02Jan08c U.S. decline in CSA (Robin)

"The Decline in Child Sexual Abuse Cases" 

by David Finkelhor and Lisa Jones in the OJJDP Juvenile Justice Bulletin

< http://www.ncjrs.org/html/ojjdp/jjbul/2001_1_1/page2.html >

[Excuse me: this URL does not work. Here is the one that works:

< http://www.ncjrs.org/html/ojjdp/jjbul2001_1_1/contents.html > Frans]

GOOD NEWS, perhaps too good to get much attention in the media or even mention by those in the child abuse industry. I came across this interesting article online at the site of the American Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. It documents a 31% decline in substantiated CSA cases from 1992 to 1998. This greatly exceeds the declines in child physical abuse and neglect. 

Finkelhor is perhaps the most influential American CSA authority. He studied the family and father/daughter incest but uncritically extended the incest model of abuse to all adult/minor sexual relations. This agreed with much feminist theory which sees boys as equivalent to women. He treats CSA as a homogenous commodity. He does not make much in the way of distinctions between incestuous and non-incestuous relationships or gender of the "victim". He does distinguish between pre and post pubertal children. The daughter atoning and substituting for the wife's lack of sexual appeal equals the boy who really gets off on having men suck his dick and maybe getting some material reward in return.

Finkelhor examines the decline in substantiated cases. He questions if there actually has been a decline in CSA, although he seems to accept that there has. He muses that reporting may have declined because people who might otherwise report cases of abuse have become intimidated by the backlash against satanic daycare abuse and recovered memories. 

Finkelhor uncritically accepted the legitimacy of satanic daycare abuse after it was widely questioned and wrote a book, NURSERY CRIMES which indulged in sophisticated statistical analysis of a large number of these satanic daycare cases, and from these developed a profile of a hitherto unknown type of female child sex abusers. As it happened most if not all of the cases he used subsequently collapsed. Gender equality, which demands at least a few token female deviates, has had to turn to teachers who initiate eager teenage boys into the joys of intercourse. 

Finkelhor is a favorite theorist of those in the criminal justice system. His theory of consent, or the inability of children to give consent, is taught as science in several fields, and is generally accepted by CSA authorities and the courts. It denies children any capacity to consent. The offender/victim paradigm is sacred. 

Finkelhor is a moral fundamentalist. He is able to reject, without denying their validity, the most reasonable arguments for adolescent sexual autonomy. Adult/child, adult/minor sex is simply wrong. It is taboo, a taboo disguised and clothed in the most hip and cool raiment. If scientific evidence is fickle and unreliable, as the Rind study demonstrated, moral based concepts promise security. 

Finkelhor, like Dr. Collins at my voir dire, probably sees a confluence of science and morality, each reinforcing the other. Very convenient. All aboard for motherhood, well motherhood issues as the original inspiration is no longer very inspiring. Motherhood today is anti-racism, anti-sexism, anti-homophobia, anti-terrorism, anti-violence, anti-pedo and anti-kid sex, and of course protecting children at any cost, even to children. Finkelhor appeals to the intellectual gut. He does however have insights and a basic integrity of respecting acceptable facts. A decline in CSA is something he believes should be explained. Nobody else is trying; how many are even aware?

Finkelhor considers several explanations but they are all within the operation of the system, the child abuse industry. He tends to minimize external economic, social and cultural factors. To me it is interesting that the period of decline in CSA corresponds with a proliferation in the quantity and availability of child pornography. At my voir dire in 1998 the police expert repeatedly claimed that there had been a "tidal wave" of child pornography due to the Internet. The prosecution's psychiatric expert, a prosperous mercenary, tried unsuccessfully to deny knowledge of any increase in child porn but both denied any decrease in CSA. The psychiatrist argued argued that viewing child pornography incited pedos to sexually assault children. I advanced the catharsis theory, the idea that pornography is a substitute for a real partner. I was not an expert witness.

The reasons for the decline in CSA as defined are important. Finkelhor admits he doesn't have the answer. But then he does not appear to have examined data that might help us understand the reasons for the decline. His data does not reveal much about how the decline relates to the age, gender and family background of the victims or their relationship to offenders. It doesn't tell us much about the nature of offences, coercion, violence or social context. Pornography, let alone child pornography, is not mentioned. 

Child pornography is widely perceived to cause CSA, and to be form of CSA in itself. Since the beginning of child sex panic in the late 1970s the quantity and availability of child pornography has gone through major swings. In the 70s it was commercially available and even very explicit material could be seen on display in stores. By the middle 1980s it was rare and could only be acquired with some risk. Starting in the 90s with the growth of the Internet it again became plentiful and more widely available than ever before. 

Have these changes affected the incidence of CSA? And if so how? We need to know who uses child pornography. Does it incite as conventional psychiatric theory assumes, or is its use cathartic, a substitute for actual CSA. Dr. Collins claimed that some pedos sometimes use it to groom themselves to assault.

For child pornography law and users the question of its effect if indeed significant is probably irrelevant. Even if the laws should prove to be counterproductive they would be retained as a statement of society's moral rectitude. Just as we are prepared accept the murders of prostitutes as a price for our laws that condemn the profession, and the shocking body of our drug laws, so we should be prepared to accept more sexual abuse of children as a price for our child porn laws.

Robin