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Abuses of the Child Abuse War
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11073 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
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11 / 1993 |
3,697 Words |
| Author
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K. L. Billingsley
K. L. Billingsley is a media and research fellow of the
Pacific Research Institute in San Francisco. |
Child abuse, especially of a sexual nature, has been a high-profile issue in recent years and has now acquired celebrity status. In his internationally publicized row with Mia Farrow, Woody Allen found himself staring down the barrel of child-abuse accusations. In May 1991, former Miss America Marilyn Van Derbur Atler accused her late father of sexually abusing her as a child. Roseanne Arnold made similar claims, soon to be repeated by Angie Dickinson, Cindy Williams, Desi Arnaz, Jr., and others. "Soon, remembered childhood abuse had become an explanation for whatever ailed an unhappy or maladjusted individual," says Richard Brzustowicz, Jr., coordinator of the Behavioral Research Ethics Review at the University of Washington, adding that before long everyone in Hollywood was "in recovery" from childhood sexual abuse.
The mantra of the sexual-abuse recovery movement, says Brzustowicz, is: "If you think you were abused, you were." On the other hand, the national "war on child abuse," waged by a vast network of organizations and agencies, flies under a different banner that may be summarized as: "If you think someone is a child abuser, he is."
No one denies that child abuse is a serious problem, and only a misanthropic anarchist would deny the state a role in the protection of innocent lives. That task is a difficult one. Consider the case of three-year-old Christa Hawkins, who was hospitalized in 1987 with a fractured ankle, broken arm, and massive bruises. Medical examiners believed the injuries were not accidental and contacted social service agencies. The child went into foster care but was subsequently returned to her mother and abusive stepfather, a Navy man, over the child's objections. Before long, Christa was back at the hospital. Her stepfather had beaten her to death. Though the man was found guilty of murder by torture and sentenced to twenty-five years, one can imagine the guilt of those who had released the child into harm's way and their determination not to let it happen again.
THE CHILD-ABUSE MYTH
But is child abuse, as one agency claims, an "American tradition" and currently at epidemic levels? After all, according to figures that are often quoted, one in five boys and one in three girls are abused by their parents. But the research arm of the National Committee to Prevent Child Abuse says that these figures have not been substantiated and amount to "a rumor." And Richard Wexler, author of Wounded Innocents: The Real Victims of the War against Child Abuse, points out that between 95 and 99 out of every 100
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