Testimony Prepared for the Crime Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee, 

R. .McCollum, Chair

Jeffrey J. Haugaard, Ph.D.

Department of Human Development

New York State College of Human Ecology

Cornell University

May 11, 2000

If today is a typical day in the United States, four children, usually quite young, will be beaten or starved to death, usually by their parents or other caregivers. Four children will be beaten or started to death tomorrow, four the next day, and so on for every day of the year (US Dept. of Health and Human Services, 1999). When I hear on the news of a child who has been abducted, raped, and murdered, my heart goes out to the child, and his or her family and friends. I have the same feelings when I hear of a school shooting that takes the lives of children or adults. However, when I hear these reports, I also stop to think about the four other children who will die on that day.

While certain aspects of some of the bills before this committee may provoke debate-such as whether juries would be less likely to convict those accused of exhibitionism or fondling a child if the penalty for these acts were life imprisonment, or whether it is appropriate to give states financial incentives to convict certain people of crimes against children rather than others-it is important to understand that these bills will have little or no influence on the vast majority of children who are sexually and physically abused in this country.

Most children who are physically abused, are abused by a parent or other caretaker. Most children who are sexually abused are abused by an adult who they know (Russell, 1983; Sedlak, & Broadhurst, 1996; Seigel, Sorenson, Golding, Burnham, & Stein, 1987; Wyatt, 1985). Those who are abused by people who have already been convicted of child abuse or child rape are a small percentage of the children who are physically or sexually abused in this country every year. Of course, even one child being abused by a convicted offender is too many-and we should work to reduce the number of children who have these terrible experiences to zero. Even by reducing the number of children with these experiences to zero, however, we would only be reducing the total number of abused children by a small percent.

I was asked primarily to address the issue of the prevention of child abuse-to describe the types of prevention efforts that we know work. Our successes in preventing child abuse appear mostly in the area of physical abuse. We tend to know more about what does not work in the area of preventing child sexual abuse than we know about what does work.

To design effective prevention efforts for any problem, an understanding of the development of that problem must be reached. For example, effective preventive efforts for suicide are based on an understanding of how suicidal behavior develops (Haugaard, 2000). As another example, we are not good at preventing eating disorders because we have only a rudimentary knowledge of how they develop (e.g., Killen, Taylor, Hammer, & Litt, 1993.

Effective prevention efforts also require that the complexity of the development of a problem be recognized. No problem behavior can be unraveled with a single explanation. Most efforts to prevent teenage pregnancies or sexual assaults by adolescents have been ineffective because they do not take into account the many pathways that lead teenagers to engage in consensual or aggressive sex (Haugaard, 2000). Prevention efforts that might reduce the frequency of sexual intercourse by teenagers who have taken a certain pathway to sexual intercourse may have no influence on teenagers who have arrived at sexual intercourse through other pathways. The same is true for child abuse-many pathways lead adults to abuse children. We must understand these multiple pathways and design preventive interventions to address them individually.

We are better at preventing the physical abuse of children than the sexual abuse of children, because we have a clearer understanding of how physical abuse develops (Olsen & Widom, 1993; Wolfe, 1985). We know, for example, that most physically abusive parents are highly stressed-often because of their financial situation, but also because of living in grim environments or with abusive spouses (e.g., Egeland, Breitenbucher, & Rosenberg, 1980; Straus, Gelles, & Steinmetz, 1980). We also know that many physically abusive parents have limited knowledge of child development or of how to parent their children effectively (e.g., Lahey, Conger, Atkeson, & Treiber, 1984). For example, parents who believe that 2-year-olds can stop crying when told to do so may see a child's inability to stop crying as intentional disrespect and react in an aggressive way. Similarly, parents who were raised in a family where corporal punishment was the only discipline used, may only be able to hit their children when trying to enforce discipline-and will have to hit their children harder and harder as they grow-often to the point where they are inflicting bruises and other wounds on them. There are other pathways besides these that can lead adults to become abusive-for example, some adults are brutes and enjoy inflicting pain on others, and children make easy targets. We know, however, that these people represent only a small percentage of those who abuse children (Milner, 1998).

Our knowledge of the development of child physical abuse has led to programs designed to prevent physical abuse in two primary ways (a) reducing parents' stress or providing ways for them to redirect the outcome of the stress they feel, and (b) increasing parents' knowledge about child development and parenting skills. In addition, our knowledge of the development of physical abuse has led to our ability to target prevention programs to certain groups-such as teenage mothers or mothers living in chaotic environments.

