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Communities Betrayed

Multiple Victim Child Sexual Abuse
in Rural Communities

 

Andrea M. Kowaz

Carolyn A. Wright

British Columbia Institute on Family Violence

 

 

 

Prepared for:

BC INSTITUTE ON FAMILY VIOLENCE
Suite 551 – 409 Granville Street, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6C 1T2
Telephone: 604/669-7055 Facsimile: 604/669-7054
E-Mail: BCIFV@cyberstore.ca
Incorporated under the Society Act
ISBN: 1-895553-30-X
Copyright © 1996 B.C. Institute on Family Violence

 

 

Communities Betrayed

Multiple Victim Child Sexual Abuse
in Rural Communities

Andrea M. Kowaz

Carolyn A. Wright

 

British Columbia Institute on Family Violence

 

Acknowledgments

A number of people made important contributions without which this book could not have been written. Dr. Derek Eaves, Dr. Ron Roesch and Dr. Steven Golding had major input in terms of initial project planning and implementation and in obtaining access to the sample community. Funding for the original research project was provided through the generosity of the Forensic Psychiatric Services Commission and the Ministry of Social Services. Ms. Dolores Escudero was a major contributor to both data collection and conceptualization, especially with regard to the impact of the abuse on the family. Ms. Jill Hightower contributed significantly both to the data collection phase of the research project, and later as Executive Director of the B.C. Institute on Family Violence, which supported and facilitated the completion of this book. Ms. Faye Grant at the Forensic Psychiatric Services Commission was generous with her time, knowledge and resources. Dr. George Tien contributed with both his time and his statistical expertise. We would also like to thank the schools, teachers, parents and children in the community involved for their participation and cooperation. The orginal report is available at the B.C. Institute on Family Violence.

Contents

Introduction

Current literature

Our sample community

Data collection

  • Phase I
  • Phase II
  • Phase III

Profiles

  • A community profile
  • Profile of the victims and their families
  • Profile of an abuser

The nature of the abuse

Disclosure

  • Community response 33
  • Short and long term effects on the children
  • Short and long term effects on the families
  • Short and long term effects on the community

Service response and evaluation of services

Conclusions and recommendations

Endnotes

References

 

About the authors

Andrea M. Kowaz, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist in Vancouver, B.C. In addition to private practice she does consultation and research with the B.C. Institute on Family Violence, and is an adjunct professor of clinical psychology at Simon Fraser University. Her previous publications are largely in the area of children’s psychosocial development.

Carolyn A. Wright is a contract writer/editor with the B.C. Institute on Family Violence. She has an M.A. in Political Science from York University.

 

Introduction

To many city-dwellers, small towns are thought of as idyllic escapes from the rat race of the city and the high pressures of urban life. There is no rush hour in a small town, you know and trust your neighbours, people can leave their doors unlocked, they help each other out, and children can roam around with the freedom that most of us remember having when we were young.

On closer inspection, the idyll of a small town is sometimes no more than a thin veneer barely concealing the tragedies that go on, unnoticed for long periods of time. This project represents an unveiling; an exposure of the catastrophes that many small towns in British Columbia have faced. Reports of multiple victim child sexual abuse (MVCSA) are emerging as an all too frequent reality in both rural and urban B.C. The impetus for this undertaking comes from a realization that there is scarce formal literature in the area of multiple victim child sexual abuse, and in particular for rural areas.

The issue of child sexual abuse has been hot in the media ever since the first disclosure of sexual abuse at the Mount Cashel orphanage in St. John's, Newfoundland rang across the country over ten years ago. Unfortunately, however, not a lot has been done to examine the effects of this type of abuse on not only the victims and their families, but on the community as a whole. The perpetrator tends to be a trusted, well-liked, and well respected figure in the community. Disclosures of abuse throw community relations and dynamics into upheaval wrought with confusion and betrayal. This book seeks to fill this gap, and in so doing hopes to provide some guidance to service providers who may find themselves faced with such a catastrophe. On a more hopeful note, we have attempted to establish some guidelines and procedures which are designed to prevent such occurrences in small communities.

What follows is a discussion of the various levels of effect of multiple victim child sexual abuse on a rural community, drawing on the in-depth experiences of the authors and other researchers with one small B.C. community which weathered such a crisis. Our 'sample' community is at the same time a specific place and everyplace, because although certain events happened in one particular community, there is ample evidence to suggest both the potential and reality of similar occurrences manifesting in any small town in Canada. Using the information gathered during a series of intensive interviews in the community, in combination with the current available literature pertaining to MVCSA, we have drawn composite profiles of the victims, the perpetrators and the communities confronting cases of MVCSA.

This project is unique in the way it acknowledges the futility of drawing clear distinctions between the effects of the abuse on direct and indirect victims, and in its recognition of the far reaching ramifications for the community as a whole as it struggles with feelings of betrayal, stigmatization, elevated suspicion and potential social collapse. In this regard, we are greatly indebted to the sample community for sharing their story with us, amidst the ongoing healing process for all involved.

 

Current Literature

Research on the prevalence and impact of child sexual abuse has multiplied during the last decade. Recent studies1 show that 27% of women and 16% of men report a history of childhood sexual abuse. Because most of the abuse is perpetrated by a relative, much of the research to date has focused on familial abuse. In contrast, little has been published about the effects of sexual abuse by a non- relative, especially when multiple victims are involved. Abuse by a trusted non-family member is believed to produce comparable effects on individual victims as abuse by a relative2. Similar to our findings in the sample community, the literature points to the fact that multiple abuse occurrences in smaller communities impacts not only the direct victims, but also children not directly affected as well as the community as a whole.3

The higher rate of female child sexual abuse has lead many studies to focus exclusively on girls, leaving boy victims underrepresented in the empirical literature. Gender-specific studies produced results consistent with non-gendered studies on the impact of childhood sexual abuse4. One exception is the higher rate of self-destructiveness and suicidal tendencies for abused boys.5

The available literature on the effects of child sexual abuse has consistently identified a series of symptoms associated with the experience:

  • negative impact on self concept,6
  • increased fearfulness and anxiety,7
  • sexualized behaviour (i.e. inappropriate to age or circumstance and sexual acting out),8
  • behavioural and school problems,9
  • somatic and sleep disturbances.10

It will emerge from the victim profiles that these symptoms are characteristic, but not necessarily present for all victims of child sexual abuse.

