Posted on May 4th, 2011 in Watchdog and later corrected
In article “Lancaster County launches sex abuse task force” reports:
“Statistics show 1 in 5 girls and 1 in 10 boys in Lancaster County are likely to be sexually abused, [Commissioner Scott] Martin said.
“Since 2006, more than 1,500 children have been referred to Lancaster County Children’s Alliance, which runs a children’s advocacy center, providing medical examinations and conducting forensic interviews in cases of suspected abuse.
“Martin said the CASE Task Force plans to disseminate information about the various methods of sexual abuse, about how to recognize signs that a child has been abused and about how to deal with that abuse.
“’The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children provides a lot of resources … geared toward children of specific ages, but what they don’t do is they don’t have ground troops in order to implement a lot of this stuff,’ Martin said. ‘That’s the void that we fill.’”
WATCHDOG: Excuse us for being skeptical that “1 in 5 girls “and 1 in 10 boys are likely to be sexually abused.” That is, unless sexual abuse is being defined so broadly as to be meaningless.
We have no reason to believe that abuse is greater today than for past generations, probably the contrary since such matters tended to be hushed up then.
Is another ‘witch hunt’ about to take place, as was the case a decade or so ago when pre-school faculties were accused and at times convicted for abuses that were strictly in the fantasies of the children stirred on by overzealous parents and authorities?
Understand, as a father of five, we are not downplaying that sexual abuse of children take place. But “1 in 5” and “1 in 10” would mean about 10,000 girls and 5,000 boys in Lancaster County are victims. The perpetrators would be enough to fill two Clipper stadiums, let alone putting them all in jail!