Some of these programs have shown a reduction in child abuse and neglect. A program in the Norfolk area of Virginia provided a 12-week course on parenting to 125 recent unmarried, low-income, teenage mothers, who had few sources of emotional or financial support (Britner & Reppucci, 1997). Five years later, reports to the state's central registry for reported cases of child abuse were examined. Two percent of the mothers in the program had been reported for child abuse or neglect, compared with 8% of a group of similar teenage mothers from the same area who had not been enrolled in the program. A 15-year follow-up of a program in Elmira, New York, showed that mothers who were visited by a home nurse during their pregnancy and periodically for two years after their birth were less likely to have a child with a substantiated case of child abuse or neglect, either by the mother or the mother's partner (Olds et al., 1997). The positive effect of the program was more pronounced for low-income mothers than for moderate-income mothers. Further, an analysis of the welfare, medical, and criminal justice costs incurred by the families with home visits and those without showed that those with home visits used about 25,000 fewer governmental dollars than those without home visits-with the average cost of the home visits being about $6,000, resulting in a net reduction in governmental spending over a 5-year period of about $19,000 per family (see Appendix 1, Karoly et al., 1998). Other reports from several communities throughout Virginia showed that mothers enrolled in local programs to reduce their stress, increase their feelings of self-esteem, and increase their parenting skills believed that these programs had important influences on their abilities to deal with their children in nonviolent and effective ways (Reppucci & Haugaard, 1991).

As I have already noted, we know less about the developmental pathways that those who sexually abuse children take-other than that most abusers are men (Reppucci, Land, & Haugaard, 1998). We know that many of them were sexually abused as children (Milner, 1998), but that only a minority of children who are sexually abused go on to abuse others (Kaufman & Zigler, 1987). Many motivations for sexually abusing children have been identified. Clinical reports show that some men experience a very strong drive to have sexual contact with children, a drive that often does not seem to be diminished by a targeted child trying to resist being abused once the abuse begins or by subsequent incarceration (Elliott, Browne, & Kilcoyne, 1995). Reports of father-daughter sexual abuse show that dominance over their children or an emotional and physical attraction to their child motivates many fathers (Giarretto, 1978; Haugaard & Samwel, 1992). Sibling abuse is often associated with chaotic, sexualized families, or families where older siblings have been the target of physical or sexual abuse (Rudd & Herzberger, 1999).

Because of our lack of knowledge about the development of sexually abusive behaviors, and because we have not identified characteristics of sexual abusers that could be used to identify groups of adults who would be the best recipients for preventive efforts, almost all efforts to prevent sexual abuse have been aimed at children (Reppucci et al., 1998). About 2/3 of school children in this country recall attending a sexual abuse prevention program in their school (Finkelhor & Dziuba-Letherman, 1995).

Programs to prevent sexual abuse vary widely in methods and their intended audiences. Some involve one presentation focused on avoiding sexual abuse and others are presented as part of a multi-presentation, personal safety curriculum. Most programs are designed for school-age children, although a few programs target children as young as three years. Unfortunately, few of these programs were assessed for effectiveness before being presented to children (Roberts, Alexander, & Fanurik, 1990).

Some evaluations of these programs have taken place. Most evaluations show a short-lived and small increase in knowledge about sexual abuse and how to avoid being abused, but provide no evidence that children's behavior has been changed, or that their ability to fend off a sexual abuse attempt has been enhanced (Reppucci et al., 1998). Programs delivered to young children, and programs that comprise only one or two presentations are not effective. For example, researchers interviewed 22 6- to 10-year old children who had been sexually abused by a school employee, despite having participated in a one-presentation sexual abuse prevention program at their school, and found that the children were unable to employ the few strategies from the movie that they remembered while in the abusive situation (Pelcovitz, Adler, Kaplan, Packman, & Krieger, 1992). (For additional reviews, see Berrick & Barth, 1992; Kolko, 1988; Reppucci & Haugaard, 1989; Wurtele, 1987; Wurtele & Miller-Perrin, 1992).

Finkelhor and his colleagues (Finkelhor, Asdigian, & Dziuba-Leatherman, 1995; Finkelhor & Dziuba-Leatherman, 1995) conducted a phone survey of 2000 children and adolescents from across the country. Those who had participated in a more comprehensive personal safety program had slightly higher knowledge about sexual abuse than those who had not participated in a prevention program. Forty percent of the respondents said that information from their program had helped them avoid fights with peers or avoid suspicious strangers; 14% said that the program had prompted them to tell an adult about something. Children who had participated in more comprehensive programs used a higher number of effective strategies when in a situation where they might have been victimized than those not in a comprehensive program. However, those in comprehensive programs were not able to thwart victimization attempts more effectively than others, and those in comprehensive programs reported more injuries while trying to thwart sexual abuse than those not in a program.

In summary, I can report that programs that effectively reduce physical abuse and neglect have been implemented in locales across the country. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for programs to prevent child sexual abuse. The lack of successful sexual abuse prevention programs is due to a lack of basic knowledge about the development of sexual abuse and sexual abusers. Federal and state agencies, and private foundations, have funded little basic research in this area-and thus we have no foundation of knowledge on which to support effective sexual abuse prevention. If we, as a country, want to prevent sexual abuse of children, rather than only resorting to punishing those who have already traumatized many children, we must being to develop a more comprehensive knowledge base about sexual abuse.

Thank you very much.

References

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