Findings about the impact of child sexual abuse suggest that many of the short term effects reported have also been cited as characteristic of general child clinical samples.11 Significant problems exist therefore, in terms of identifying unique symptoms and then attributing them to sexual abuse per se. Sexualized behaviour may be the one exception as a more specific symptom of childhood sexual abuse.12 Passivity has been identified as characterizing the free play of sexually abused children, but less so than for physically abused children.13 For school age children both behavioral and academic problems have been reported14, but these findings are somewhat equivocal due to a lack of clinical control groups. Low self-esteem, suicidal ideation and acting out have been reported for teenage victims of childhood sexual abuse15, but again, these symptoms have also been shown for general clinical samples for this age group.

The literature shows that when children answer questions about themselves, the findings are more equivocal than when parents or teachers respond on their behalf.16 In fact, parents of sexually abused children consistently consider their children as more pathological than the children consider themselves.17 As such, it is unclear whether sexually abused school age children are more or less disturbed than non-abused children. Some studies have shown that sexually abused children score somewhere in between non-abused children and other clinical groups on a general scale of disturbance.18 In addition, disadvantaged or disturbed families have problems which are not specific to sexual abuse. As a result, a direct relationship between sexual abuse and other behavioural and emotional manifestations can not be claimed.

A few studies have focused on the effect that extra-familial sexual abuse has on the parents of child victims. Findings showed that guilt, anger, anxiety, stress, powerlessness, stigmatization and betrayal characterize the feelings of the parents of the victims of Multiple Victim Child Sexual Abuse.19 Furthermore, Glancy and Regehr (1991) descriptively studied the impact of multiple abuse on a very small isolated community and found that symptoms of betrayal, powerlessness, and stigmatization generalized to the whole community, an effect which we also noted during the gathering of information from the sample community for this project.

Our sample community

The findings contained in this work are a reflection of an intensive series of investigations designed to understand the impact of non-familial MVCSA in a small rural community at a variety of levels. We considered impact on the child victims of sexual abuse, the families of victims, the families of other children in the community, and the functioning of the community at large. The community services available at the time of the disclosures were evaluated by both parents and professionals, and recommendations were made to improve both service response in the event of another crisis of this magnitude and the provision of ongoing, regular services. Various groups and segments of one particular rural community were involved in our study. We have incorporated our results with those of other relevant studies and bodies of literature to come up with a ‘sample’ community representing a particular place and everyplace.

The community as a whole was outraged that the abuse was allowed to happen. There was a significant amount of media coverage of the event, and people in the town were sensitive to the feelings of stigmatization which resulted. Continuous consultation was maintained with community members throughout the course of this study so as to heed their concerns. The focus was on the entire community due to the magnitude of the abuse, the high profile of the offender both before and after disclosures, the difficulty in differentiating between direct victims and victims of more subtle forms of abuse, and the observed and reported impact on community members with varying levels of contact with the abuser. Previous research findings on community impact were also considered.20

All children in the community were considered to be affected by the abuse. The unique aspect of this project is in the recognition of the difficulty in drawing a clear line between victims and non-victims in occurrences of MVCSA in a small rural community. Not only are all children affected by the atmosphere of secrecy and abuse prior to the disclosures, but the entire community suffers from feelings of betrayal, stigmatization and confusion following the disclosures.

The size and location of small rural communities does not allow for the kind of anonymous buffer provided by large urban centres that helps families and victims cope privately with the effects of multiple victim, non-familial child sexual abuse. The entire community suffers the effects of the abuse and can feel stigmatized by the negative attention paid to these types of issues in the media. There remain long-standing effects of such rampant abuse and betrayal, leaving a legacy of mistrust, anger, anxiety and a possibility of prolonged problems with sexual abuse. Parents are faced with feelings of betrayal and inadequacy in protecting their children from such heinous offenses. It may be useful to view the healing process of a small community through the lens of a general Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - a reaction to a trauma which can have long-ranging effects which are difficult to overcome. It can be a long time before many parents of the victims, let alone the victims themselves of MVCSA will be capable of trusting again.

"It will be a long time before we trust anybody like that again."
Parent of victim

Data collection

We expected direct and indirect victims to show more problems when compared with children in other communities on a series of self-esteem, personality and behavioural measures. Since the majority of the direct victims were male, it was expected that boys would exhibit more problems than girls. Although the test results were expected to be more pronounced for the direct victims compared with the indirect victims, all children in the affected community were considered as impacted because the abuse occurred on such a large scale, affecting children in a variety of settings including school and extra-curricular activities. The whole school atmosphere was abnormally sexualized resulting in conflicts among the children over differential treatment by the abuser.

Phase I

The first phase of the study conducted in the sample community asked one hundred and fifty children from the elementary and high schools to complete questionnaires designed to measure self-esteem and self-concept, fears, powerlessness (locus of control), overt behavioural problems, and somatic symptoms. The participants were classified in a confidential manner according to their victim status indicated in victim records. Due to the time lapse between disclosures and the inception of our project, over 50% of the children who had made disclosures had moved away from the sample community and were thus not available to participate. Almost all of the remaining victims participated in the data collection. Due to the interaction between the children from the two elementary schools in the sample community during extra-curricular activities, and some transfers from one school to the other subsequent to the disclosures, we were unable to draw clear distinctions between "affected" and "not-affected" schools.

Phase II

In the second phase of the project, 30 participating families representing a total of 36 children answered a series of questions pertaining to social and psychological functioning. The interviews were divided into three phases. The first phase looked at variables which are considered in the literature as likely moderators or mediators of the impact of abuse, including: socio-economic and educational status, family history, present family characteristics, and the relationship between the parents and the abuser prior to disclosure. Second, we looked at the short and long term effects of the abuse on the parents, the type and intensity of the abuse experienced by the children and the short and log term effects of the abuse on the children. Third, the parents were asked to evaluate the services available in the community at the time of the disclosures and immediately following.

For the purposes of evaluating the results, the families were divided into three groups according to the victim status of their children. Group 1 consisted of families with at least one child who was a direct victim of sexual abuse, ranging from frequent abuse to isolated incidents. Group 2 consisted of families with at least one child whose abuse was strongly suspected due to their reactions at disclosure, their proximity to the abuser, and their friendship with other abused children. Group 3 consisted of families with children for whom abuse was not suspected due to their distance from the events and the directly affected children.

