By Riva Brown
The Clarion-Ledger [Mississippi]
October 1, 2006
http://www.clarionledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061001/NEWS/610010403
A local law enforcement officer reportedly told the father of a 12-year-old girl that he didn't believe her rape allegations. So the father turned to sheriff's deputies for help. They arrested the man, now 60, who fathered a child by the 12-year-old. He later pleaded guilty.
A then-Hinds County resident who pleaded guilty in November to having oral sex with his 10-year-old daughter was put on house arrest for a year instead of being sentenced to the up to 15 years in prison the law allows.
Child protection officials endangered a prosecution in at least one sexual abuse case, and possibly another, when they arranged for a child to meet with his alleged attacker.
LONG-TERM EFFECTS The abuse of children leads to lack of stability and loss of productivity when the children reach adulthood and yields to direct and indirect costs of nearly $100 billion, according to two studies on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Web site. A 2002 study found children who experience maltreatment are at an increased risk for problems as adults, including smoking, alcoholism, drug abuse, eating disorders, severe obesity, depression, suicide, sexual promiscuity and certain chronic diseases. A 2001 study found the direct costs - judicial, law enforcement and health system responses to child maltreatment - are estimated to be $24 billion annually. The indirect costs - long-term economic consequences of child maltreatment - exceed an estimated $69 billion annually. |
Throughout Mississippi, the state's most vulnerable residents - children - are at the mercy of a system sometimes ill-equipped and, in some cases, unmotivated to protect them, The Clarion-Ledger has found.
Despite a team of legal, law enforcement, child protection and health-care professionals that manages such cases, there are no uniform standards for investigation, no uniform punishment and disagreement over what is best for the children.
Between 2001 and 2004, the last year for which figures are available, the number of substantiated child sex abuse cases rose 77 percent while the number of adults behind bars for sexual offenses against children has gone up 50 percent. The Department of Human Services doesn't track what happens to cases after it finds evidence.
"There are some who may surmise from that we're not taking it as seriously as we should," DHS Executive Director Don Taylor said. "He who is silent gives consent. I think, in this instance, we've been far too silent for far too long."
DHS has sent letters to several district attorneys in the state to encourage them to prosecute fathers who have babies with girls under 16, the legal age of consent.
And one lawmaker is trying to raise that legal age to 17. Others are trying to get legislation passed to stiffen the penalties of some child sex abuse charges so perpetrators spend more time behind bars.
Although some laws went into effect in July that will make life more difficult for sex offenders, laws in Mississippi, in general, do not seem as harsh as those in other states. In at least five states, perpetrators face the death penalty for some sex crimes against children.
A Rankin County mother is using the laws on the books now to seek prosecution of her father - a former pastor, youth minister and minister of music - for allegedly abusing her now-9-year-old son. "I want to be able to look my son in the face 20 years from now and say mama did everything she could not only to protect him but to fight for him," she said.
"You worry about teachers at schools and at day care, you worry about your child at other people's houses," the boy's mother said.
"You never think you have to protect your own children from your own family or even to suspect your own family," said the woman, who did not want to be identified because it would identify her son. The Clarion-Ledger does not identify victims or alleged victims of sexual abuse.
The woman's father, Ralph Hall of Smith County, was indicted last year on two counts of molesting a 7-year-old male and one count of sexual battery of a male under age 14, Circuit Court records show. Hall also has been indicted on two counts of molesting a 10-year-old boy, according to the court file. The 10-year-old was her son's playmate, the woman said. Hall is free on $45,000 bond and is awaiting trial.
The Hall case is one of the few to get this far. Less than half of child sex abuse cases get reported.
Yet the number of reported cases in which DHS found evidence of child sex abuse has increased statewide, from 507 in 2001 to 897 in 2004.
In Mississippi, the number of people behind bars for sexual offenses against children has increased from at least 98 in 2001 to at least 147 in 2005, according to the Mississippi Department of Corrections.
The difference in the number of substantiated cases versus incarcerations is partly because of the number of child-on-child crimes, said Cathy Dixon, clinical director of the Mississippi Children's Advocacy Center in Jackson. If the crime involves a 16-year-old perpetrator, "the 16-year-old may be adjudicated in Youth Court and the offender status not show up," she said.
