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Children with Sexual Behavior Problems: Victimizers or Victims?

Parents are always concerned about protecting their children from harm and wrongdoing. However, is it possible that in our attempts to make some children safe we end up harming others along the way?

The Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers just released the Report of the Task Force on Children with Sexual Behavior Problems. According to the task force, sexual behavior problems (SBP) in children are “behaviors involving sexual body parts that are developmentally inappropriate or potentially harmful to themselves or others” (p. 3).

This report, in its effort to make recommendations on how to address SBP in children ages 12 and under, dispels several myths our society has regarding these youngsters. One example is the commonly held belief that most children with SBP have been sexually abused themselves. Research in the past ten years has shown that many children with SBP have no known history of sexual abuse. The Report of the Task Force draws our attention to the fact that SBP can raise the concern of past sexual abuse, but should by no means be taken as evidence of such.

Despite strong public concerns that children with SBP develop into adult sex offenders, the Task Force’s report suggests that that SBP in children can be treated successfully with cognitive behavioral therapy, especially if caregivers are involved in the treatment. Two randomized trials found that at the ten-year follow up, 2% of children with SBP who received cognitive behavioral therapy were arrested for sex offenses, as compared to 10% of children who received treatment in a play therapy group; a control group of children with non-sexual behavioral problems had a 3% sex-related arrest rate.

The findings of the Task Force highlight two important points. First, there is evidence that cognitive behavioral therapy is an effective way to treat children with SBP. Second, even in the play therapy group, the arrest rate for sexual offenses ten years later was only 10%. The assumption that children with SBP inevitably grow up to become adult sex offenders appears to be by and large unfounded. The Task Force urges mental health professionals and policy makers to understand that children who show early signs of SBP are not “lost causes.” Instead, with focused approaches, there is strong evidence that children with SBP can be successfully treated and are not at increased risk for committing sex offenses as adults.

In June 2005 the Children’s Safety Act of 2005 was passed with bipartisan support by the House and is currently awaiting a Senate hearing. This bill, if passed, would require children as young as 8 to register on public sex offender registries for life. The Task Force believes that publicly labeling children as sex offenders for life can lead to “a number of significant harms” to these children from “ostracism to vigilantism” (p. 24).

This report directly addresses a very difficult topic – that of sex and children – and what happens when the sexual behavior of children becomes problematic.

Your thoughts…

Comments:

It appears this article was posted before December 13, 2006. Since then The US Congress has passed the “Child Safety Act of 2005” which is now “The Adam Walsh Act of 2006”. It was signed into Federal Law on July 27, 2006. Also, some things were changed in the final version. The law will not register 8 year-old children. It was compromised to move that age up to 14 years-old and that the child would have to be adjudicated of a sexual offense that would be punishable by a least a year in prison. If the victim is younger than 13 years of age, then the so-called offender would be registered for life. This will still capture a lot of children with sexual behavior problems.

There are multiple problems with this type of law. First, I know of NO research that has supported or proved that public registries prevent sexual offenses. Additionally, a large number of local municipalities have passed ordinances that would bar “registered sexual offenders” from living 1000 feet to 2500 feet from any school, playground or place children congregate. As these local ordnances and the Adam Walsh Act become enforced many children, including their families and most likely their victims (who are more likely to be a younger brother or sister) will not be allowed to live in these areas. The victim and offender might have to change schools, change school districts and likewise their parents might have to change jobs or be relocated to another job. Both the victim and so-called offender might also then be located far from treatment services and then the family might not pursue these services due to time constraints and cost of travel. Lastly, if or when public registry of children convicted of sexual offenses becomes the norm it might impact the number of children legally held accountable for those behaviors. The legal system might be more likely to plea bargain down to a lesser crime (i.e. – simple battery) to prevent public registry of these children. The problem here is that a conviction of a sexual offense might be what is needed for a child to qualify for juvenile sexual offense specific treatment programs, both outpatient and residential, as would be needed in some cases. This could lead to those children who needed treatment to NOT getting treatment. Historically, the area I live in has not been able to assess which children were of a greater risk to the community prior to pressing charges, adjudication, or diversion. These risk assessments, if they occur usually happen after the child was charged or diverted in the legal system and are NOT used to help guide the decision to charge, adjudicate, divert, or allow a plea to a lesser charge to be offered.

