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Childhood Sex Abuse: The Podium Preparation Theory

I can remember looking around my classroom as a young nursing student after learning that 25% of children are sexually abused. I was shocked at this high number. I wondered how many of my classmates had suffered in this way as I mentally calculated 25% of our class. I was deeply struck by the fact that this number, wasn’t just a number. It represented real people, real suffering, real pain.

Since then, the problem of child sex abuse has not gone away. According to the CDC, today in the United States, the rate of child sex abuse is 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 13 boys. Because sex abuse is widely underreported, these numbers underrepresent just how big the problem of child sex abuse actually is. Some scholars even suggest that for every case reported, five more unreported cases exist. (Tenbergen et. al.)

Artwork featured on NAMBLA homepage “Mental Arithmetic” Bogdanov-Belsky

What Age is most at Risk?

A 2016 study by The National Center for Injury Prevention and Control states that adolescence appears to be a time of high risk for sexual violence with 40% of women reporting being raped before age eighteen and 21% of men reporting being forced to penetrate someone before age eighteen. The National Center for Victims of Crime found that children ages 7-13 are most vulnerable to sexual abuse.

A complicating factor in determining which age range of children is most at risk for sex abuse is that children under age seven often lack the linguistic framework needed to disclose sexual abuse. As a healthcare worker, I am aware of a case in which a young child was attempting to disclose sexual abuse by saying “he is being sick to me”. The disclosure was not understood as sexual abuse as the child used the phrase “sick to me” rather than the precise term to describe what was occurring.

What was actually happening was vaginal and anal rape, but the little girl did not know these words. Further, toddlers, infants and some children with disability may be nonverbal and therefore unable to disclose. Since both the age groups of adolescence and ages 7-13 have been cited as high risk periods for sex abuse, together with the fact that children younger than seven can have limited verbal ability to voice their abuse experience, all kids under 18 are at risk for sex abuse.

What are the Effects of Child Sex Abuse?

The effects of childhood sexual abuse are serious. Physical, emotional and psychological effects can range from immediate to long term; and vary in severity depending on many factors. According to the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry children who experience sexual abuse are at an increased risk for:

depression,
PTSD,
drug addiction,
suicidal behaviors,
feelings of fear, shame, worthlessness,
low self-esteem,
they may be withdrawn,
mistrustful of adults,
intentionally harm themselves,
display age-inappropriate sexualized behaviors and/or
attempt to pressure others into sexual behavior

To this list researchers Briere and Elliot add:

dissociation,
substance abuse,
sexual difficulties,
somatic preoccupations
the behaviors/symptoms seen in persons diagnosed with borderline personality disorder

The National Child Traumatic Stress Network further concludes that effects of child sex abuse can range from a variety effects such as:

nightmares
outbursts
running away or
self-cutting/harm
long term effects on interpersonal relationships
physical, mental and sexual health impairment.

In his seminal work, The Body Keeps the Score, Dr. Bessel Van Der Kolk discusses the implications of the extensive neurobiological effects of trauma, childhood sex abuse being one example of such trauma. Van der Kolk also points out that the founding fathers of neurology and psychology such as Sigmund Freud and Jean Martin Charcot acknowledged childhood sexual abuse as the root of what was then termed “hysteria”, a mental disorder involving emotional outbursts and unexplainable physical symptoms (p. 179).

The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study sought to examine the relationship between the experiences people had before they turned 18 and later health outcomes. The study asked questions about the participants’ childhoods’ which included topics such as physical abuse, sexual abuse, verbal abuse, etc. The ACE Study found a strong relationship between ”abuse or household dysfunction during childhood and multiple risk factors for several of the leading causes of death in adults.”

This study provided essential insight into the far-reaching impact of abuse; it showed there is a link with childhood abuse and health later in life.

The ACE study is the basis for ACE screening tools which are widely used today. This is a tool used in trauma informed care to assess the amount of and type of trauma a person has experienced to better serve their needs. The following is an example of what is asked in regard to childhood experience; “Did an adult or person at least five years older than you ever… Touch or fondle you or have you touch their body in a sexual way? or Attempt or actually have oral, anal, or vaginal intercourse with you?”

As the ACE study showed, childhood abuse is connected to certain poor health conditions later in life. Assessing for a history of childhood sexual abuse is important as survivors can also experience higher rates of depression, agoraphobia, panic disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, simple phobias, sexual disorders, posttraumatic stress disorder, psychosis and suicidal ideation. (Saunders et al)

Sexual abuse in any stage of life is an unwanted and difficult experience. However, given that childhood abuse is one of the contributing factors to adverse health outcomes later in life; sexual abuse in childhood takes on an added level of significance as the negative effects can continue throughout the developmental stages of childhood and into adulthood.