Phase III

The third phase of the study looked at community impact. Interviews were conducted to ascertain the effect of the abuse on community functioning and dynamics. This portion of the data collection was designed to help put together recommendations and guidelines which could be helpful to other communities facing this type of crisis.

 

Profiles

Before examining the findings of the study it is first important to understand the dynamics of multiple victim child sexual abuse. Where do these events occur, who perpetrates these types of offenses, and who are the victims? Three profiles will be drawn. The first profile will be that of the community. What are the socio-economic factors unique to rural communities, what are the special concerns vis-à-vis the hiring of professionals and what are the limits to resources available. The second profile will be that of the victims of MVCSA. Is there a target group? What role does family history play? How do the children react to the abuse? The third profile will look at the abuser. Who is the perpetrator, what does he or she do in the community, how are their victims chosen, and how is compliance maintained for so long?

All of these profiles are amalgamations of the people involved in the case study and of more general information that has been gathered concerning occurrences of MVCSA. We have done this for two reasons: first, to protect the privacy of the sample community; and second, to offer a broader understanding of the dynamics of MVCSA so as to provide a useful tool to any community who may be facing such circumstances.

A Community Profile

The sample community could be one of many small towns in rural B.C., with a population of around two thousand people, fluctuating with the ebb and flow of the economic tide. Initially a boom town with all the promises of wealth and happiness, the town now sits in a bleak landscape surrounded by once plentiful rich natural resources, now almost completely run dry. This is the fate of many small B.C. communities which arose out of the belief that the rich natural resources in "Super Natural B.C." were limitless.

The unemployment rate in the town is high, hovering between ten and fifteen percent. Mining provides for 33 percent of the jobs, followed by services at twenty-six percent. Between 1981 and 1988 the town experienced a twenty percent decrease in population precipitated by job loss and some fallout from the disclosures of sexual abuse. Due to the remoteness of the town and the size of the community, it is served by one social services office which takes care of thirteen small communities in the region. Stretched to its limits, the social service office attempts to provide at least the basics of services, mostly for substance abuse and family dysfunction. There is no long term counselling available.

As could be expected, when the disclosures began, this office was ill-equipped to deal with the volume of services needed in addition to its regular caseload. The shortage of services available in small isolated communities makes the possibility of problems such as MVCSA more probable. The means are not available to provide preventative education or proper monitoring of problems when they arise. An unfortunate byproduct of these shortfalls is that the targeted children tended to come from dysfunctional families, struggling alone with issues which really needed professional intervention.

Studies of MVCSA have found that disclosure and investigation were more likely to occur in small communities. The irony of this is the limit on resources available in smaller communities to deal with the fallout from disclosures. The broad impact that disclosures of this type can have on a community demand more comprehensive services and education. It is even probable that with more preventative education, children would be more aware of the difference between appropriate and inappropriate behaviours from adults. This, in turn, would hopefully result in fewer occurrences of multiple victim child sexual abuse. More questions might also be asked of professionals looking to relocate to small isolated communities.

Profile of the victims and their families

The victims of pedophiles are often carefully chosen for their vulnerability and for the likelihood that they will keep quiet about the abuse. Offenders use varying combinations of coercion, deception, bribes, threats, punishments and intimidation to control and manipulate the children. The children on their part make efforts to cope with the abuse through various means such as:

  • not participating in sports teams,
  • dropping out of extra-curricular activities at school,
  • refusing to participate in activities such as scouts,
  • refusing to go to the doctor or to school,
  • poor performance,
  • deliberately avoiding any contact with the abuser.

In the sample community, a small group of children tried to support each other by grouping together every time the abuser called on one of them. The power and control that the abuser wields is evident in the jealousy felt by some children of the special attention paid to certain favourites of the abuser, even when they were aware of the nature of the attention. Other children notice the attention and feel glad to be free of it.

In a 1991 study of the occurrence of MVCSA in B.C.,21 a general profile of "the preferred victim" was drawn up. The study included data collected from thirty reports of MVCSA in twenty-one communities. The major findings include distribution across gender, age and family history.

In 50% of occurrences, the majority of victims were boys. In 30% of occurrences the majority of victims were found to be girls and in the remaining 20% of occurrences there was an even distribution between both genders. Interestingly this runs counter to the statistics for intra-familial and incest abuse where girls are overwhelmingly the victims.22 Furthermore, the long term impact of sexual abuse differs across gender. Given current socialization of boys and girls, male victims of sexual abuse are more likely to become perpetual abusers, while female victims are more likely to become perpetual victims. Boys are socialized to be in charge and to "be real men". Sexual abuse challenges their masculinity, thereby confusing male victims. Some boys think they must be homosexual because they attracted the attentions of a male. In an effort to regain their control and therefore their masculinity, they may resort to a variety of aberrant sexual behaviours, including becoming abusers themselves. The importance of recognizing the possible effects and treating the victims accordingly becomes all the more pressing when consideration is given to the potential for a perpetual cycle of abuse.

In 57% of occurrences, the victims were under the age of 12, while only 13% of occurrences showed the victims to be older than 12 years of age. In the sample community for this project, the perpetrator's preferred age group was between the ages of 9 and 15, but if he had no access to these younger children, he would abuse older children in their stead. He showed a strong preference for boys, but he also abused girls when the opportunity arose.

Some parents had a social relationship with the offender prior to the abuse. Some considered him a good friend, while others were just friendly on occasional contact. The families of direct victims of the abuse all had some significant contact with the abuser prior to and during the abuse. A number of parents remember feeling uncomfortable with the offender before the disclosures as a result of conflicts with him, such as over the abuser's open opposition to the introduction of a sexual abuse prevention program into the school. Several parents had also objected to the sexual quality of school dance performances choreographed by the abuser which had the children wearing scant clothing and acting in very suggestive ways. In retrospect, many parents felt they had tragically misinterpreted suspicious circumstances observed during the abuse period. One parent recalls seeing the offender carrying a kicking and screaming pupil while saying "you know you will like it." At the time, the parent assumed that the child was simply being uncooperative. These finding suggest that parents were ill-equipped and ill-prepared to recognize the signs and symptoms of possible abuse, and as such, were unable to act on their suspicions.

