[acb-hsp] Seeing Sexual Abuse and not Interveening

[peter altschul]

How Could You See a Child Being Sexually Abused and Not 
Intervene?
  Tracy Clark-Flory, Salon November 13, 2011
  This story was originally published at Salon.



It's a question many are asking as more details emerge from the 
Penn State scandal: How could you see a child being sexually 
abused and not intervene?
  As a 28-year-old grad student, assistant coach Mike McQueary, 
now on administrative leave, claims he witnessed Jerry Sandusky 
raping a 10-year-old boy in the locker room showers.  McQueary 
immediately called his own father to tell him what he'd seen, 
according to the grand jury report but waited until the next 
morning to notify coach Joe Paterno.  Even given the powerful 
institutional hierarchy within the school's football program, 
which some have gone so far as to compare to the Catholic Church, 
most find it difficult to imagine standing by as a pre-pubescent 
boy is allegedly sodomized by a middle-aged man -- no matter who 
that man is.
  But there is no shortage of criminal cases where witnesses' 
reactions, or lack thereof, seem baffling from the outside.  The 
most infamous example is the 1964 rape and murder of Kitty 
Genovese during which, according to popular legend, 38 neighbors 
listened to her cries for help and did not even call the cops.  
The story has been used in Psych 101 classes ever since as an 
example of the chilling "bystander effect," where people are less 
likely to help when there are others present because they figure 
someone else will.  (The lesser-acknowledged truth is that the 
bystanders in the Genovese case were not nearly so apathetic as 
the lore suggests.)
  In this case, though, we have a single witness who reported 
what he saw -- but belatedly and not to law enforcement.  In an 
attempt to make better sense of his response, I went to Joan 
Tabachnick, author of the National Sexual Violence Resource 
Center's guide, "Engaging Bystanders in Sexual Violence 
Prevention," and a board member of the Association for the 
Treatment of Sexual Abusers.
  In general, why might someone not intervene as they're 
witnessing a child being raped?
  On some level, unless you actually experience it, it's very 
hard to understand.  I would certainly hope everybody's reaction 
would be to jump in and do everything possible to stop it, but 
the reality is that 90 percent of child sexual abuse is never 
reported.  So you have to put this in the context of the fact 
that most abuse isn't reported.
  That this person didn't stay silent but called someone they 
trusted, their father, suggests that they were trying to 
understand what it was that they saw.  There's also maybe some 
shame, like they felt like they didn't have the ability to stop 
the abuse or that because they first reacted to the horror and 
stepped away they have some self-blame.
  They might not be quite sure what it means to make a report -- 
will they be doubted, will they ruin their own reputation or the 
reputation of somebody else? And what does it mean to the child, 
will they be taken away from their family or whatever 
opportunities and support that they have? Maybe the child who's 
being sexually abused is also getting physically abused at home 
and their only opportunity to get away from that is staying in 
this program.
  It's hard to understand, but it's also very common and 
understandable when you put all those things into place.
  In this particular case, there must have been the shock of 
seeing this powerful, respected figure engaged in such an act, 
right?
  You see things like "Law and Order: Special Victims Unit" and 
they're these monsters, people who rape, murder and abduct 
strangers.  So if the abuser is somebody you care about and 
respect, there's a cognitive dissonance: "Can they really be 
doing this monstrous thing when they're not a monster?" When I 
did some interviews with offenders in prison, I remember one 
minister saying that even when he was sexually abusing a child, 
he asked the child, "Is this good touch or bad touch?" and the 
child said, "Because it's you and you're a good man, it must be 
good touch."
  I just recently wrote a piece called "A Reasoned Approach," 
which was funded though the Ms.  Foundation.  What we talked 
about is that because we have moved more and more toward 
monsterizing the offender, it's actually limiting our ability to 
prevent child sexual abuse.  The more we make sex offenders into 
monsters, the less likely we are able to see behaviors in people 
we love that give us concern.
  My first private assumption upon hearing the details of the 
timeline was that McQueary was worried about the ramifications 
reporting would have on him and his future career prospects -- 
but theoretically it could be that it took him time to understand 
this shocking image he was seeing?
  I think anybody who would walk in and see their hero doing some 
monstrous act would have a hard time understanding just what was 
going on.
  Do we know anything about witnesses in the Catholic Church sex 
abuse scandals, people who didn't come forward because of the 
tremendous power that was at play?-
We don't have any research on that, but just think about how long 
the sexual abuse was going on within the Catholic Church and how 
recently the scandals emerged.  It really was only after there 
was a critical mass of victims willing to confront that 
hierarchy.  It really is very hard within a place where there's a 
strong hierarchy for people to challenge that and to know what to 
do.  And because in our country there is such an incredible 
punitive response, you also know that by even making an 
accusation against somebody, you can ruin their reputation, and 
their life.
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