If information about appropriate sexual behaviour is not available to children, they may look for that information in other avenues like pornography, warned Dr Peter Choate, an expert on issues related to child sexual abuse.
Choate was in the city to address a lecture held by Tulir-Centre for Prevention and Healing Child Sexual Abuse on juvenile sex offenders.
Speaking to City Express before the lecture on Thursday, the clinical social worker and lecturer from Mount Royal University, Canada, said that for a child with no other source of information on appropriate sexual behaviour, pornography contributed to negative attitudes about what is or is not appropriate.
“Pornography is highly accessible to children and is very misogynistic. It teaches boys things about girls and their preferences in ways that are not true,” he said, responding to a question regarding increased reporting of sexual offences being committed by minors against minors in the country.
“The family should be the main source of information about sex,” he stressed. In cases of juvenile sex offences, he stressed that it was key for people to accept that such crimes did occur. “We need to accept that it is serious,” he said.
Sex offenders tend to utilise relationships and the power in those relationships along with inappropriate interpretations of what is acceptable, in order to gain sexual satisfaction, he explained. In the case of juvenile sex offenders, such crimes would occur in the form of rape, incest or abuse of infants, he said.
The biggest challenge in addressing these crimes is that because of fear, guilt or shame, a majority of victims never report their abuse. Some may only talk about the abuse years later.
“The most profound thing society can do is to believe a victim and to create opportunities for the victim to report the abuse,” he stressed.
“This is a life-changing moment for the victim. So for the victim to heal, he or she must be believed and the offender held accountable,” he said. If offenders are not held sufficiently accountable, the message they receive is that they can get away with it. And the message victims receive is why tell at all, he explained.
As far as juvenile sex offenders were concerned, Choate said that most teenagers were able to understand, upon reflection, that what they did was wrong. This is where therapy is most effective in dealing with juvenile sex offenders, he said.
Offenders need to be assessed for the probability of re-offending, and a key factor is whether an offender expresses remorse. Those who do, understand what they have done and are more likely to be rehabilitated.
Those who do not express remorse, who are less willing to be accountable, are more likely to offend repeatedly.
When attention was drawn to a case in Delhi where a juvenile who raped a minor was released after three months in a reform home, Choate responded by saying that any response to the issue had to be specific to an Indian context.
“But we need to ask: are we prepared to hold the offender accountable? We need to assess from a risk perspective: the higher the probability that they might re-offend, the greater accountability. And but for a very small group of repeat offenders, therapy can be very effective. We need to ask: what have we done to help the offender not offend again,” he said.
Impact on the Victim
“The impact on the victim must not be forgotten,” Choate warns. It is important to remember that 60 to 70 per cent of sex offenders have experienced some form of abuse in their lives.
Parents should focus on how to make the world safe and predictable for a child who has been abused . They should be engaged with the child and convey the message that he or she is going to be all right. If the offender is someone in the child’s family, boundaries need to be in place to make the child feel safe. An older child may benefit from therapy but importantly, the child should know that this (the abuse) is not normal sexual exploration, Choate said.
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