The Christchurch Star
Christchurch, New Zealand.
Saturday, October 22, 1988.

Who do you believe?
by Cate Brett

Men convicted of sexually assaulting children are almost invariably guilty. It is men like Mark, who will probably never face charges, who alarm some professionals in this city.

Mark is a worry on two counts: Either he is guilty but the system is incapable of proving his guilt, or he is innocent and falsely accused.

Nobody interviewed for this article was prepared to dismiss the possibility of Mark's innocence. Details of the case were not disclosed, but the simple laws of probability suggested to all that someone somewhere along the line is going to be falsely accused.

Dr Steve Hudson, director of clinical training at Canterbury University psychology department (and one of the few professionals prepared to go on record for this article), describes men who have been falsely accused as the inevitable casualties of a process of social change.

Dr Lyn Hay, a practising clinical psychologist, says yes, a child can be manipulated into giving misleading information that may lead to a false allegation.

But it is rare. Very rare: "Virtually every child disclosing sexual abuse can and should be believed."

Dr Hay accepts, however, that in extraordinary circumstances — perhaps — involving custody disputes in a deeply disturbed marital setting — a child may be manipulated by a mother.

"In a case where a child has been sexually abused by someone other than the father and the conditions of malice exist, it is possible for a child to be manipulated into accusing the father."

She warns that counsellors should always be aware of the dynamics between the various adults in the child's life.

But she adds: "As a rule of thumb, most abusers are damn good liars and it is extremely rare for a woman to be so disturbed that she will manipulate her child in this way — and get away with it."

Research into allegations of child sexual abuse within the context of custody disputes shows that, regardless of whether the allegation is water-tight, something is badly amiss in the child’s life for the allegation to have risen in the first place.

The child’s health is at risk which ever way you look at it: Either the abuse is real and may happen again, or the child is being used and manipulated by a deeply disturbed parent.

Obviously, in such a situation, someone needs help; someone must intervene on behalf of that child.

When, how and why that intervention occurs are three questions of enormous concern to a number of Christchurch psychologists.

They believe that under the current system, the scope for serious mistakes is too great. Mistakes which can cost a child's life or needlessly destroy a family.

Inadequate intervention or overkill — either can be disastrous.

It is not only a question of whether or not children lie. It seems clear that in 99 per cent of the cases where a child discloses sexual abuse, it has occurred.

Researchers point out that a child has everything to loose and nothing to gain from disclosing sexual abuse.

The grey area — and the area requiring extraordinary skill and expertise on the part of psychologists, social workers and therapists — is when a child is too young, to vulnerable or too disturbed to come out with an allegation.

This is where the headaches and heartaches begin. It is also, according to Dr Hudson, where the first mistakes may be made.

A child may be suspected of being sexually abused for a number of reasons. A child psychologist, Miriam Saphira, has drawn up a check list of potential abuse indicators, including bed wetting and other behavioural problems.

But, points out Dr Hudson, these are also indicators of a number of other psychological or emotional traumas in a child's life.

One of his colleagues talks of Ms Saphira’s checklist being posted in a Christchurch health camp: “If a child exhibits five of the indicators, it is whisked off to the child protection team as a sexual abuse suspect.”

It is a simple and well-documented phenomenon: People tend to find what they are looking for.

Nowdays everyone is looking for sexual abuse.

The next question concerns the quality and reliability of the work done by a range of people to determine whether or not abuse has occurred in a child displaying some worrying indicators.

If a child is living at home, the first formal contact with a 'helping agency" will occur when a social worker and police officer arrive to check out the abuse claim.

Experts have already voiced grave fears about this initial assessment interview being conducted by people untrained in the field. They argue that both for the sake of the child and the social worker, only those whose specialist training should do this disclosure work.

This first interview is crucial, occurring before the evidence has been "contaminated" by repeated interviews, cross-examination, adult interrogation and the upheaval which invariably follows if the child is removed from home.

As one professional puts it; "Screw up that first interview and an offender may walk free."

Often disturbed children will not disclose abuse — or certainly not the extent of abuse — until well into what may be a lengthy and intense course of therapy.

It may take months before a deeply disturbed child will trust an adult sufficiently to disclose sexual abuse.

Which raises another question for Dr Hudson: “What part has the therapist played in shaping up the evidence?

“If the therapist enters the relationship already convinced that sexual abuse has occurred, this must influence the whole process.”

He points out that a vulnerable child is open to suggestion and manipulation. Simply by assuming that abuse has occurred, a therapist may slowly and subconsciously shape the answers the child provides.

“Over a period of time the child will learn what sort of response are pleasing and earn a smile.”

The use of leading or suggestive questions in interviews with young suspected abuse victims is a vexed issue. Most admit therapists have little option when dealing with a barely verbal, terrified child.

Another area of controversy surrounds the use of sexually anatomically correct dolls (SAC dolls) as a psychological tool for establishing sexual abuse in young children.

Recently research has begun to emerge challenging both the reliability and validity of SAC dolls as a tool for assessing sexual abuse.

The problem with SAC dolls, as with a number of other indicators in the child abuse jigsaw, is that there is no normative data. i.e. no one knows what abused children would normally do with the doll.

This lack of normative data was a crucial issue in the Cleveland crisis where a cluster of doctors were convinced abuse could be detected by anal reflex dilation. They had no normative data against which to compare their findings and the result was scores of children being assessed as sexually abused on the basis of one faulty indicator.

According to Dr Hudson, the problems associated with the use of SAC dolls and other controversial sexual abuse indicators can only be resolved if a clear distinction is drawn between the work of therapists and the work of those whose job it is to assess the validity of an abuse claim for the courts.

At present that distinction is at best clouded and at worst .non-existent

Dr Hudson believes this places therapists in the intolerable position of being both the child's advocate and a key source of “objective evidence” for the courts.

“It’s very difficult to remain objective when you are confronted daily by case after case of soul destroying evidence of horrific sexual abuse,” he says.

"There is an enormous tendency to become angry and overburdened and burnt out. These stresses and strains can lead to people adopting less than professional standards.

In the area of child sexual abuse, where so many pieces of complex evidence must be pieced together, professionalism is essential.

In the absence of incontrovertible physical signs, the decision as to whether abuse has taken place must be made on the evidence produced by the child.

According to Dr Hudson and a number of his colleagues, the methods and procedures used to obtain that evidence are in urgent need of a rigorous sort-out as they frequently lack reliability.

They fear an overburdened Department of Social Welfare and numerous independents attempting to cope with an intolerable work load has meant professionalism is jeopardized.

Dr Hudson has a number of suggestions as to how the system could be improved. Many of them were included in the Cleveland report:

§ All those working the field whether professional or lay, need specialist training in dealing with child sexual abuse.

§ Intensive research into the merits and validity of various sexual abuse assessment techniques is urgently needed.

§ Immediate introduction of full video-taping of all interviews with suspected abuse victims so the “evidence” can be scrutinized by peers and in the court room.

§ Separation of the assessment of abuse function and the work of therapist and counselors.

§ Psychological assessment of alleged abusers as part of the evidence-gathering process.

For all his fears about the system’s current shortcomings, Dr Hudson does not believe the existence of people like Mark means we are sitting astride another Cleveland.

But he does think we owe it to ourselves and our children to do the job better than it is being done today.