Archive for March, 2007
CSA Conference – Africa
First International Conference on Child Sexual Abuse in Africa
http://www.crin.org/resources/infoDetail.asp?ID=12328
From 24/09/2007 to 26/09/2007
Nairobi, Kenya
African Network for the Prevention and Protection against Child Abuse and Neglect (http://www.crin.org/Organisations/vieworg.asp?id=18)
PO Box 46516
00100-GPO
Nairobi
Tel: + 254 2 2722835
Email: admin@anppcankenya.co.ke
Website: www.anppcankenya.co.ke
Believing child sexual abuse claims
Feb. 13, 2007
A University of Oregon study has found that
· young men who have never been traumatized are least likely to believe a person’s recounting of child sexual abuse.
· males with highly sexist beliefs also tend to believe that such incidents, if they happened at all, were not harmful to the victim.
There are two forms of disbelief
· One is that such things never happen – similar to denying the Holocaust occurred.
· A second is that no one is harmed – that kids are sexual beings who sometimes experiment with grownups, which feeds into widely held mythology.
It is important to study the factors that may explain why some people don’t believe that such abuses occur, a phenomenon that discourages victims from speaking out and allows perpetrators to escape unpunished and possibly repeat such crimes.
The biggest obstacle to addressing CSA, is an unwillingness to talk about it, and this is very much related to people’s unwillingness to believe that it occurs and is so problematic.
Until we change societal attitudes, abuse victims are less likely to speak up. It means that abuse can keep occurring to them, and that they won’t get the societal support they need. It’s positive social support and being believed that is most likely leading to positive mental health outcomes.
In the study, 318 university students were divided into two groups based on self-reporting of abuse history and sexist attitudes. Both groups heard short vignettes in which a male or female described an incident that occurred at age 9 involving an adult figure. The victim in each case also reported whether the memory has always been available to recall since the incident or was recently recalled.
Females, including those who had and had not suffered from some kind of betrayal of adult trust, and males who had experienced such betrayal all were willing to believe such an allegation, even more so in the cases where memory had always been present. There was a dramatic decline in believability for men with no abuse history. This was a very big effect with a major difference between males and females.
The findings suggest that educational efforts may need to be more heavily focused toward men to help them understand that such acts do occur and that the abuse causes long lasting damage.
http://www.uoregon.edu/newsstory.php?a=2.13.07-disbelievers.html
Typology of Sex Offenders
Offenders are more likely to be relatives or acquaintances of their victim than strangers.
There are three categorizations of sex offenders against minors in the field of criminal psychology. The first two are major while the third is minor.
Regressed offenders
Regressed offenders are primarily attracted to their own age group but are passively aroused by minors.
- The sexual attraction to minors is not manifested until adulthood.
- Their sexual conduct until adulthood is aligned with that of their own age group.
- Their interest in minors is either not realized until well into adulthood or it was recognized early on and simply suppressed due to social taboo.
Other scenarios may include:
- Not associating their attractions as pedosexual in nature due to cultural differences.
- Age of consent laws were raised in their jurisdiction but mainstream views toward sex with that age group remained the same, were acted upon, then they were charged with a crime.
- The person’s passive interest in children is manifested temporarily upon the consumption of alcohol and acted upon while inhibitions were low.
Fixated offenders
Fixated offenders are most often adult pedophiles who are maladaptive to accepted social norms. They develop compatibility and self-esteem issues, stunting their social growth.“This offender identifies with children, in other words considers him or herself to be like a child and thus seeks sexual relationships with what the offender perceives to be other children”.Such offenders often resort to collecting personal articles related to minors (clothing, children’s books) as an outlet for their repressed desires. The sexual acts are typically preconceived and are not alcohol or drug related.
“Children who molest”
Some therapists noticed that many adult sex offenders already showed what they considered deviant sexual behavior during childhood. So they promoted early treatment of deviant minors as a preventive measure. However there is still little known about normal as opposed to deviant child sexuality. It is also unknown whether so called deviant minors have a higher risk of becoming an adult sex offenders than anybody else.
The label “juvenile sex offender” is controversial because it is not only used to describe acts of violence, but also consensual acts that violate statutory rape laws; critics of this trend view many such children as simply engaging in sexual experimentation.
Ref – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_sexual_abuse#Typology
Bitter Chocolate
Bitter Chocolate: Child Sexual Abuse in
India
by Pnky Virani
By the way in case you have read this book then please write a review about it on Amazon. It is a pity to see that such an important book has not recieved a review till now.
Bangalore
Askios (Greek for ‘shadowless’)
http://members.tripod.com/askios-ivil/
http://askios007.blogspot.com/
Yahoo Groups
For CSA Activits
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/askios-activists/
For adult survivors of Child Sexual Abuse
http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/askios/
Delhi
RAHI (Recovery and Healing from Incest)
http://www.rahifoundation.org/
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