Family life and history contributes significantly to the chances of a child being victimized. The 1991 B.C. study showed that approximately one third of the victims were members of stable intact families with no known history of sexual abuse. The children were socially popular and performing well or excelling in school. The remaining two thirds of the children came from families where significant stresses were experienced prior to the sexual abuse. These children came from families with previous histories of family violence, including sexual and physical abuse, drug abuse, and alcohol abuse.

Ideally, if the challenges facing many families had been addressed earlier by social service providers, many of these children may not have been so vulnerable to the abuser. Sas and Cunningham (1995) postulate that children from dysfunctional families are at a higher risk of abuse because of "insufficient supervision, boundary problems and the like." Furthermore, they found an overlap between sexual abuse and physical violence within the home, which appeared to suggest that child victims of familial violence might be at a greater risk for sexual abuse. Dysfunctional families have many problems which disallow any broad conclusions to be drawn on the specific effects of child sexual abuse. The Gove Report (1995) concluded that children from poor families in particular are more likely to suffer from psychiatric disorders, to drop out of school, to have a low birth weight, to suffer chronic health problems and to require protective services. "Poverty is a child welfare issue and when governments allow children to live in poverty, they are, in effect, committing systemic child neglect."23

The data from the sample community showed family dysfunction in the lives of the affected children, including physical and sexual abuse of one or both parents as children, marital problems, wife battering, and perpetration of sexual abuse by the father. A history of divorce was not uncommon, especially for the parents of direct victims. Over half involved lengthy and stressful court battles, but the others were relatively uneventful. By the time the abuse took place most divorced parents had been re-married. Parents experienced other stressful events external to the abuse such as the death of a parent, serious illness in the family, a house fire, or a recent move. These families were left vulnerable enough by internal and external circumstances which allowed the abuser to identify the children as easy, vulnerable targets.24

The children from these families had previous significant adjustment problems such as behaviour disorders, learning disabilities, physical disabilities, a significant medical problem, and a handful of other special needs. The perpetrator was able to identify the particular vulnerabilities of these children and then successfully exploit them to his advantage. He would make promises of support and recognition, in addition to material compensation for their "favours." These children were susceptible to such offerings because they did not have other forms of support from peers and family members.

The perpetrator did not limit himself to preying on vulnerable children. He was also drawn to children with high physical ability, a quality which he shared with his victims. He was able to access these children through coaching sporting events, using his dedication to providing unique and intensive opportunities as a smoke screen for his abusive activities. The perpetrator was an opportunist, taking advantage of children where and when he could, using different forms of manipulation, geared towards fulfilling the needs of the children as he saw them.

Many studies have looked at vulnerability factors that may place children at risk for being abused25. Often the factors mentioned have been related to different kinds of family variables such as family dysfunction, previous abuse in the family, etc. (see also BC Ministry of Health, 1991). Our results are consistent with these findings: The abused group had more dysfunctional families, more divorces, more parents who had been previously sexually abused, and more children with individual vulnerability factors such as mental retardation or medical problems. These factors may have produced vulnerability to extra-familial abuse through a history resulting in low self-esteem, emotional neediness, and low coping skills in the children. From another perspective it appears that the abuser had some skill in the selection of likely victims.

He picked his victims with cunning. He found their most vulnerable spot and exploited it. He went after the adopted kid, the foster kid, the youngest in the class...he had the uncanny ability to sense the weak link. He made sure they felt he was on their side.
Vancouver Sun

Profile of an Abuser

Small towns are faced with a difficult task when trying to attract professionals away from the glamour and pay of the big cities. The allure of a quaint town in a rural setting is minimal and often dismissed as too intimate and too isolated. How then does a rural community, badly in need of the services of professionals, set about to attract the attentions of valuable and committed people, be they teachers, doctors, social workers or lawyers? Faced with such challenges, rural communities may not have the luxury of either a comprehensive screening process or a multitude of qualified applicants. Those who are willing to establish themselves in the community and set up a professional practice or fill a much needed void in services are greeted with a sigh of relief and often with open arms. Reference checks done quickly expedite the process and facilitate the settlement of the new professional. The information provided in the references may be tainted by the desire of one community to be relieved of a "problem" teacher or other professional. Key information may be withheld or considered non-essential, resulting in devastation for the new community.

New professional arrivals can build up trust and respect in the community quite quickly because they are often seen as dedicated to the job at hand rather than looking for fame and fortune in the "big city." If an abuser is not a stranger in town he26 is likely to already be a respected and trusted figure who has a proven track record of caring about the welfare of the children and offering them extra-special attention and services. Anyone who fills this type of role in a community where resources tend to be scarce, will quickly have the full strength of town support behind him. He will have pre-established relationships with children through various community and professional venues.27 He may even use his position of trust in the community as well as his access to personal information and records of children to better identify individuals who would make the best targets for manipulation and abuse.

[He] appears to have a genuine fondness for children, seeking out their company over that of adults whenever he had a chance. Vancouver Sun

A "typical" pedophile28 has an uncanny ability to elicit trust and establish intense relationships over a short period of time. People are very attracted to this type of personality and can feel very protective of the perpetrator, even to the extent of denying allegations when they first emerge. Testifying in a child sexual abuse case during the mid-eighties, psychiatrist Dr. John Bradford cited research indicating that a middle aged pedophile has an average of seventy-five victims before being caught. Furthermore, a thorough look at the past of almost anyone arrested for child molesting will unearth previous unreported offenses. The offending individual practices a general denial of the damaging effects of the abusive behaviour and a distortion of the reality surrounding the abuse.29 According to one child-care worker, a classic pedophile might have the following personality profile: "Married, two kids, ingratiating himself to parents, really cares about kids, puts himself out for others all the time, pillar of the community, churchgoer, active in community affairs." This profile accurately describes the abuser in the sample community.

In one particularly publicized case there were efforts to declare an abuser as a dangerous offender and a psychopath. Of sixteen characteristics that are used to identify a psychopath ranging from a "lack of remorse or shame," to "specific loss of insight," "untruthfulness and insincerity," and "superficial charm and good intelligence," this offender was considered to score one hundred percent. It was asserted that he had a personality disorder which made it virtually impossible for him to experience normal feelings of guilt or anxiety - or to tell the difference between right and wrong.

