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Auckland
Sexual Abuse Help Foundation
Newsletter November 2003
Guilty or Innocent - Is that the issue?
by Kathryn McPhillips.
Over the years, we have been asked on a number of occasions to lend our
voices to support one side or the other in the debate about the guilt or
innocence of Peter Ellis. We have always refused on the grounds that in the
absence of third party witnesses or physical evidence, guilt or innocence can
be extremely difficult to establish, so we could not offer an informed
opinion. All we could honestly say was that one of the apparently unprompted
disclosures made several months into the investigation "You know, this
carrot is like a big fat penis in your mouth to suck" (as reported in
the book A Mother's Story: The Civic
Crèche Child Sex Trial) is one we would consider as needing
investigation.
However, due to this recent publication of Lynley Hood's book A City Possessed, media attention
focused on Peter Ellis has begun to influence the ways that sexual abuse of
children and associated services are viewed. Therefore, it seems time to
offer a few opinions about this case and the wider issues that the case
raises.
The guilt or innocence of Peter Ellis
It may be that only those directly involved will ever know the truth about
whether Peter Ellis indecently assaulted any child at the Christchurch Civic
Creche. It is possible that even they will not share the same
"truth" now, as the nature of memory is such that it is vulnerable
to reconstruction over time. Further, the nature of sexual abusing is such
that it invites both public and private denial by those doing the abusing.
"Sex abuse hysteria" or real
concerns?
Lynley Hood suggests that a mass hysteria she calls "sex abuse
hysteria" influenced the investigation and prosecution of the
allegations of sexual abuse made against Peter Ellis. She seems to suggest
that this hysteria was promulgated by what she calls the "sex abuse
industry" (eg agencies like ASAH) and that it was unwarranted. She
supports these ideas with a selective presentation of the research about
sexual abuse and its consequences (recently debunked by Drs Emma Davies and
Jeffrey Masson in the New Zealand Herald, Aug 11, 2003).
Perhaps there is another way to look at the phenomenon of people feelingly
strongly about the need to investigate and prosecute allegations of the
sexual abuse of children.
Up until the 1980s, the sexual abuse of children was considered to be a very
rare event - psychiatric textbooks estimated that incest occurred in 1 in a
million families. Through the 1980s, various prevalence studies began to
suggest a different picture. The Otago Women's Health Study reported that 32%
of a non-clinical sample of adult women reported that they had unwanted
sexual experiences before they turned 16 years of age and that 70% of these
involved genital contact. Alongside this change in ideas emerged correlations
between a history of childhood abuse and later problems in mental health.
Is this a case of unwarranted hysteria or an understandably high level of
anxiety held by parents who want to protect their children? In the absence of
a solution at the societal level, the first place to look to ameliorate the
anxiety could be an individual solution - to get rid of the alleged abuser.
"If I can get rid of him, my child will be safe".
An early investigation
The allegations of abuse, the investigation and the prosecution of Peter
Ellis all took place in the early 1990s, when understanding of the nature of
child sexual abuse and ways to work with its challenges was at a very early
stage. If we were able to compare everything done at the time along with the
assumptions made then with our current mindset, it is likely that there would
be a significant number of differences.
Even so, today we still realise that there are things we don't know in
dealing with this issue. For example, science can not yet tell us how to get
unambiguous evidence needed to prosecute someone for child abuse that involve
concepts beyond that child's developmental capacity for understanding. A
classic example that we have heard many times from adult women raped as
children is the impossibility of understanding what had happened and telling
this to someone else when you didn't know that you had a vagina.
A final opinion
A final opinion: Our justice system can not yet solve the problem of sexual
abuse.
·
Science can not yet and may never
be able to tell us in definite terms who is innocent and who is guilty.
·
Many cases never get to court
because abusers ensure that witnesses to child sexual abuse (CSA) are rare
and police and prosecutors know that although an allegation may be strong and
convincing, a conviction is unlikely without corroborating evidence.
·
There is no research that shows
that merely incarcerating people accused of sexually abusing children stops
them doing it.
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Rehabilitation programmes are not
available or taken by all people convicted of abusing children.
Therefore,
we can not rely on the current justice system to protect our children from
sexual abuse or to protect people from being wrongly convicted of abuse.
Other approaches to the problem
We can choose to carry on handling this problem in a way that doesn't work
for any party involved or we can start thinking about another way to approach
the problem of sexual violence.
Consider what it might be like to live in a society where:
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Abuse (sexual and other) of
children is seen as a significant social problem and all manners of resources
are deployed to work towards solutions.
·
We look carefully at all of our
social practices to evaluate which of these support abuse and which of these
do not support abuse.
·
The safety of children is
prioritised over the rights of adults in ways that still respect adults.
·
An environment is created which
encourages those who wish to perform sexual acts on children (or others
against their will) can disclose and seek help. In other words, effective
rehabilitation becomes more highly valued than punishment.
·
The tendencies towards secrecy,
denial and minimisation associated with abusive behaviour are well known,
debated and researched. These tendencies should be considered part of the
fallibility of memory that we all share, and not a trait accused only of
survivors.
·
The not-surprising fact that most
child sexual offenders have childhood histories of some form of abuse is part
of our concept of victims and abusers. The need to see the child as victim
does not preclude understanding for the person who abused her/ him.
The sexual
abuse of children is a widespread social problem, which research suggests
that up to 1 in 3 girls and more than 1 in 10 boys may face directly. The
solution of this problem requires widespread social action, which takes a
proactive approach to addressing the root causes on a social systems scale.
Only with changes like those described above may parents feel safe leaving
their children in the care of others, people with desires to abuse feel safe
to disclose, men feel safe to enter professions where they have sole care of
children, and anguish can be avoided over the possibility of wrongful
convictions of people alleged to have sexually abused children.
For more information on rehabilitative approaches, see the:
·
Update from the Youth and Family
Team on page 5
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Web-site of Auckland's Safe Network
www.safenetwork.co.nz
·
Conference Success by Working
Together at www.anzatsa.org
·
American organisation with a
strong call for a public health approach to sexual violence,
www.stopitnow.com
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