They buried their abuse for decades. Must-see interview gives greater insight into how young boys respond to sexual abuse.
Former Little Leaguers, James Manfredonia, Bruce Morrison and Timothy Morey had spent nearly half a century hiding a secret. Now, thanks to a newly passed law in New York State, they have filed lawsuits against their former Little League coach Tony Sagona, who they claim had sexually abused them.
Source: NBCnews.com. https://www.nbcnews.com/video/he-was-bothered-by-the-sandusky-story-for-years-a-new-law-allowed-him-to-speak-out-and-seek-justice-73431109653
Why do we keep teaching our children about “stranger danger” when 90% of sexually abused children are exploited by someone in the immediate or extended family, or by someone close to the family?
How do child molesters gain access to their victims?
While some sexual abuse is purely opportunistic, most children are groomed and lured into situations where they are vulnerable to abuse.
Contrary to common “Stranger Danger” warnings, child molesters are rarely strangers; at least 90% of sexually abused children are exploited by someone in the child’s immediate or extended family, or by someone close to the family.
Common grooming strategies include:
1. Befriending parents, particularly single parents, to gain access to their children.
Ninety percent (90%) of sexually abused children are victimized by a parent, close family member or family friend, so there’s no need to “befriend” the parent(s), they’re already in your inner-circle.
2. Offering babysitting services to busy parents or guardians.
3. Taking jobs and participating in community events that involve children.
4. Becoming a guardian or foster parent.
5. Attending sporting events for children.
6. Offering to coach children’s sports.
7. Volunteering in youth organizations.
8. Offering to chaperone overnight trips.
9. Loitering in places children frequent – playgrounds, parks, malls, game arcades, sports fields, etc.
10. Befriending youngsters on social media (Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, etc.) and online gaming platforms.
When and where do most sexual assaults usually happen?
Most child sexual abuse occurs in the home of the victim, the home of the offender, or another residence.**
Eighty-one (81%) of all child sexual abuse occurs in one-on-one situations: one-offender/one-child.
Wherever youth are physically or virtually alone with someone is a potential place where they can be subjected to sexual misconduct or abuse.
With incidents involving juvenile offenders, 1 in 7 sexual assaults occurs on schooldays between 3pm-7pm, with a peak from 3-4pm, right after school. This speaks to the importance of safe after-school care and close supervision of multi-age groups of youngsters.
How do child molesters target their victims?
Early grooming efforts by sexual predators seek to determine if the child has a stable home life, or if the family is facing challenges like poverty, divorce, illness, drugs, homelessness, etc.
Children lacking stability at home are at higher risk for sexual abuse, as there is usually more access to the child and opportunities to abuse the child.
Child molesters will also target kids who are loners, or who look troubled or neglected. Youngsters who smoke, vape or use drugs and alcohol are seen as risk-seekers lacking adequate supervision, and therefore easy targets.
Single moms are often targeted, as they are more likely to be overwhelmed by parenting duties and vulnerable to offers to babysit and/or drive kids to school, practices, lessons and other activities.
Final Thoughts:
Child molesters are family members, relatives, neighbors, coaches, teachers, preachers, friends and our children’s peers. Knowing this – and knowing that adults cannot be with children every moment of every day – it is essential to talk openly with children about personal boundaries and personal safety.
Teach children, age-appropriately, how to recognize and evade the lures used for generations by sexual predators of every kind.
Thankfully, both children and adults are beginning to more readily report sexual abuse and harassment, saying boldly and loudly that these crimes are no longer acceptable.
A listing of phone numbers by state to call and report child abuse.
Provides 24/7 assistance in 170 languages to adults, children and youth with information and questions regarding child abuse. All calls are anonymous and confidential.
Source: https://childluresprevention.com. Accessed, October 14, 2019.
Each state has laws that prevent a child sex offender from being prosecuted.
When a crime is committed, there is a window of time that a state has to charge the perpetrator. The laws that determine this time frame are called criminal statutes of limitations.
As high-profile cases of sexual violence continue to make headlines—and as survivors seek to report crimes—it can help to have a better understanding of these laws and how they vary.
