Child sex abuse hysteria and the Ellis case
	Focus on People - Hall of Fame > The wisdom of Gordon Waugh
	Letter sent to Metro Magazine November 30, 1998 Rape Crisis Credibility by Gordon Waugh, Auckland Rape Crisis and the Help Foundation should not attribute their financial crises solely to government health agencies and private trusts, as implied in "The Second Rape" (Metro, Sep 98). Rape Crisis credibility finally evaporated with the sheer effrontery of the figures, definitions and comments backing its incest campaign. It got $30,000 from the Minister of Social Welfare to promote that orgy of misinformation. The Help Foundation also bears responsibility. It claims to have 60 clients per week at its Mt Eden centre alone (3,120 annually). Dozens of other sexual abuse agencies claim thousands more clients. But in 1997, there were just 1,328 prosecutions in all categories of sexual crime. [Later Note : I did not state the number of CONVICTIONS for 1997, though. They amounted to a total of about 720 convictions for all types of sexual offence.] These agencies claim special expertise in sexual abuse matters. Their trauma-focused, victim-role counselling rests on a belief that recovery is a long, slow process, which only they as "specialists" can provide. Their methodologies have been challenged and found wanting. Any relationship between their counselling and beneficial outcome is at best tenuous. Preferred interventions are those which are brief, solution-orientated and professionally administered, proved by controlled studies to be safe and effective. Medication is often an invaluable adjunct to treatment. Funds providers and the public are now awake to the gross exaggerations and fatal limitations of these inefficient, ineffectual and advocacy-driven sexual abuse agencies. Much would be gained by having genuine victims treated in mainstream medical facilities by skilled professionals.