered child molester John Evander Couey, 46, who was staying across the street from the Lunsfords when Jessica vanished. Cops say Couey, who had moved into the mobile home of his half sister Dorothy Dixon, 47, shortly before the kidnapping, slipped through the Lunsfords' unlocked front door on Feb. 23, put his hand over the half-asleep girl's mouth and led her to Dixon's trailer. Authorities don't know how long Jessica was alive after being abducted, but say she was sexually assaulted. (Meadows et al.)

Child Abuse Page 5

Couey was arrested 24 times beginning in 1977, including a 1991 conviction for fondling a child younger than 16. He was also fired from a dishwashing job in the early 1990s for writing a sexually explicit love letter to a 14-year-old coworker. (Meadows.)

WHO ARE ABUSERS

Why are there so many people who want to molest children? How can we stop them?

The enormous amount of reports and cases of child molestation could almost make you think that everyone who sexually abuses a child is a priest. In fact perpetrators are diverse lot of people. Not only priest molest children but also teachers, Boy Scout leaders and other adults who work with kids and their own family members.

So what and who is a child molester? The term "child molester" is often used as a synonym for "pedophile." Sex offenders that commit incest, referring to those who are biological parents, stepparents or siblings of the victim, are considered a special type of child molester. Perpetrators come in many different types and personalities and are most often someone the child knows and trusts. Usually the perpetrator has easy access to the child because he/she has sole responsibility for the child, or takes care of or visits the child, and is trusted by the child's parents.

Sex offenders for the most part are hard to spot; he or she is a very normal person. Sex offender's for the most part hard working, tax paying citizens who support their family and go to church. But according to the media sex offenders are portrayed as an ugly monster who is foaming at the mouth and prowling playgrounds and lurking in the dark. If this was true the sex offender would be easy to spot and even easier to catch.

Child Abuse Page 6

THEIR VICTIMS

A sex offender looks for a child he can prey on where he has some assurance he will not get caught. Sex Offenders are not about sex, but about gaining power and control over someone. It is much easier to gain power and control over a young child. This is because children are more trusting, innocent and can be easily manipulated, deceived and threatened by the offender. Children are raised to be respectful, courteous and obedient towards adults.

According to Dr. Fred Berlin, a Johns Hopkins University professor who founded the National Institute for the Study, Prevention and Treatment of Sexual Trauma in Baltimore, Md., pedophilia is a distinct sexual orientation marked by persistent, sometimes exclusive, attraction to prepubescent children. Dr. John Bradford, a University of Ottawa psychiatrist who has spent 23 years studying pedophilia--which is listed as an illness in the manual psychiatrists use to make diagnoses--estimates its prevalence at maybe 4% of the population. (Those attracted to teenagers are sometimes said to suffer "ephebophilia," but perhaps because so many youth-obsessed Americans would qualify, psychiatrists don't classify ephebophilia as an illness.) (Kluger, 2002)

Hard-core pedophilia is a different and more intractable problem, and, according to Tim Smith, a Seattle treatment specialist who works with sex offenders, it may affect fewer than 10% of the child abusers in the U.S. The true pedophile is drawn to children not merely incidentally but exclusively. Most pedophiles target kids in the threshold years before puberty, but some look further down the age spectrum, seeking out even toddlers. Pedophiles who prefer preadolescents often court them with the ardor of a

Child Abuse Page 7

suitor, lavishing attention, praise and gifts on the child they have chosen. Typically they tell themselves that the relationship is a mutually beneficial one--something they believe until the child reaches puberty, and the abuser suddenly loses interest. (Kluger, 2002)

Molesters and pedophiles seem to target same-sex and opposite-sex children equally, the gender they choose depending mostly upon availability. And though the media may carry stories of the occasional Mary Kay LeTourneau--the Washington State teacher who famously bore two children by one of her underage students. Overwhelmingly, abusers appear to be male. "We've been waiting for the so-called avalanche of women offenders to appear," says Smith. "We're still waiting." Some doctors disagree with Smith, believing the incidence of female abusers may be under-reported, since some boys may see sexual contact at the hands of an older woman not as Sex offender traits molestation but as early initiation. (Kluger, 2002)

WHAT IS CHILD ABUSE / MOLESTING

Child Sexual Abuse- Engagement of a child in sexual activities in which a child is developmentally unprepared and cannot give consent (Lotke). This act includes rape, date rape, domestic violence, sexual assault, harassment, incest, and sexual molestation. On average a child abuser abuses 117 children before they are caught ("Sex Offenders", 6). Not all of the cases involving child sexual abuses are documented because most of the victims don't know or believe that they have been abused. As sexually abused teens grow up they are faces with many questions of why it happened or what they did wrong.

Child Abuse Page 8

Sexual