Why is it so important that we have thoroughly educated ourselves about abuse, including on how tricky abusers can be, as Pastor Jimmy Hinton so ably teaches?
Here’s why. Over and over again, I run into cases where kids are not protected properly because the adults in their lives are not properly educated. Here are some examples.
- Abusers are “supervised” in settings where kids are present, because one of the many committees which have sprung up don’t believe offenders will molest if others are around.
- In a case where kids were being sexually groped in a public setting, the assumption was reached, after “investigation” by one of the committees, that it had to be a family member molesting the kids (at home)–because they were sure it couldn’t have happened in a public setting, even if that is what the kids said, and even if they could name their abuser.
- In another sickening situation, the head of a committee told an advocate that “fully 50 percent of the stories we hear are lies”. This indicates that either this “plain” community has a lie problem the likes of which I have never dreamed of, or the men tasked with supposedly helping victims are believing the offenders, not the victims.
Were they properly educated, they would know that law enforcement statistics indicate that the rates of false allegations of sexual abuse/rape in adults is a low, low approximately 4%, and when it comes to rates of false allegations by children, it is even lower. So those of us who are properly educated know there is a problem in that community–and it isn’t likely to be that they have a problem with victims lying!
My friends, this is where ignorance leads us. And in this day and age, there is no excuse for this level of ignorance.
We must take a stand and insist that those who are assuming that they are competent to work with abuse cases, truly are. Just because committees assure the public that they are “working with law enforcement and the justice system” doesn’t mean they are properly educated and doing things right.