His first sexual encounters were with younger children when he was about 12. It was these experiences that became the central imagery for the sexual fantasies that haunted [him] through adolescence and adulthood, fixating him sexually at the level of a thirteen year old. Vancouver Sun

The newspaper account of the case showed this offender as a classic example of someone who lived the "Peter Pan syndrome," wherein sexuality is fixed at a certain age level and the individual just does not grow up. During the court case, a psychiatrist in forensic psychology, specializing in the evaluation of sexual offenders and pedophiles, described the phenomenon. Young children lack a sense of right and wrong, living in a state that has been described as "moral realism" in which they take their cues for how to behave from the reactions of those around them. At about age eight, children begin to develop a sense of time, allowing them to experience guilt over the past and anxiety over the future. This new state is described as "moral autonomy" meaning they can make moral judgments on their own. Psychopaths represent the three or four percent of people who fail to adequately develop that moral sense. Psychopaths have a firm grip on reality and are often highly intelligent, yet have no self-esteem – requiring them to seek constant approval from others – and have no ability to discern that their actions may be harmful.

When introducing himself at the beginning of the year he would commonly say to his students, "...if you think or feel like saying No to me, you say Yes." Vancouver Sun

The argument was made that the abuser in the sample community could not see that what he was doing was wrong. According to the media reports, his psychiatrist testified that the offender took the attitude that "there's no harm done, he's doing them (the children he molests) good." Although he denied that there was anything wrong with his behaviour, the offender did fear getting caught and had concocted an escape plan if he ever did. Despite several close calls with being caught as a child molester, the offender in the case study persisted with highly inappropriate activities. He consistently put himself in close contact with young children, despite acknowledging that he would likely molest again. In a typical fashion, this pedophile maneuvered himself into positions of potential intimacy with children so as to keep available his options for sexual contact.

The nature of the abuse

A study of sexual abuses perpetrated against child victims reveals two broad patterns of behaviour.30 The first pattern involves no actual physical contact between abuser and victim, but does encompass:

  • acts of indecent exposure,
  • coaxing the child to undress,
  • showing children pornographic materials,
  • verbal pressure and manipulation used to gain compliance and control.

The last item seems to eventually lead to the second pattern of abuse which involves physical contact between the abuser and his or her victim(s).

Abusive physical contact is characterized by physical pressure or actual invasion of the child's body. This pattern runs the spectrum from what could be considered "accidental" touching and fondling to full-out sexual assault. A short list would include:

  • application of pressure on the child's body through fondling, rubbing and stroking to the genital and other areas of the body;
  • mutual masturbation;
  • kissing on the mouth;
  • oral-genital contact;
  • vaginal or anal penetration of the victims with a penis, finger or other object.

Records examined subsequent to the disclosures of abuse in the sample community revealed that the perpetrator had a long history of abuse in other school districts before moving to the sample community. He lived in the community for two years during which time he established himself as a trusted and respected figure. His good standing was shattered by one female victim's disclosure of sexual abuse. During the two days following this initial disclosure, other children were questioned, and a large number of additional disclosures were made. More than sixty interviews conducted by the RCMP and Social Services over the next few days revealed the stunning magnitude of the case. The local school board immediately suspended the suspect from his teaching responsibilities and parents quickly became involved to assure the protection and treatment of the affected children.

A wide range of abuse was disclosed during the interviews. The abuser engaged in abusive activities which encompassed both patterns of abuse listed above. He was an opportunist, taking advantage of situations already given, or carefully engineering ones that allowed him the opportunity to perpetrate abuses undetected. A list of his abusive behaviours was compiled following the disclosures and included the following:

  • direct mutual genital fondling and masturbation,
  • forcing the children to lie down with him and in a few cases including the removal of clothing,
  • forcing the children to be sexual with each other in front of him,
  • forcing the children to sit on his lap and rubbing against them,
  • inappropriate sexualized language,
  • directing children to act suggestively during school dance performances.

He promised monetary rewards, or participation in sports teams, good grades, and other special privileges in return for sexual favours. Tension among the children developed as a result of the special attention and favouritism. A few of the abused children did talk about their experiences with him to other children, prompting some uncomfortable rumours in the school.

 

Disclosure

In many instances of multiple victim child sexual abuse, prior to any true disclosures, some children will try to tell friends or family members about the abuse. When the object of a disclosure is another child, the results can be frustrating for the victim of abuse. Frequently these disclosures amount to dead-end disclosures because the child being told of the abuse has a) been sworn to secrecy, b) does not have the capacity to understand the severity of what he or she is being told, or c) may ridicule the victim, leading to social ostracism. The victims may find themselves further victimized by their peers who may consider them as "weird," "queer," or "dirty."31 The victim may withdraw from social relations and become a loner, or retract the disclosure and deny its validity. This experience is especially difficult for adolescent males who tend to fear that if they report the sexual abuse, they may be taunted, ridiculed and rejected by their peers. Some boys even feel that they are somehow to blame for the abuse and assume that they must be homosexual if a man wanted sexual liaisons with them.

Some parents may recall behavioural changes in their children, but most likely would not have recognized it as an indication of abuse. Some children try to tell their parents about the abuse, but the offender's good standing in the community, combined with a child's inability to articulate the specifics of sexual abuse, leads many parents to misinterpret signs and symptoms of abuse. A child's reluctance to be alone with an abuser, or blatant and apparently unjustified disobedience can be easily misunderstood by an unsuspecting and trusting parent.

When disclosures are finally made, sometimes after many years of suppression and misery, it can be quite traumatic for both the children and their parents. They may feel intimidated and powerless vis-à-vis the abuser because he is typically considered to be such a trustworthy and respected citizen. The victims and their families may feel threatened with retaliation by the offender, especially if there is a great power imbalance between them (socio-economically). The victims themselves may fear negative reactions from their own family members and friends. Many victims are afraid that they are somehow at fault for what happened to them, in a classic "blame the victim" kind of way. Some victims in the sample community were confused when they were told that what they had been doing was wrong, yet it was not their fault. They were obeying a respected and trusted authority figure, something which they had been taught to do. Victims in other occurrences have even defended the activities they were asked to participate in, saying they did not find them distasteful.

At the time of disclosure, a child's feelings of vulnerability increase dramatically. Many children end up feeling ambivalent about disclosing due to the negative response they perceive from the recipient. They may even feel responsible for the upheaval which ensues, and feel guilty about the content of the disclosure.32

Unfortunate consequences of...long periods of denial and community tension were the prolonged pain and stress (re-victimization) experienced by children who had been abused and who did not receive family/community support, and/or were criticized or belittled for revealing what happened to them. Some victims experienced rejection by peers and/or members of their own families.

