an inch from murder - weblog

« Details of the charges child abuse against Michael Jackson | Main | Center hopes film helps break the silence »

January 28, 2005

Tactics of sex abuse change

The arrest of a Cary computer programmer on charges of manufacturing child pornography and publishing it on the Internet reveals that society still wrestles with the complexities that arise from the sexual abuse of children.
Even though more people are looking for the behavior, sexual abuse thrives in secrecy.

Child pornography has established a widespread presence on the Internet, but catching dealers and users is hard work and getting tougher.

Most of all, parents can be vigilant, but abusers often are the people closest to a child.

Facing that fact is the most important element in confronting sexual abuse.

"One of the biggest challenges is that it's so incredibly painful to hear about," said Marjorie Menestres, executive director of the nonprofit SAFEchild agency in Wake County.

"Nobody wants to believe it. It's almost mind-bogglingly difficult to believe that an adult could hurt a child. It's easier for people not to hear it."

Jane Harvey, executive director of the Carteret County Rape Crisis Program, said the perception lingers that sexual abusers are strangers and somehow "look" the part.

"One of the myths about child sexual abuse that keeps going around is that the person who would do this is a monster, they're creepy, they're weird, and we're going to recognize these people," Harvey said. "People say, 'Oh, he couldn't have done that, he's such a nice man.' But pedophiles sometimes are the quote-unquote upstanding citizens that you would never suspect."

Apparently, no one suspected Brian Schellenberger, 41, a married father of three. He lived in a yellow two-story house on a cul-de-sac off Cary Parkway and worked at SAS Institute for nearly 20 years as a software programmer.

Arrested in December, Schellenberger is charged with sexually exploiting children, possessing child pornography and trying to hire someone to kill his wife.

The FBI confiscated his five computers and found thousands of pornographic images of children on the hard drives. He is alleged to have acquired some of the collection over the Internet.

The World Wide Web has revolutionized the pornography industry, particularly the segment involving children. Someone who wants child pornography no longer has to risk arrest by making a purchase in a store or through the mail but can simply boot up a computer.

Some Internet pornography is sold; some is privately traded among collectors who "meet" in chat rooms requiring a code or password.

In the past 10 years, the FBI has concentrated some of its investigatory firepower on rolling sting operations to catch people who obtained pornography through the Internet. Between 1995 and the end of March, 3,316 people were convicted, almost all for possession.

But as in the hunt for illegal drugs, users are easier to catch than dealers. The FBI has found that much Internet child pornography is manufactured overseas, which makes Schellenberger's case rare.

The FBI alleges that he photographed himself sexually abusing two young children and posted the images in an Internet chat room. By chance, a Toronto police unit that investigates Internet child pornography found one photograph and identified and located a child. That discovery led to Schellenberger's arrest.

Yet as child pornography has become more available, the federal government has tracked a decrease in one measure of sexual abuse cases.

In the most recent study, released in February, the U.S. Justice Department said that between 1994 and 2000, the number of sexual abuse cases that child welfare officials substantiated had decreased by 40 percent.

North Carolina was one of a few states that did not experience a decrease; the number of substantiated cases has remained about the same since 1994, at about 1,000 a year.

David Finkelhor, director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire, conducted the study.

He looked into possible reasons for the decline, such as a backlog of cases getting cleared up or changes in data collection. He concluded that years of awareness and prevention campaigns have done a good job.

"This has been a social program that people have been working on fairly energetically for 20 years," he said.

The subject of sexual abuse rarely arose in any situation two decades ago. Not anymore.

On April 24, for example, Alison Arngrin, who played Nellie Oleson on the long-running TV program "Little House on the Prairie," spoke for an hour on CNN's "Larry King Live" about the sexual abuse that a relative inflicted on her when she was a child.

But despite the apparent success in addressing sexual abuse, people who work on awareness and prevention campaigns are rethinking all that they have done.

In the past, they aimed to give children tools to protect themselves, such as knowing a good touch from a bad touch.

Jennifer Tolle Whiteside, executive director of Prevent Child Abuse North Carolina, said that while those programs gave some abused children a chance to come forward, they also placed on children the burden of policing sexual abuse.

"Putting the responsibility on kids never made sense," she said.

"The work to be done now is to ensure that new parents get information and support about parenting. We have to be sure we have parenting classes and support."

Harvey and other experts said that despite the Justice Department studies, their experience tells them not all instances get counted or even noticed.

Between July 2002 and June 2003, child welfare caseworkers investigated abuse or neglect allegations involving 107,157 North Carolina children; they substantiated sexual abuse in 1,041 children.

Marcia E. Herman-Giddens, senior fellow at the N.C. Child Advocacy Institute and adjunct professor at the School of Public Health at UNC-Chapel Hill, said a sexually abused child often does not have any marks on the body, and a child welfare official must rely upon a child's description of what happened.

In addition, the child's connection to the adult determines whether the case is counted as abuse or neglect.

"Certainly, some cases of sexual abuse are classified as neglect because of the legal criteria governing the relationship between the child and the adult accused of the abuse," she said.

Child welfare agencies investigate only family members, custodians or caretakers. If someone else is suspected, the case goes to a district attorney.

The most common charge lodged is taking indecent liberties with a child. The latest data available, from 2000 to 2003, show that prosecutors charged 6,329 people with that crime and won convictions of 3,635 people.

Still, thousands more instances of sexual abuse go undiscovered. Pedophiles avoid detection at all costs to prevent the loss of access to a child. An injury could raise suspicion. As a result, Herman-Giddens said, "usually, the parent is the last to know."

Jonathan Sher, executive director of the N.C. Child Advocacy Institute, said that even when abuse is suspected and a culprit is identified, people can be reluctant to report what they see. "Human beings," he said, "have an extraordinary capacity for denial."

Schellenberger is in jail without bail, awaiting trial.

###

###

HOW TO SPOT SEXUAL ABUSE OF A CHILD

Here are some indicators that a child may be experiencing sexual abuse, from Prevent Child Abuse North Carolina:

- Stomach aches, changes in appetite or sleep, the presence of sexually transmitted diseases.

- Fear, guilt, depression, anxiety, difficulty concentrating, post-traumatic stress disorder.

- Physical or verbal aggression, conduct problems, social withdrawal, eating disorders, suicide attempts, substance abuse.

- Inappropriate sexual behavior, sexual dysfunction, hypersexuality and sexually aggressive behavior.

Prevent Child Abuse North Carolina recommends that parents:

- Build a strong foundation of trust with the child.

- Talk to the child. Then listen and observe.

- Talk openly about sexual development, behavior and abuse.

- Use proper names for body parts.

- Teach the child that he or she is in control of his or her body.

- Teach the child to speak up if anyone touches the child or tries to look at private parts, shows the child pictures or tries to take pictures of private parts, talks to the child about sex, walks the child into a bathroom or does anything that makes the child uncomfortable.

- Tell the child that some people try to trick children into keeping silent about touching private parts.

Posted by Nealus at January 28, 2005 06:30 PM

Comments

Post a comment