From the legal definition of rape to the statute of limitation for a particular sex crime, where you live makes a difference. Here’s a guide to the laws in your state.
Follow RAINN on Twitter at @rainnaction to be the first to know about our state policy work. #ActWithRAINN
RAINN.org- https://www.rainn.org/public-policy-action
The pedophile network has such technologically advanced, encrypted data bases that it took five years for police to crack.
Some of you may remember when the secret symbols of pedophiles were made public by the FBI in 2006 and 2007. This topic is well-worth revisiting, because pedophiles haven’t gone anywhere, they’re just more sophisticated at hiding.
Here’s the recap.
These are the symbols pedophiles use to signal their sordid sexual preferences. The seemingly innocuous pastel-colored scrawls feature butterflies, love hearts, and spirals. But to FBI agents they signify something much darker.
One of the symbols, a blue spiraling triangle framed by another triangle, is known as the BoyLover logo. It is used by pedophiles who prefer young boys.
Another is for pedophiles who prefer much younger boys. This symbol, known as the LittleBoyLover logo, is also a blue triangle spiral, but drawn in a child-like scrawl. The
The so-called GirlLover logo is a heart inside a heart, indicated that the male or female pedophile prefers young girls.
Pedophiles who do not have a preference of gender use the ChildLover logo, which is a butterfly made up of love hearts.
Finally, there is the Childlove Online Media Activism logo, which pedophiles use as a symbol to promote their ’cause’: that sexual relationships between adults and minors should be decriminalized.
The symbol – a triangle, a love heart and a circle merged into one – has been circulating social media, blogs and webcasts for years. It has even appeared on some children’s toys.
Investigators with the FBI’s Cyber Division Innocent Images National Initiative first discovered the code in 2007.
Identical or similar jewelry and symbols as described in this intelligence bulletin should raise suspicion of possible pedophilia activity when found during searches.’
June-2019, Norwegian police uncovered yet another network of pedophiles, this one operating with such advanced technology that they went undetected for the past 20 years.
Police have seized several million photos and videos of assaults on young boys from around the world.
Encrypted data
The pedophile network has possessed such technological expertise that it built up advanced, encrypted computer data bases so large that police have only managed to get through around 20 percent of the material seized after five years of investigation.
Held positions of trust
The NRK state broadcaster reported that several of the men have worked with children or volunteer in positions that give them extensive contact with young boys. The husband of the male entertainer worked as a football (soccer) referee, according to NRK.
Investigators have worked on the case since 2014, when an Oslo mother overheard her 12-year-old son talking with a friend. He complained of having been groped by a man, an entertainer in his 50s who was a sort of mentor to them both through a local club. He wondered if the other boy had been assaulted as well. He had, and the mother reported the incidents to police.
The attorney acknowledged that the police investigation has revealed how the network of pedophiles operated with secret symbols that could identify their pedophile tendencies. The network includes individuals with unusually high levels of computer expertise. Several of the male suspects work with data technology.
Norwegian police made arrests last year, four years after police finally managed to crack their encrypted files and gain access to the material.
One of the men reportedly had gained responsibility in an international group referred to as “BoyLove” that also allegedly seeks to normalize sexual assault on children.
Source: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3560069/The-symbols-pedophiles-use-signal-sordid-sexual-preferences-social-media.html. https://www.newsinenglish.no/2019/07/02/police-reveal-advanced-pedophile-ring/
If you are an adult concerned for a friend or loved one who you know or suspect has experienced sexual abuse as a child, your support and understanding can be critical to their recovery.
Adults who have had experiences of sexual abuse as children need and deserve a chance to speak about their experiences with those who understand and can help.
Survivors of child sexual abuse can also play a critical role in the prevention of further abuse to other children. If you or someone you love needs support to recover, now is the time to reach out for help. Find the support you deserve.
If you are a survivor of sexual abuse as a child, it is very important to seek professional support and guidance for your recovery.
The impact of sexual abuse by another child, teen or adult can change over time. The changes unfold as a young person grows into adulthood and continue throughout a lifetime.
Even if you were offered support and resources earlier in life, if you are feeling the need for support at this time, we encourage you to seek the help you need and deserve. You can find resources and support here.
