Sexual Assault of a Child - Essay Example

Sexual Assault of a Child Child sexual abuse is a few type of sexual activity with a child by an adult, or by another child where there is no approval or approval is not likely; or by another child who has control over the child. By this explanation, it is likely for a child to be sexually mistreated by another child who is younger than they are. The new study, The Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in the U.S., Canada and Mexico, was completed in September 2001 by Richard Estes and Neil Alan Weiner of the School of Social Work at the University of Pennsylvania. Surprisingly, say Estes and Weiner, the commercial sexual exploitation of children is a problem that most often affects those from the middle class. Also, of the estimated 766,686 missing juveniles in the United States last year, including abductees, runaways and abandoned "throwaways," 16 percent likely were victims of sexual exploitation (Spun, 2002). The clinical explanations of sexual abuse are linked to decrees, the directing the belief is whether the encounter has a shocking impact on the child. Not all sexual encounters suffered by children do. Distressing impact is usually influenced by the significance of the act to the child, which may alter as the child progresses through developmental phases. The sexual abuse may not be "shocking" but still leave the child with cognitive distortions or difficult attitude; that is, it is acceptable to touch others for the reason that it feels good. Sexual abuse comprises of, but is not restricted to, viewing a child pornographic resources, placing the child's hand on another person's genitals, touching a child's genitals, or penetration of any orifice of a child's body with a penis, finger, or an article of any kind. Penetration does not have to take place for it to be sexual abuse. Sexual abuse can take place anywhere, at any occasion, including in front of other people who do not, or prefer to not see. Sexual abuse has horrifying consequences on children. Children who have been sexually abused undergo from overwhelming mental breakdown and at times death. The children build up distrust and will have troubles in their future relationships. In addition sexual abuse makes sexual abusers. The impact of sexual abuse accomplishes all levels of a child’s sentiments. Confusion is frequently the early response of the child. Once the abuse starts the victim undergoes an incredible disagreement with their emotions. They feel pleasing due to the awareness they are getting from the parent, as well as the bodily satisfaction. Conversely they undergo pain, guiltiness, and annoyance for what is being done. Child victims of sexual abuse suffer far worse trauma if they think images of their ordeals are distributed on the internet, a Welsh conference will hear today. The shame of being seen in pictures of abuse passed among paedophiles leaves children with a heavier psychological burden (Internet Images Make Child Abuse Trauma Burden Worse, 2004). The abused will feel remarkable guiltiness for various reasons. They think they did nothing to prevent the abuse as a result they are accountable and it should carry on. They felt painful but the abuse was sometimes pleasing. They one way or another deserved or caused the abuse. A victim will generally feel this manner when their confidence has reduced and they have no more responses for what is happening. Another most important foundation of guiltiness comes from the mother. Frequently when the mother is told regarding the mistreatment she will not want to think the charges and will hold responsible the child. Other motivation for why the mother may pass guilt. She may feel unequipped to confront the husbands control in any region of life consequently she passes the husbands liabilities and looks at the child. The mother would not like to lose her husband. She does not want to quit the safety offered by her husband and will deny the abuse. In order to reach at a conclusion concerning the probability of sexual abuse, the expert considers the clinical conclusion from the child's interview plus confirming verification from other resources. Rarely is the specialized 100-percent sure that the abuse took place as explained, with completely no room at all for doubt. Conversely, it is tremendously difficult to decide with no doubt that the sexual abuse did not take place. Sex abuse cycle Sex offenders carry out a series of thoughts in addition to behaviors before, during, and after each crime. A typical sex abuse cycle comprises of certain thoughts and feelings, triggers, high-risk situations, apparently insignificant decisions, target selection, sexual fantasies, scheduling the offense, grooming the victim, executing the sexually deviant behavior, maintaining secrecy, regret or fear, and evasion campaign. The mechanism of the cycle varies from offender to offender. For instance, some offenders aim adolescent females; others aim at pre-pubescent males. Some offenders discover that anger or low sense of worth triggers their cycle; others find their cycle is activated by alcohol or job loss. Working with the treatment provider, sex offenders can make out the set of state of affairs, events, as well as emotions that come about before they commit a sexual offense and build up a relapse prevention plan. The details of personal cycles are elicited through the use of a variety of techniques including ‘hot seat’, role play, diary keeping and artwork such as story boards. The adolescent identifies the events that trigger the cycle, the thoughts, feelings and behaviors