After reading this information you might think that everyone agrees; sexually abusing children is harmful, however, that’s not true.

Everyone is Against Abusing Kids…Aren’t They?

No. Rewind again to my days as a young nursing student in the late 1900s. One evening, late into the midnight hours, I was jolted from my study by a disturbing statement in my textbook. I reread it several times to be sure I had it right. I was shocked and confused. I cross-referenced the endnote number to the reference at the back of the chapter for more information. Surely this must be some kind of misunderstanding? This can’t be real. Upon further research, I discovered the truth. It wasn’t a misunderstanding.

The textbook statement was regarding “the sexual response of children”.

I wondered how on earth did the authors of this book come to know how children respond to sexual stimulation? What I discovered was that Alfred Kinsey supplied this information through his ”research”. I was able to locate and read some of Kinsey’s published research.

Kinsey got paid to collect and analyze data about how children respond to sex abuse.

Unfortunately, Kinsey did not go down in history as a criminal, no not at all. He was able to veil his sick penchant and disguise his sadistic, systematic abuse as ‘medical research’ furthering knowledge of human sexuality. In fact, he is known as the father of human sexuality studies.

Figure 2screenshot taken 8/2/23

At the time I was conducting this research the internet was still in a fledgling state, making information harder to come by. Providentially, I happened to hear a talk show called the Phil Donahue Show. That day’s show featured a panel of childhood abuse survivors. One panel member recounted being raped as a little girl by her own father on a regular basis. She stated that her father would write in a notebook after these horrific episodes.

She went on to explain that a man would come by her home and give her dad an envelope of money in exchange for a page from his notebook. She said this man’s name was Alfred Kinsey.

I thought to myself, “Wow, this is how Kinsey came to make the statement (that textbooks now quote) that signs of orgasm in children could be manifest as screaming and crying. He paid fathers to rape their little girls and record their responses in a notebook.” Today, the Kinsey Institute is proud to “continue that tradition” as they explore the “complexity and diversity of human sexual behavior.”

Figure 3 Screenshot taken 8/2/23

Unfortunately, Dr. Kinsey is not alone. Despite the accounts of painful lived experiences and research that shows sexually abusing children is harmful, there are people who defend child sex abuse.

Dr. Ralph Underwager was asked in an interview if choosing pedophilia is a responsible choice to which the doctor replied:

“Certainly it is responsible. Paedophiles spend a lot of time and energy defending their choice. I don’t think that a paedophile needs to do that. Paedophiles can boldly and courageously affirm what they choose.”

Additionally, the now defunct pedophile organization the Rene Guyon Society had the slogan, “Sex by year eight, or else it’s too late.”

Today in America, the North American Man Boy Love Association advocates for sexual empowerment of youth to have sexual relationships with men regardless of age, in regards to children, they state they “denounce the rampant ageism that segregates and isolates them in fear and mistrust. We believe sexual feelings are a positive life force.”

(It is important to note that NAMBLA does not represent the entire gay community as members of organizations such as Gays Against Groomers openly advocate against pedophile activities.)

Dr. Loren Pankratz psychologist, psychiatry professor, author and expert witness is also on record supporting child sex abuse. While discussing sexually abusing children under the age of two in an interview, Dr Pankratz states

“It doesn’t damage the child.”

Despite overwhelming clinical evidence that child sex abuse can create harmful effects that reverberate across the life span, Dr. Pankratz states “stroking the vagina of a two year old child” would not be harmful to the child. He claims even in an instance where an unrelated male did this and had an orgasm in front of the child, the child would not remember and therefore not be affected by it. Despite the fact that this act is considered sexual abuse in two forms, contact sex abuse (touching the child for sexual purpose) and non-contact sex abuse (performing a sex act in the presence of a child), Dr. Pankratz endorses this behavior as non-harmful.

Wikipedia has published a complied list of organizations that support sex between children and adults. List of pedophile organizations.

https://factcheck.afp.com/pride-flag-pedophiles-someone-created-one-no-one-waves-it

If sexually abusing kids is physically, emotionally, psychologically and relationally harmful and destructive,

Why would professional people in positions of power and authority support it?

There is another dimension of sexual abuse, one that is almost entirely ignored, that may hold the answer. But first let’s take a closer look at the perpetrators of abuse.