If you feel that the person who abused you currently poses a risk to a child or teen, it is important to share your concerns with others who can be allies to you in taking steps to protect this young person. We can help you find allies who share your concerns.
Perhaps you are recognizing signs of risk in the child or the adult. Maybe this child is near the age when you yourself suffered abuse. We urge you to trust your intuitions and act on your instincts by speaking to other adults who can take steps to protect this child.
There are many steps that can be taken before a child is harmed. You don’t have to wait until there is “proof” that abuse has occurred to act.
Learn about the statute of limitations in your state for reporting child sexual abuse. Filing reports about your own abuse (with the support of a counselor) can be a step to take if you believe that the same person who harmed you may have abused someone who is now a minor.
If others are already concerned, your coming forward can help ease the burden of disclosure the child or teen may be facing.
Care enough to take the risk and talk about it. If you are an adult concerned for a friend or loved one who you know or suspect has experienced sexual abuse as a child, your support and understanding can be critical to their recovery.
There are many resources that can help you to better understand what an adult survivor may be experiencing now and how the recovery process evolves over time. Sharing the resources you find here with the person you’re concerned about is a great place to start.
Support resources for family, friends and partners are important as well – by acknowledging how a loved one’s abuse can personally affect you, you are taking a step in becoming a safe adult for those who experienced sexual abuse.
Source: Stopitnow.org. https://stopitnow.org/help-guidance/online-help-center/adult-survivor. Accessed- September 19, 2019
Archbishop’s response to mandatory child sex abuse reporting labelled ‘pig-headed’.
Australia- Melbourne’s Catholic archbishop insists three years jail is preferable to breaking the seal of confession and reporting child sexual abuse to authorities.
Priests will risk prison if they don’t report child abuse revealed to them during the sacrament of confession, under new laws introduced in Victoria.
The bill, introduced into state parliament would make religious ministers mandatory reporters of abuse suspicions alongside police, teachers, medical practitioners and early childhood workers.
“I don’t think in contemporary and mainstream times, knowing what we know now, that we can do anything other than say the rights of children trump anyone’s religious views,” the attorney general, Jill Hennessy, told reporters.
“Ultimately this is about making sure that we start to right the wrongs of systemic abuse.”
Archbishop Peter Comensoli said he’d ask someone who admitted abuse to tell him outside the box but if they refused he would “keep the seal”.
“I hold the principle of mandatory reporting … and I also hold onto the principle of the seal of confession. My own position is that I don’t see that as mutually exclusive,” he told ABC Radio on Wednesday.
The archbishop’s office later released a statement saying the church welcomed the proposed expansion of mandatory reporting to include religious ministers, but denied the seal of confession was an obstacle to mandatory reporting.
“Confession doesn’t place people above the law. Priests should be mandatory reporters, but in a similar way to protections to the lawyer/client relationship and protection for journalists’ sources.”
Catholic archbishops in the ACT and South Australia have also vowed to defy similar laws.
Melbourne’s most senior Catholic also revealed he saw disgraced cardinal and convicted child abuser George Pell in prison about two months ago, as he awaits the outcome of his appeal over his conviction for sexual abuse.
“I think he has a sense of waiting, as anything there would be a psychological agitation about waiting for what’s going to be the outcome of the appeal, but I found him strong spiritually and calm and very conversive,” Comensoli said.
Under the proposed Victorian laws, priests and spiritual leaders face up to three years’ jail if they don’t report child physical and sexual abuse allegations.
Archbishop’s response to mandatory child sex abuse reporting labelled ‘pig-headed’.
“I would expect anyone who is aware of a commission of a crime would have the wherewithal and the personal ethics to report that crime,” Hennessy said.
The Andrews Labor government’s reforms would also allow survivors of institutional abuse to apply to the supreme court to overturn “unfair” compensation settlements previously signed with churches.
Chrissie Foster, who with her late husband fought for years for compensation for their two girls who were abused by a Catholic priest, said there was no excuse for priests who failed to report confessions of abuse.
“The Catholic priesthood tried to get away with a basement bargain deal with all of this. They should pay until they can’t stand up,” Foster said.