A NOTE ABOUT YOUNG CHILDREN AND CHILDREN WITH DISABILITIES

Special attention must be given to the problems vis-à-vis attempted disclosures by very young children or children with significant physical or mental handicaps due to their particular communication abilities. These situations demand that services accommodate the greater challenge of ensuring the safety of children by providing appropriately trained professionals to interact with the children in a way that facilitates their abilities to express themselves. Very young children do not have clearly defined boundaries between themselves and others. Furthermore, their vocabulary may be limited and may not include concepts of abuse, how to express fear and other feelings, or words to describe body parts. This is not the medium to examine the particular challenges of addressing abuse issues for such children, however it is necessary to indicate the need for specific study in this area.

Community Response

There is a high incidence of denial at the community level to disclosures of multiple victim child sexual abuse perpetrated by an up-standing community member. Residents reported resistance to accepting the validity of the disclosures, and in some cases tried to minimize their significance in up to 80% of occurrences studied in the 1991 B.C. Ministry of Health Report. Once the abuse is recognized, over-reporting of further suspicious activities is not uncommon. Generally, most of the reports turn out to be false, the result of hypervigilance and increased suspicion. The general findings concerning the effects of MVCSA on communities as a whole are congruent with the findings in the sample community. Communities as a whole experience the effects of abuse, and may manifest symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

According to DSM-III-R (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, 3rd Revision), PTSD occurs when a person, and in this case, an entire community, has experienced an event that is outside the range of usual human experience. The event is persistently re-experienced in a variety of ways including recurrent and intrusive recollections of the event and intense psychological distress at exposure to events that symbolize or resemble an aspect of the traumatic event. There is a persistent avoidance of stimuli associated with the trauma or numbing of general responsiveness as indicated by at least one of the following: efforts to avoid thoughts or feelings associated with the trauma; efforts to avoid activities or situations that arouse recollections of the trauma; inability to recall an important aspect of the trauma; markedly diminished interest in significant activities; feelings of detachment or estrangement from others; restricted range of affect; and a sense of foreshortened future. Finally, hypervigilance is not uncommon following a stressful event.

The time that a small community can take to recover from the trauma of sexual abuse leads the authors to believe that a significant amount of stress is experienced by not only the victims, but the entire community. The high level of mistrust and anxiety that permeates a community suggests that the healing process is prolonged beyond what would be anticipated by non-direct victims.

In our sample community parents of victims were affected both as community members and as parents of specifically abused children. We heard about feelings of powerlessness, betrayal and stigmatization. On a broad level, we were looking for qualitative information on community impact. We found that all parents, regardless of the victim status of their children, felt high levels of stress, supporting the hypothesis that the abuse impacted on the community as a whole.

Heeding the desires of the community, we refrained from asking children any questions directly pertaining to sexual abuse. Parents and community members poignantly expressed their feelings of exposure and stigmatization and did not wish to subject the children to the possibility of feeling re-stigmatized by their participation in the project. During the course of the project several new occurrences of abuse came to light in the community and environs. We recognized that it would be difficult to claim that the observed effects are due solely to the abuse perpetrated by the one individual responsible for the original incident under study. Furthermore, it complicated the mending of trust that was only slowly taking place as the community learned to understand what effect sexual abuse has on everyone in a small rural locale.

Short and long-term effects on the children

In order to gain some perspective on the impact of sexual abuse on child victims, we administered a series of questionnaires to children in both the sample community and a comparison community. The results highlight the effects on the known victims and the other children in the community, however, they do not provide conclusive findings about the specific effects of this one instance of abuse on the community's children. Previous family histories in addition to subsequent occurrences of abuse in the community limited our ability to draw clear conclusions about the impact of a single perpetrator. While the statistical and methodological limitations of this study must be acknowledged, we also felt it important share our observations. Consequently, we decided to look for broad patterns of social and psychological functioning of the victims following a known instance of sexual abuse.

The questionnaires were administered three years after the abuse was disclosed. The findings are generalized measures of social and psychological functioning of the victims of abuse, as well as all the children in the community. We looked at categories such as locus of control, industry, fears, disturbance and emotional and behavioural changes, across age and gender. The results indicate that the abuse affected all children in the community, albeit differentially according to their victim status. Boys exhibited more problems than girls, likely because the majority of victims were male. We also found that the older children showed more residual effects of the abuse three years later, suggesting that age may be a significant factor in the healing process following childhood sexual abuse.

Age seemed to be a large factor in determining the effect of the abuse on industry measures, and particularly school performance, although all children from the sample community, demonstrated lower industry scores than the comparison sample. When grades are examined for the two years preceding the disclosures and the 3 years following, we found that the younger children were performing better following the disclosures while the older children were faring worse. These findings were particularly striking for the boys who were direct victims of abuse. This seems to confirm that the impact of abuse was greater for the older children at the time of occurrence.

The victims of abuse were clearly affected by the breach of trust by an authority figure. Many children showed a general distrust of adults and a handful of children had problems with teachers whose behaviour or appearance reminded them of the abuser. The children were very selective with their relationships, slow to trust others and exhibited extreme caution when meeting new people. There was a tendency to let people reach out to them, leaving the option of acceptance or rejection to their own judgment. Presumably, this effort results in reduced vulnerability, and a greater feeling of control for the children. The younger boys exhibited high levels of internal control, while the older boys tended to rely more heavily on external control.

The children from the sample community showed less fear than expected, which suggests that there was a tendency towards compensation for feelings of vulnerability. Although they were not fearful of failure and criticism, there was an understandably inflated fear of personal harm. Consistent with other clinical studies on fear levels and gender, girls exhibited higher levels of fear than the boys. Boys may also have had a greater need to compensate for their feelings of vulnerability, because they represented the majority of victims.

An interesting aspect of our study entailed asking the children to draw a picture of a person. We were looking for indications of "disturbance" as evaluated by a special scoring system developed specifically for this study. According to this scoring system, a majority of the drawings from the sample community were classified as clearly disturbed. The "clearly disturbed" rating included: undue sexual emphasis, anxiety, social inappropriateness, aggressiveness and defensiveness. Again gender was significant in that boys showed more indications of disturbance in their drawings than did the girls. Although this is in keeping with a general finding amongst school age children, it is also notable because again, boys represented the majority of the victims of sexual abuse in the sample community.