that occurred prior to the abuse, the distorted thinking he used to excuse his behavior, the methods used to ‘groom’ or prepare his victims and the consequences of the abuse for himself and others. An individual’s cycle will also form the basis of his relapse-prevention program. He will be helped to identify the ‘risk’ situations, thoughts and feelings and hence the circumstances which he must learn to avoid and the occasions when he might require further help. For example, one 14-year-old was able to recognize that one of his ‘risk’ situations was when he felt humiliated or ignored by others. He tended to withdraw to his bedroom at such times and to use sexually inappropriate fantasy to make himself feel better. By developing his assertiveness skills and improving his self-image and confidence, this individual was better able to cope with difficult social situations. His awareness of the dangers of socially withdrawing helped him to seek out someone he could talk to when he felt upset. In this manner he began to reduce the risk of his reoffending. As part of his relapse prevention program he contracted to avoid the company of the peer group who most frequently rejected or scapegoated him. Abusers as victims Many adolescent sexual abusers have themselves been victims of sexual abuse and the experience of G-MAP indicates that most adolescents who sexually abuse others perceive themselves as abused in some way. The dilemma for many professionals is whether the adolescent who has abused should be regarded primarily as a victim or an abuser. The view of those involved in the Manchester program is that adolescents who sexually abuse must be able to accept full responsibility for their actions. Most are likely to attempt to deny, minimize or rationalize their behavior, and in order to bring about change, professionals must avoid colluding with any of these attitudes. To place initial emphasis on an abuser’s own experiences of victimization is enhancing his ‘poor me’ image and giving him messages that he is not entirely responsible for his behavior. Those working with adolescent sexual abusers should therefore regard them as primarily in need of treatment for their abusive behavior, although help to understand why abusive behavior has developed is an important component of treatment. Such help should include developing recognition of the part his own abusive experiences have played, whilst understanding that since many victims of abuse do not go on to abuse others, his past cannot be an excuse for his current behavior. For some it will be necessary to be referred for individual work on past abusive experiences to be conducted alongside the group work, although this must be carefully timed. One of the 15-year-olds in G-MAP consistently stated that he had only abused his 9-year-old brother because his uncle had abused him. He resisted taking responsibility for his behavior and claimed that he could not help it. By helping this young person to recognize that his uncle was fully responsible for his abusive behavior it was eventually possible for the adolescent to accept that he himself was responsible for abusing his brother. The treatment involved in a sexual assault specific program is, in any event, likely to cover many issues that relate to an individual’s experience of abuse. Issues of self-esteem, power relationships, vulnerability, feelings of guilt and grief are all likely to be addressed, and participants should be encouraged to share their own experiences. Dealing with issues of victim empathy can raise many previously suppressed or blocked memories and feelings relating to an abuser’s own abuse. Role plays, sculpting and artwork are used to facilitate this work. The process of raising awareness of the effects of abuse on victims is assisted by information drawn from extracts from victim statements, video-recordings of survivors talking, and literature (Fersch, 2006). Cognitive distortions previously used by the adolescents to deny these effects are confronted and diminished, and many are made to consider for the first time the ways in which their victims suffered and the longer-term consequences of their behavior on others. A study by Briere et al. (1988) evaluated adult males and females who had been sexually victimized as kids with a control group who had not endured abuse. They established that sexual abuse in childhood has, at the very least, an equal effect on males and females. They claim that sexual harassment may be even more shocking for young male victims than for females, since allegedly lower levels of abuse for the previous resulted in similar symptomatology. Among the consequences that distinguished victims from non-victims were a greater occurrence of suicide endeavors in addition to higher levels of anxiety and depression. The impacts of child sexual abuse accounted by others take in depression, anxiety, suicidal gestures, somatic complaints, disturbed interpersonal relations due mainly to the incapability to trust others, school difficulties, a decline in the level of social performance, finely tuned sexual activity that frequently includes homophobic concerns, obsessive masturbation, infantile behavior, paranoic or obsessed behavior, and poor body representation or changes in physical functions. A male's sense of helplessness may even be directed into aggressive sexual behavior in which the victim becomes an offender. No single consequence, conversely, has been found to be universal. Sexual abuse often takes place in a cycle, which instigates with the offender's sexual desirability to the child. Internal inhibitors are a