In the same bill, anyone denied a working-with-children check for serious crimes such as rape and murder would no longer be able to appeal that refusal.
The Blue Knot Foundation, the national centre for excellence in complex trauma, hit out at the Catholic church’s opposition to the law.
“Whatever justification church authorities present to support this stance, the continued suggestion that the Catholic church is above the secular law of the society in which it operates is unfortunate to say the least,” spokeswoman Dr. Pam Stavropoulos said.
Victoria’s Liberal-National opposition has previously indicated it would back a law mandating priests report child abuse allegations.
But party leader Michael O’Brien on Tuesday said he wanted to see the details of the bill.
“I’d like to think that in Victoria in 2019, we can make sure we can protect kids and we should also be able to respect freedom of religion. Let’s see if the government has got that balance right,” he said.
Crossbench MP Fiona Patten welcomed the government’s move, saying “I think that Jesus would mandatory report”.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/aug/14/victorian-bill-would-compel-priests-to-report-child-abuse-confessions-or-risk-jail . By: Lisa Martin Australian Associated Press. Accessed- September 18, 2019.
Reporting my brother to Child Protective Services was the first step in ending a decades-long cycle. *9 minute read
By Emily Miller, Human Parts
Content Warning: Graphic depictions of sexual and physical abuse.
Mom unburdens herself only weeks before she dies. She tells me about Mike’s* abuse against his children. Her revelations confirm what I’ve known since childhood: My brother Mike is dangerous. Mom tells me about the inexplicable holes in walls throughout Mike’s house, how he and his wife ignore the cries of their baby, and how roughly they handle their toddler. What frightens her the most, she confesses, is that when she dies there will be no one left to look after her grandbabies. She doesn’t ask me to replace her, but I can take a hint.
“You fat pig!” Mike yells as he tries to lift his sweaty, four-year-old son from the shopping-cart-like metal basket at the front of the pedicab.
My nephew cries and grabs hold of the sides of the basket, refusing to budge. Mike yanks him once more, only this time a spoke catches my nephew’s bare thigh and punctures it.
Blood bubbles to the surface of my nephew’s stocky leg, then runs down it before soaking into his little white sock. I use my hoodie to try to stanch the bleeding. It won’t stop. “Call 911!” I shout. I try to calm my nephew by singing the Alphabet song. It holds his attention only so far as L-M-N-O-P, so I switch to the Barney song, “Clean up, clean up, everybody everywhere… ” Mike pushes me aside. The boys and I look on, saucer-eyed.
Edges blur, leaving but one pulsating truth at the center: Mike has gouged a hole in his son’s leg.
We drive home to Los Angeles. I don’t speak of the incident with my boys, pretending that they’re okay, and so am I. Until I’m not. A few days later, at work, I kick the snack machine in the breakroom because “It won’t release my goddamned Doritos.” My coworkers look up from their sandwiches and stare. I slink back to my desk.
I see a therapist. I tell her about the snack machine, about my nephew, and all the stories I can think of from my childhood — beginning with the original sin.
After adopting two boys, Mom wants a girl. Dad grants Mom her wish, just as he might purchase a diamond bauble she admires in a jewelry store window. They name the baby Sarah*. All seems in order except Sarah’s skin is “ruddy,” this being the word Mom used the one and only time she told me the story, when I was 10. It means “having a healthy reddish color.” I know this because I looked it up in the student edition of Merriam-Webster that I keep atop my molded acrylic desk.
“Not to worry,” a nurse says to my parents. “The pressure in the birth canal can sometimes cause discoloration. Her skin will even out over the next few days.” Dad expresses some concern that the baby appears to be Black. “But the birth certificate says ‘Caucasian,’” counters Mom.
Over the course of the next few months, Sarah’s skin doesn’t lighten. It darkens. Mom and Dad ask questions of the pediatrician, who confirms Dad’s suspicion that the baby is Black. Mom is as shocked as Dad by the news, but she has bonded with her first daughter, and so tries to downplay the plot twist. Dad insists that raising a Black child in an all-white community recently rattled by racial violence would be too much of a hardship for the family and Sarah to bear. Dad arm-twists Mom into giving Sarah up for re-adoption. My brothers, Mike and Andy*, watch as their baby sister is peeled from Mom’s arms by social workers. Their five- and eight-year-old selves fear they, too, will be repossessed.