Proportionally, twice as many children from the sample community had incomplete drawings as compared with the comparison community, and there were many more incomplete drawing for the high school children than for the younger ones. We also noted higher levels of disturbance in the drawings of the older children. The combination of the evidence from the drawing exercise and the academic records seems to confirms that the impact of abuse was greater for the older children at the time of occurrence.

At home, emotional and behavioural changes were noted by the children's parents. School performance records, in addition to RCMP and social service records were examined. There was little evidence of abnormal criminal activity during the time of the abuse, and any behavioural problems had been interpreted by social services as related to a long history of family dysfunction. Parents, however, described a few school related behavioural changes, such as refusal to attend, poor performance and withdrawal from extracurricular activities, namely sports. The children also exhibited behaviours such as worrying, arguing, fighting, fearfulness, unhappiness, feelings of worthlessness, poor ability to concentrate and difficulty sleeping.

Following disclosure, behaviours became much more clear. Directly abused children were confused, angered and guilt-ridden about their interactions with the abuser. He was someone whom they had trusted, so they obeyed his requests. The confusion and anger was not isolated to the direct victims, however. Other children in the community had a hard time grasping the idea of sexual abuse, and some were quite fond of the abuser, or had yearned for his attentions. Some children felt intense emotional conflict over the arrest of the abuser, because for many of them, he had provided an emotional attachment they craved, and which made them feel important. To complicate matters, the abused children became the butt of cruel jokes by children from the other school, who taunted and teased the victims mercilessly.

The children generally felt a sense of relief however, once the disclosures became public. The secrets they had been carrying around were finally revealed, and they no longer had to feel uncomfortable at school because of the abuser, although a few feared that the abuser might come back and harm them. Other children felt relief because they knew that that something had been terribly wrong with the relationship between the abuser and their friends.

Short and long term effects on the families

The initial reactions of the parents to the charges were disbelief and shock, followed closely by anger. Parents of direct victims felt betrayed by the pretense of the friendly relationship they had had with the abuser. They were angry with the school system which they felt had failed in their obligation to protect the children in their care. This feeling was fueled by the revelation that the abuser had been hired as a teacher even though he had a previous history of abuse in other school districts. Parents were also displeased with the way the school board handled the situation after the disclosures, displaying no coherent course of action and little or no direction for the teachers who were responsible for the children.

Many parents felt guilty that they remained unaware of the abuse even after observing some suspicious events. Parents felt like they had failed their children twice: first, for their inability to protect their children from the abuse, and second, because their children had either not chosen to or been able to, confide in them.

At the time of this study, parents felt their children were generally doing well. They did worry every time a change in the child took place, wondering whether they were observing a change due ‘normal’ development or an effect of the abuse. They remained concerned about the short-term and long-term effects of the abuse.

The abuse disclosures ultimately sensitized the whole issue of abuse, to the extent that touching other children in any way became a source of anxiety and led to the fear that one would be suspected of abuse. On the other side of the coin, parents noted increased awareness and education in the community surrounding the issue of sexual abuse, allowing some topics to become commonplace rather than taboo. With this newfound openness, it was anticipated that the community’s children would be more able to recognize and disclose abuse in the future compared with children from other communities.

Coping strategies used by the parents of direct victims included support from a variety of sources such as family, friends, and services. Almost all directly affected families participated in some type of counselling. Information on sexual abuse was acquired through meetings, workshops, and counselling. People made use of different coping mechanisms. Some parents became active in organizing support groups, demanding services, and volunteering, while others withdrew from these activities, retreating into themselves or moving away.

Short and long term effects on the community

Some common threads characterized the responses of community members to the disclosures of abuse including initial feelings of shock, disbelief, and anger, and soon followed by a sense of betrayal and vulnerability. There was a dramatic increase in tension in the community arising out of misinformation, differences in coping styles, and different priorities in terms of what steps needed to be taken.

Conflicts between individual community members, between parents and the school, and among parents of different children characterized the post disclosure period. One main conflict centered around the role of the media, including the arrival of reporters from out of town. Some parents took advantage of the media coverage hoping to use the media attention to demand services and compensation. A number of parents of both victims and non-victims preferred to keep things quiet and maintain privacy. They began to feel that the whole community was becoming unnecessarily stigmatized with the media attention. Media aside, the size, and therefore intimacy, of the community was already compromising both privacy and confidentiality.

While the parents of directly affected children wished to remain anonymous; other parents wanted to know who had been abused in order to protect their own children from possible harmful influences. Some parents tried to guess who had been abused by watching the activities around the social work office and by closely monitoring the children's behaviour. Community professionals observed how mistrust, rumours, and partial information brought some parents and some community members to regard each other with suspicion.

Other conflicts centered around differences in attitude toward the abuser and the victims. Some parents took issue with a minister of a local church who seemed to be placing onus of responsibility for the abuse on the victims. He was later charged with child sexual abuse himself. Another source of conflict was the relationship with the abuser himself. Some parents were initially supportive of the abuser, while others were immediately against him. One father forced his children to retract their disclosures and then started a door to door campaign to support the abuser. Community members who defended the abuser thought that the children were making things up or that the children were themselves the seducers.

Service response and evaluation of services

Service Response

The first action came from the local interagency group which immediately formed a response team, organizing an information workshop for parents and teachers. The workshop was given by a sexual abuse counsellor from Vancouver and took place one week after the first disclosures. Financing for the event was not arranged until a few weeks later when the school board decided to provide the necessary funds. The meetings proved to have limited usefulness for the parents beyond the first meeting which followed closely on the heels of the disclosures and provided much needed information for coping with the immediate effects. Parents also took the opportunity to address their feelings of guilt and anxiety around what had happened and what the future held.

Two weeks after the disclosures, two counsellors were hired from a nearby urban centre. Their mandate was to assess the situation, to deal with the immediate crisis in the school, and to meet the affected children and families. Initial funding was arranged by the parent's group, but they were later hired by the Ministry of Social Services and Housing for a total of four months. Some people decided to access counselling services outside of the community and felt that the results were generally good.