psychological factor that powers a person's behavior, which, in this case, is the information that it is ethically wrong to abuse a child and that the abuse might cause serious physical and mental injury to the child. External inhibitors are aspects that are based on a fear of being imprisoned, which would damage the offender's public status. Imprisoning abusers does not stop additional abuse, on the other hand. After prison, thirty-eight percent of the convicts come back to the streets, carrying their cycle of abuse. Once these inhibitors reduce, stress or tedium advances the pedophile further into the cycle of sexual abuse. He/She begins to set off places where children are frequent. The offender then identifies a child who appears vulnerable and begins to interact with him/her by offering candy, a ride in a car, etc. When alone, the offender will masturbate while thinking of the child and the possibilities of what he/she can cause to happen with the child. http://library.thinkquest.org/C0112203/gsexual.html Reported characteristics of adult males who were sexually abused as children include sexual preoccupation or compulsiveness, gender identity confusion, sexual orientation confusion, difficulty establishing stable, trusting relationships, depression, substance abuse, disturbances in self-esteem and body image and symptoms of chronic posttraumatic stress disorder. Repression, denial, or normalization of the trauma is often manifested by adult male clients. It is estimated that somewhere between 45-65% of male child molesters where themselves victim of childhood sexual abuse. http://beachildshero.com/abusecycle.htm The association between homosexual behavior and sexual abuse is not essentially fundamental. Men who engage in same-sex behaviors are not essentially gay, and gay males may be more helpless to various victimization experiences, including sexual abuse. Not all male children as well as adolescents who endure sexual abuse become sexual offenders. Only about thirty percent of sex abuse victims in fact repeat this cycle of abuse with their own families. Treatment “Counseling and therapy have traditionally been known as "talking cures," used to relieve the symptoms of emotional distress and the problems in living encountered by clients as they progress through life” (Daniluk, & Mills, 2002). Relapse prevention is a self-control program that was developed in the field of addictive behaviors and later adapted for use with sexual abusers. It is specifically designed to help sexual abusers maintain behavioral changes by (1) identifying problems early on and (2) developing strategies to avoid or cope more effectively with these problems. Relapse prevention is most effective when the offender’s support group (people with whom the of-fender has regular contact) are included in the plan. Once the treatment provider identifies the offender’s sexual abuse cycle and establishes a relapse prevention plan, officers should request a copy of this information and meet with the provider to discuss the plan. Officers need to familiarize themselves with the relapse. Conclusion With the prevalence of child abuse in the United States and the implication of child abuse with numerous social and psychological problems, counselors should receive education and training on the prevention and treatment of child abuse and neglect. Many counselors receive training about child abuse through graduate-level courses, workshops, and seminars. A crucial educational component of such training should be attention to the reactions of those participating in the training. While participating in educational courses on child abuse, students may have various reactions to hearing stories about child abuse. These reactions, such as anger, avoidant responses, over-identification, feeling overwhelmed, and experiencing shock and horror, can disrupt the learning process. Instructors are encouraged to help students become aware of possible reactions to the material, permit individuals to leave the course or workshop if the content is exceptionally disturbing, provide ample opportunity to process feelings both inside and outside of class, and teach self-care techniques. The importance of special training for those who counsel child abuse survivors cannot be overemphasized. It is equally important for counselors to be aware of their own reactions to the course material. If counselors understand their own reactions to the realities of child abuse presented during a course on this topic, they may be able to bring a heightened awareness of this difficult issue to their work in the counseling setting. Reference: http://beachildshero.com/abusecycle.htm http://library.thinkquest.org/C0112203/gsexual.html Brandon Spun, 2002. Closed Doors and Childhoods Lost: Many Experts Believe Cases of Child Pornography and Prostitution Are on the Rise. Sometimes Prosecutors Focus on the Victims Rather Than on the Perpetrators, Magazine article. Insight on the News, Vol. 18, January 28, Internet Images Make Child Abuse Trauma Burden Worse, 2004. Newspaper article; Western Mail (Cardiff, Wales), May 28. Judith C. Daniluk, Letty J. Mills, 2002. Her Body Speaks: The Experience of Dance Therapy for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse. Journal of Counseling and Development, Vol. 80 Ellsworth Lapham Fersch, 2006. Thinking about the Sexually Dangerous by Licoln Nebraska, published by iuniverse. Briere, J., Evans, D., Runtz, M., & Wall, T. (1988). Symptomatology in men who were molested as children: A comparison study. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 58(3), 457-461. Read More