After I’m adopted — replacing Sarah — my brothers hide me under blankets from anyone who enters our home. I am an adult before it dawns on me that I was adopted into a grieving, frightened home that harbored a humiliating secret.
I wake up to a snap followed by a scream. Is it Andy or Mike this time? Snapgoes the belt again.
“AAAAH!”
It’s Mike.
I’m coloring at my child-sized pink and white desk that Grandpa made when Dad appears in the doorway with a suitcase in one hand and the black and red machine he polishes his shoes with in the other.
“Where are you going, Daddy?”
“I’m leaving, sweetheart.”
“When will you be back?”
“I won’t be back. Come give Daddy a hug.”
Mom goes out to dinner with her new boyfriend, and leaves Mike in charge. He invites me into his bedroom. I’m excited because he’s never let me in his room before tonight. “Have you ever seen a penis?” he asks. The way my heart thumps tells me something’s not right about this question. Still, I don’t want to be banished from my big brother’s inner sanctum so I say, “No. I’ve never seen one.” He unzips his pants. My first impression is that penises are ugly, especially when long and hard with big veins everywhere, like Mike’s is now. I resist what happens next but Mike is 16, and a wrestler. I am seven, and a ballerina. He pushes my face closer and closer to the throbbing organ I know is there but can’t see because my eyes are closed.
“Swallow,” he says, when finished. I gulp. “Don’t tell anyone or I’ll kill you.” I nod, my whole body trembling as I back out of his room.
I stand with my back against the wall as Mike, wielding a butcher knife, chases Andy up the stairs. I run after them down the hallway and enter the guest room as Andy jumps from the second story window into our snowy backyard. When the police arrive, I’m being looked after in the basement by my “Aunt” Grace*, but can hear the voices in the kitchen. Mike tells the police that Andy is on LSD. Mom is crying. Andy is shouting curse words as the police force him to come with them.
The next time I see Andy, he’s much calmer. When I ask Mom what’s happened to Andy, she mumbles, “It must be the shock therapy.” I nod, even though I don’t know what shock therapy is.
Mom sits at the kitchen table with a wooden ruler and a foldout map of the United States. “What are you doing?” I ask.
“I’m trying to figure out which city is furthest from your dad: Los Angeles, California or Portland, Maine.”
The answer is Los Angeles.
After we move, Mom doesn’t help me get ready for school or make me breakfast anymore. She sleeps instead. Mike still wants blowjobs, and Andy gets thrown out of school a few months after we arrive.
“What’s the matter, honey?” Mom asks. “Please tell me, why are you are crying like this?”
It is five years since the last blow job — so many years it’s conceivable that I’ve dreamt it all. I don’t intend to break my oath to Mike, until he calls me “Emily Big Butt” under his breath at the dinner table. It’s anyone’s guess why I crack open this time when I hadn’t all the other times he teased me. I jump up from the table and run to my room. Mom finds me sitting on the edge of my bed. Everything spills out of me in great, heaving sobs. She holds me in her arms until I calm down, then presses her hands into my shoulders, looks me in the eyes and says, “Let’s just keep this our little secret. Okay?” Too upset to consider my options, I sniffle and say “okay.” Mom hugs me again.
I spread out the map on my bed and figure out which college is farthest away from my family.
The next time I mention Mike’s abuse to Mom, I’m in graduate school. I’m standing in the kitchen of my Manhattan railroad apartment. It’s a stiflingly hot summer day and I open windows, trying to create a cross breeze. Mom calls to check on me for the umpteenth time that week. I tell her I’m still depressed only this time I go one step further and share with her my recurring nightmare. The one where Mike is holding a revolver to the back of my head and I wake up when I hear the click.
A while after I hang up, the phone rings again. I hear a small voice on the other end. It takes a second before I realize it belongs to Mike. He explains that he’s calling to apologize for what he did. I have often fantasized about this moment and the verbal vivisection I’d unleash if it ever came to pass. Yet all I feel now is relief. Relief that it wasn’t a dream after all.