Currently, The Adam Walsh Act of 2006 (aka – Children’s Safety Act of 2005) is with the Federal Attorney General Office waiting for the Attorney General to provide guidelines to the States on how to enact this federal law in their respective States. Therefore, each individual State has a chance to define how they, as a State want to adopt this law in the State. If you are concerned how this many affect your children or other children in your area contact your State Representative and State Senator and inform them on your thoughts about the Adam Walsh Act and how you would like that to be or NOT be enacted in to your State’s laws.
Posted Wednesday, January 24, 2007 by Chip Royall - Tampa, Florida at 12:36 PM

My child was abused once in a park by a stranger who, despite the fact that I could ID him, the police refused to pursue because his mother provided an alibi. My son then went on to act out sexually with another child and when i took him in to the doctor, he said that because of something my son demonstrated called an "anal response reaction" MUST have been abused more than a dozen times over a period no longer than six months. This caused me to freak out and after pressuring my son to tell me who did this to him, he identified a teacher at his school who had given him extra attention.

An extensive investigation ensued and finally, many years later, my son confessed that he had misidentified the teacher just to get me off his back! He said that he had annally stimulated himself (which the doctor told me was impossible) after being abused because he identified that he enjoyed the stimulation.

My son then went on to develop "zoophelia" or sex with the family dog, and was finally treated successfully with cognitive behavioral therapy. He is now a relatively well-adjusted young adult, and I absolutely dread to think of what would have become of him if he had been put on a sexual offender's registry! Posted Tuesday, January 23, 2007 at 06:03 PM

I am encouraged to see some attention given to this
topic. These are everybody's kids and nobody's kids.
They are in everyones system..mental health, social
service, mental retardation... Yet not one system
wants to tackle the issue and create a service system
which will address their needs.
I do not believe they should be made to register as a
sex offender...in fact they are not sex offenders, or
pedefiles...they are children who need treatment.
There is a very good article entitled Don't Shoot Us We
Are Your Children. In family support we believe that
childen have the ability to change...it is because of this
belief that we pursue treatement for children and
families. There is effective treatment for these
families and it is in societys best interest to provide
for their most vulnerable population. Posted Tuesday, January 23, 2007 at 05:49 PM

I was naive enough to beocme a foster parent when my son was 5. Three little girls were placed with us; 4, 5 and 6. They ended up in our home for a long time because the bio-mom kept changing her mind about taking them back, releasing to a relative, etc. When they finally became free for adoption, their mom and her partner (on house-arrest for murder) moved down the road from us. She went to the school and exchanged phone numbers with the girls. While things had been intense before that due to the amount of abuse these girls had endured, life became a hell for our family after that time. The counselors involved with the girls believed them when they began saying my rather nerdy, shy, sensitive son was abusing them, even though they were older (except for the one 6 months younger), bigger, more sophisticated, had been proviously abused, and were not hesitant about speaking up about anything at family meetings or in private.

Howewer, these girls were very charming and convincing, and their mom had told them that they could come back to her if they made these accusations. The therapists involved said, no that can't be why they're saying things, their bio-mom can never get them back. Well, guess what, they're back with their mom, and I can only hope that that's a good thing. In the meantime, my son and I were ground into mincemeat by Child Protective Services because of the transference or whatever that these counselors, who staffed together,and at least one of whom had been abused as a child, were experiencing. The investigastion that CPS did was a joke; there was never an opportunity to bring in other therapists, friends of the family who were psychologists who had spent time in the home, or any defense. I was never allowed to refute charges that I should have known that my son was abusing the girls!

A label of sexual abuser can be attached to a youngster as the result of a witchhunt; it can be a punitive label attached to a family because of of rumor or prejudice or because a family speaks out for change in a rural area where the politics don't allow that.

To punish an 8-year-old or any child for life is just so sad. Why do we seem to need scapegoats even with all of our psychological understanding? I hope the psychologists and social workers through their associations and directly will rise up and start earning the trust of families by speaking out against this bill. Posted Thursday, January 11, 2007 at 04:41 PM

I would like to know how it was determined whether or not children acting out sexually had been sexually abused. As anyone who works with sexual abuse victims knows, asking family members if a child has been abused or not is often futile since the family members are often the abusers or are enabling the abuser. Forensic evidence is not valid either, since molestation generally leaves no physical evidence.