A percentage involves victims too young to meaningfully give testimony, Dixon said. "That case is not going to get prosecuted," she said.
"Another percentage of the cases are botched and bungled by the system," Dixon said.
Other reasons why the cases often don't get far, Dixon said, are sometimes prosecutors don't want to take the case unless there is medical evidence, and there aren't enough prosecutors, courtrooms and judges to handle the volume. Only the most serious, most prosecutable cases make it all the way, she said.
"Then there is a number of cases that made it all the way to trial and didn't get found guilty," Dixon said. "It seems to be increasingly difficult for jurors to believe children."
Circuit Judge Tomie T. Green, who is assigned to child sex abuse cases in Hinds County, said she has had trials where the jury refused to convict.
"I was like, 'Lord, give me strength.' They don't give the victims the benefit of the doubt," Green said. "I'm really aware of how the victims appear to the jury. They come in dressed very provocatively and their language is not always developed. The jury perceives their testimony based on the way they talk and dress."
Green also said some people don't see sex crimes the way they see other crimes. "They see sex as something they get over. It's not the same way they see a murder. With a murder victim, the crime ends with death. With a child, the pain continues forever from one generation to the next."
Said Gail Foster, a member of the support staff at the Rankin Children's Advocacy Center: "When people remain in denial or darkness about how bad sin is and how destructive it is - especially regarding sexual abuse of children - the state, as well as the church, will remain weakened and unable to effectively minister and help others constructively."
Foster has conducted a class for women at the Flowood Restitution Center who have survived child sex abuse.
Some survivors of child sexual abuse may wait decades before they even talk about what happened to them. As a result, many turn to substance abuse to ease their pain and may have problems with intimacy in their relationships.
Lisa Matherne, who said several family members sexually abused her over 10 years, said she turned to drugs around age 16 after the abuse stopped.
First it was marijuana, then speed. "Anything that would change my way of thinking," said Matherne, who is doing time at the Flowood Restitution Center for cocaine possession.
Pretty soon, those drugs weren't doing it for her. So she switched to powder cocaine. Then crack. That worked for 20 years.
She even blew at least half of a $150,000 trust fund she got at age 18 trying to stop remembering, stop hurting.
A Jackson woman, who said she was sexually abused by two brothers-in-law by age 12, said being molested didn't only affect her childhood, it also affected her marriage.
She is married to a man who revealed to her after he found out his son was sexually abused that he, too, had been sexually abused at the same age, 12.
"He didn't understand. Certain ways he would touch me, I just would shut down. To be honest, I really didn't put two and two together until years later," said the woman, who did not want her name used.
"I got this man to provide for me, take care of me, love me, open doors for me. I never had that before. Bought flowers for me every week. I never had that before," said the woman, who had a baby at age 15 for a man who was 11 years her senior. "Just being a lovable husband, and here it is he didn't understand why we were having so many problems in the bedroom."
Teresa Nelson, a licensed certified social worker at St. Dominic Behavioral Health Associates, said every child sex abuse victim is different, but victims of repeated sexual or physical abuse are more at risk for long-term problems.
Nelson said adults who have been sexually abused as children should find someone to talk to and get a physical to make sure nothing is wrong medically.
"I think a lot of people, when they're being hurt as children, are threatened. For example, 'I'm going to kill you if you tell your mother' or 'I'm going to kill your mother if you ever tell anybody,' " she said. "It's important to test reality and know nothing bad is going to happen to them if they tell their secret."
Some survivors say they may have gotten relief if their case had been pursued when they were children. There is no statute of limitations to prosecute child sex abuse cases in Mississippi.
After more than 25 years, the Jackson woman abused by her brothers-in-law remains conflicted about whether to seek prosecution. "People who wait too many years don't get too many good results," she said.
"I just feel like if I did do it, people would say, 'Why you wait so long? Why you didn't do it then? Why you didn't tell it then?,' " she said.
"If I did do this, I'd be closing a chapter. But now it won't close. It's just constantly open."
rvbrown@clarionledger.com
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