I hang up and stare out the kitchen window, watching steam float up from the vents of the Chinese restaurant three floors below. For a moment, I float too, on a cloud of truth, finally visible.
As the session draws to a close, the therapist offers a few healthy coping tips to last me until our next session, which we schedule for the following week. As I gather my belongings, she stops me. “There’s one more thing,” she says. “You should report your brother to Child Protective Services for harming his son.”
“If you don’t, I will,” she adds.
Now I’m the snack machine, and the therapist has just kicked me. I sit on the sofa holding her steady gaze. The seconds tick by as she waits for my conscience to drop into place.
Before it does, I propose a compromise. “How about I confront Mike,” I say. “I’ll demand he treat his children better or I’ll report him.”
The therapist is kind. She patiently explains how I am not going to change my brother’s parenting, and that he’d likely feel attacked and resentful if I try. “In order for him to change,” she says, “he’ll need counseling to understand his own pain and the reasons why he hurts his kids and why he hurt you, Andy, and who knows how many others.”
“You’re not equipped to offer him solutions,” she tells me. “Even if you were, in the time it would take, your nephews would continue to be at risk.”
I finally concede. “I’ll call,” I tell her. “It’s my duty, not yours, to protect my nephews.”
She directs me to a local agency. When I call, a social worker walks me through the process as I jot down notes on the back of an envelope that I keep to this day. But when I mention that my brother is out of state, she informs me that the agency has “no standing” to file a report. I must contact Child Protective Services in my brother’s home state. I hang up, exhausted, but call the next agency.
The social worker takes a “good faith” report over the phone and asks if I have witnessed physical abuse or a pattern of “boundary violations,” or received a disclosure of abuse from a child. I explain what I witnessed while returning the pedicab. I also share everything Mom told me before her death.
After one too many glasses of white zinfandel, Mom’s youngest sister, Aunt Cindy*, lets it slip that Mom was raped by a half-brother I never knew about. Grandpa had chased his son off the farm with a rifle, and the incident was never mentioned again. Deprived at last of the oxygen I’ve fed it all these years, my burning resentment of Mom extinguishes. Sometimes all we know is what we’re taught.
If Mike is contacted by Child Protective Services, he never lets on. I don’t witness further abuse toward his children — only toward his wife who silently absorbs barbs about her weight and clothing, and threats that he’ll leave her if she ever cuts her hair short.
As I learn more about the patterns of abuse, my best self can make out that Mike is simply a scared person hiding inside a scary person. I think back to the belt lashings and wonder, Who abused Dad? I tell myself I’ve finally broken the cycle of abuse — unless I count the times some benign misstep by one of my children triggered a disproportionate response from me.
I ask my boys, now men, “What was it like for you as a child, when I would get crazy angry?” The intellectual one answers, “Which manifestations of your reactivity are you referring to?” We unpack that. The sensitive one replies, “I was scared at times, and didn’t want to upset you because I felt like I would get ripped apart.”
I hadn’t intended to mention this last part, about my fits of rage. But now that I have, should anything happen to me, could you, from time to time, check in on my grandbabies?
*Names have been changed.
If you or someone you know is suffering from abuse, depression or suicidal please review this list of national resources.
By: Emily Miller. Source: humanparts.medium.com/a-legacy-of-abuse-57dab89dde83
Each state has laws that prevent someone from being prosecuted for a crime after a certain period of time, these are known as statutes of limitations.
When a crime is committed, there is a window of time that a state has to charge the perpetrator. The laws that determine this time frame are called criminal statutes of limitations. As high-profile cases of sexual violence continue to make headlines—and as survivors seek to report crimes—it can help to have a better understanding of these laws and how they vary.
Each state has laws that prevent someone from being prosecuted for a crime after a certain period of time, these are known as statutes of limitations. Some states provide exceptions to their time limits—for example, if DNA evidence is discovered, the state is allowed more time to prosecute.
Use this map to find out how your state compares: https://www.rainn.org/statutes-limitations
To speak with someone who is trained to help, call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 800.656.HOPE (4673) or chat online at online.rainn.org.
Source: https://www.rainn.org/
The Youth Advocate 