Furthermore, looking at arrest rates is also not a valid way of determining whether an individual is victimizing children. Even in cases where there is physical evidence, testimony from the child victim, and support from Protective Services or police investigations, it is rare that a perpetrator is ever arrested.

Having said all that, I believe therapy can help tremendously if done early and by an experienced clinician. I therefore do not support putting children on the Sexual Offender's list. However, I would support legislation that puts adult offenders in prison for life in order to stop the spread of this tragic epidemic that is sweeping our nation. Posted Thursday, December 28, 2006 at 12:23 PM

Of course when you work in this you want more funding, it is your job and your money to pay for that house that you have to pay for, it is these childrens lives. Do you understand what is really being done to these children by this system after you get them to fess up? Can you answer this is it better to call them a liar because they won't tell then it is to call them a liar for telling? Is it better to do what this system says to do to them then it is to do what they would really want to have done or what they need to have done for them? To leave them with guilt and shame as they get older. Do you realize how devestating it must be for them to be split apart from their siblings and other family members that they have a bond with? Do you realize how many people are just like you and want to run around and tell this stuff all over town about these kids to even perfect strangers and when it is their own right to privacy that is being violated? Wouldn't it make more sense to stop it before it gets started then to treat it? How much are we working on that? What about baby's and little children that are being put on psychiatric medications because they are fighting these so called treatments in the only way they know how they are acting out and throwing temper tantrums and crying all the time or getting in trouble as they get older? It must stop! There is no way to justify it. It is wrong. Posted Thursday, December 14, 2006 at 05:44 PM

I worked with children who were indeed the victims of abuse and I was shocked at the number of children here in rural Columbia, TN who were suffering in silence. We used puppets to go into the school to help children understand what abuse was and what to do it they were in these situations. I was startled to have children disclose to us every time we did the puppets. Its not something I would have thought I could handle, but with the proper training I felt that I was able to help the children and their families. We need more funding to help families parenting children who are victims of abuse. Posted Thursday, December 14, 2006 by Sheila, MTFN Columbia, TN at 01:49 PM

Most children in society are exposed to sexual stuff all of the time, all around them in all of our arts and community affairs. Things that us parents forget to tell them they learn in schools or by questioning of health professionals.

There is no more kids talking to other kids or experimenting on their own age level or kids coming to their parents when they are ready to ask these questions. Psychiatry and health does this because it says it is good preventive materials, which is a lie. In fact I would say that it puts ideas into some childrens minds. Either we are going to be a society based on sexuality in advertising and tv or we are going to shut down societies sexuality.

The system of protection and treatment hurts our children and their innocence more then anything that I have ever known of. It hurts our kids. If I knew of a child that was acting out inapropriately I would not tell the system. I would try my self to take appropriate actions in a confidential way so as to protect that child from further harm because they can be used to make a living off of. Of course I would explain to them that it was not right and that it was not their fault if an adult did something to them that they shouldn't have.

If it was a four year old as has recently been in the news I would want to know where the information came from how they learned to do these things and then I might be doing some talking to the adults around them and telling them how wrong it was that the kids were learning these things from them.

When will we see that what started as a way of doing some good for some few people that had been actually raped and abused severely with the promise of complete confidentiality as a way to at least be able to say it to someone has been totally corrupted for the value it creates in the mental health feild?

Some people out there must be listening to those of us who have been hurt and unjustly used in these ways by the system to purchase more programs and find others to do this so called treatments to. When there is no real valid and reliable scientific evidence to promote this and it is being based on lies and crystal balls it hurts far more then it will ever help.

What a child might do one or two times in their lives is not their whole lives, but now it can be used to ruin their entire lives, isn't that wrong? And it is based mostly on he said she said and not what is really in the best interest of that particular child.

It is jobs and people are making good money off of hurting our worlds children more then they are helping them. Isn't it just as bad to call them a liar because they won't admit that they have been abused as to call them a liar for saying it? Isn't it just as harmful to turn them into a future perpetrator just because they have been abused? Sometimes they have been abused severely?

