UNITED STATES
Tulsa World

By GINNIE GRAHAM World Staff Writer

Child sexual abuse is woefully under-reported and harder to detect, says a Tulsa woman who created an abuse prevention program.

“The biggest difference is that other types of physical abuse can occur in public, and sex abuse is a private crime,” Sharon Doty said. “The prevention and treatment of sex abuse is something distinctly different. The reporting is outrageously low, especially for boys.”

Sexual abuse of a child represented about 5 percent of substantiated abuse and neglect cases in fiscal year 2011, according to statistics from the Oklahoma Department of Human Services.

Doty created a sex abuse prevention program that has been adopted in 122 Catholic dioceses in the nation, with about 1.5 million people going through the workshops. It focuses on understanding the behavior of predators and how to intervene.

She created the nonprofit group Empowering Adults –…