What I wanted when I admitted that I had maybe been exposed to and abused, when I was forced to admit that my child was my ex-brother in laws child was an apology from him and my sister for letting him do this to me and that never came. I wanted him to take care of my child at least to help give us some financial support so that I didn't have to beg the system for every little crumb that we got.

Instead I was labeled as mentally ill and so was my child because we were poor and I had no one that understood or was really there to help us as they call it, I was unjustly punished by the so called helpers in life and so was my child for acting out the pain and conflicts he saw his mother having by getting into trouble.

That wasn't fair and none of my abusers have ever had to be labeled or treated by this system and they walked away smelling like roses. So the perpetrators do not have a brain disease in this case it was the abused that had the so called brain diseases, when it was not brain diseases at all. Our system is wrong, way wrong.

When is our system going to stop and step back and give the appropriate help if it is asked and stop punishing the survivors of what has been done to them by first the abuse and then second the system? I have been very lucky to have had some good parents and also people that really cared about me and enough fight in me to overcome what happened to a great extent.

I fight for those that have not had the support that I have had and have not been able to do the things that I have been able to do, much of through my own writing that was my way of healing and expressing certain things in life.

It makes me sad to see how even my writing has and is being corrupted to use against survivors of this type of thing. Good intentions can be warped into ugliness anytime that anyone can find a way to use them to make a living, people are greedy in life so much of the time.

Those that are being helped by my struggles are those that have used those of us like me to create more treatments with and I say it is time for it to stop! I am out here to tell you that what your system did to me hurt me and it is enough don't do it to other children, it is a corruption so severe that it is mentally painful just to know it.

No more pushing of these treatments and misperceptions will be allowed by me. There are things that can be done to help, but none that are being done by this system of corruption and I am here to tell you that it will change if it takes my last breath to change it. That is a promise.

I have struggled all of my life to overcome what has been done to me by those of you saying that you are helping me, and I am here to tell you that what you did hurt me more then it ever helped me. What I did to counter you has been what has helped me the most.

I am sorry if you don't like this, but it is the truth out of the mouth of a survivor and as long as I am here to tell the truth that is what I will do. Janie Lee, M.Ed. Home and land owner, speaker, advocate, mother and grandmother. No longer in a position where you can do this to me, but out of it and fighting for what is right and trying to stop the wrong that is being done by your system.

Trying to forgive myself for what I was put through by all of the so called good and caring people out there that treated and judged me in the wrong ways for what was done to me in life. You did not help me and you are still not helping others and that is where I will work to change things so that others can have a different and better life then I have had, it is only fair. Posted Wednesday, December 13, 2006 at 09:46 AM

I have to admit to believing in each of the two myths discussed in the article. But the fact that children with sexual behavior problems are treatable just reinforces the general impression I have had... As a society we have developed such an intense fear of "sexual predators" that our responses have become rigid and disproportionate. I see children who are kept in restrictive placements because people are so afraid of what might happen if they are returned to community placements. The fear of bad publicity and lawsuits drives these decisions to an irrational extent, making systems so risk-averse in this particular area that children may languish for extended periods in institutional "care," We need to focus on the fact that these children will return to the community sooner or later and there will always be some risk to that. But to be paralyzed in the short run with fear of that risk penalizes children unnecessarily, probably works to worsen their difficulties overall, and doesn't solve the problem. Posted Wednesday, December 13, 2006 at 08:30 AM

Working in an agency that is not focused on children in the child welfare system but instead works mostly with youth living with their biological parents (although there is some crossover) we work with youth who exhibit the behaviors with no history of sexual abuse themselves. It is refreshing to see an article that encourages us to look at things with an open mind and not generalize and make assumptions. These kids are not "throw aways" - they deserve compassion and treatment, of course while paying attention to safety of others. Posted Wednesday, December 13, 2006 at 06:29 AM

Working in the child welfare system, it does seem almost all of the children with inappropriate sexual behaviors have been sexually abused. Of course, most of the children in the child welfare system have been exposed to sexually inappropriate behaviors, if not abused and exploited. The system frequently over reacts to these children, often getting them labelled and placed in sexual offender programs. I would like to know more about effective out patient treatments. Posted Wednesday, December 13, 2006 at 06:14 AM

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