The Ministry of Health provided a mental health team which arrived in town two months after the disclosures and stayed for a total of three months. During this period, the team saw individual children and families, facilitated support groups, and conducted workshops on sexual abuse for local professionals. Not many parents felt that the services offered by the Mental Health team would be useful for themselves, but some did avail their children to the service. As well, a permanent mental health position, the need for which had been previously established, was created at this time, with the new worker arriving three months after the disclosures. This position had broad responsibilities for a large geographical area.

The Ministry of Education funded an elementary school counsellor position for a year after the abuse. The position was extended for an additional year and there had been some initiative to make this position permanent. This ministry also financed some informational workshops and the coordinator position for a community awareness program. An effort to increase prevention was made by means of school programs such as "CARE" and "Feeling Yes Feeling No," programs designed to inform and alert children to inappropriate behaviour from others to prevent sexual and other abuse.

Evaluation

Evaluation of the various community and government services by parents and professionals was mixed. By the time the mental health team arrived, many problematic patterns and conflicts had already been established and many parents and children were not very receptive to treatment. Under-use of this service was attributed by respondents to the fact that the mental health team did not reside in town and came only two days per week. They were seen as "outsiders" and were not trusted by many community people. Because the regional Ministry of Health office had initially refused to get involved and send help to the community, community members were embittered, and therefore unwilling to make use of this resource when it became available.

Other problems with service use were directly related to the magnitude of the initial crisis. Professionals connected with the local Social Services office described the initial disclosure situation as chaotic. The large number of interviews that needed to be conducted with children took priority over regular office duties and programs which were put on hold for a month. Social Services was used by professionals and members of the community as their principal source of information about the case and for guidelines for action, increasing the load on this office. Both parents and professionals talked about how existing services were taxed to the limit. To complicate matters, some of the professionals involved in providing service were also parents of victims. Confusion and lack of guidelines frustrated the initial response.

Funding was a significant problem. The first counsellors and consultants who came to town did so without a firm promise of remuneration. An emergency fund was eventually established through donations and a grant from a community organization. This uncertainty angered many parents who thought immediate help from the ministries was necessary. Several projects were dropped due to a lack of funding, including some local volunteer organizations which would have been able to help with the victims.

Some parents expressed dissatisfaction with the level of expertise provided by the professionals who came to help. As an extreme example, one parent noted that she found herself providing emotional support for a counsellor who was overwhelmed with the magnitude of the problem, a position this parent resented since she had expected to be the recipient of support herself. Other parents simply did not trust the professionals level of knowledge, feeling that these individuals were expecting unrealistically "quick" results for their efforts. In many cases, parents expected help to come to them, rather than needing to seek it out. This was because they did not want to be seen going to mental health services or counselling and being "stigmatized". Professionals, in their view, should have been prepared to deal with these types of responses and should have reached out to them more.

Professionals felt that parents were initially very open to receiving help. They came to the first community meeting with high expectations of rescue and were disappointed when they found no clear answers. The disappointment increased as further help was slow to come.

Professional opinions varied widely on the needs of parents (and victims) following the abuse. Some professionals thought that many of the parents were still dealing with emotional sequelae up to two years following the disclosures. Other professionals thought that the problems found in the local families were related more to problems arising from a variety of factors including a depressed economic situation in the area, high unemployment, alcoholism, and drug abuse. Some professionals also believed that the sexual abuse resulted in a multitude of chronic problems for local children. In contrast, other professionals interacting directly with the children, such as school counsellors, teachers and mental health professionals, thought that the observed problems were no different from those observed in similar small communities without a history of abuse.

Existing services were considered by all parties involved as overloaded and insufficient. One mental health worker had a client waiting list of several months long, able to attend only to crisis situations to the neglect of more chronic problems. People requiring more attention were referred to private therapists in a nearby city, which was well beyond the means of many local families. At the time of data collection there was no psychiatrist, no alcohol and drug counsellor, no family therapist, no sex-abuse therapist, and no psychologist in the community. Some prevention services sponsored by Social Services and probation had been cut back. The school counsellors were overburdened as cut backs in the schools led to a decrease in the time available for counselling.

Requests were made for long-term psychotherapy, assessment and monitoring of affected children and counselling for the parents. Other suggestions included a teen centre geared towards providing constructive activities in addition to information and counselling in a number of areas, including drug and alcohol counselling. The need for continuous education on the issue of sexual abuse both at the community and school levels was also mentioned.

Professionals ranked a family therapist and a drug and alcohol counsellor as the most important services needed. Community professionals also identified the need for a full time permanent therapist in town with expertise in sexual abuse cases. In addition, an increase in school extra-curricular programs and in community recreational activities for children, and provision of parenting workshops were seen as important in preventing further problems. Professionals noted that subsequent to the abuse, more people were volunteering their help and that the strength and persistence of some of the parents created a powerful drive to increase services and to educate the community about sexual abuse.

The need for more financial support for local programs was noted. The initial response team has develop into a permanent "abuse team," incorporating representatives from Social Services, Mental Health, School Board, Hospital, E. Fry Society, RCMP, probation, and school counsellors. Its goal is early detection of neglect, physical and sexual abuse of children in order to prevent further abuse. The abuse team is limited in its ability to act since it receives no funding, has no enforcing power, and its actions are limited to the ability of the existing services to deal with more cases.

 

Conclusions and recommendations

Small rural communities have a special vulnerability in cases of multiple victim non-familial child sexual abuse. When hiring professionals from outside of the community, choices are often seriously restricted by the number of people who are willing to relocate to a small town. As a result, the screening process for those who are willing, must take into consideration the potential for the type of betrayal and breach of trust examined in this book.

Limited human and fiscal resources force service providers to offer minimal services when more comprehensive ones are desperately needed. The structure of small communities often has people wearing many different hats, and thus can put them into positions of conflict of interest during a crisis. Service providers may themselves be in need of help, but there are no resources available to them, because they themselves are the sole providers of such services.

The impact of a crisis such as child sexual abuse extends beyond the actual victims to affect the entire community. It becomes difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish between children victimized by the abuse and those who may have remained unscathed. This book showed that all children are affected, albeit to varying degrees, by the abnormally sexualized atmosphere prompted by the behaviours of the abuser. Furthermore, the attention given such an occurrence by the mass media stigmatizes the community as a whole. Community members may feel that they are somehow being blamed as a result of the negative attention.

Two general conclusions can be drawn as a result of our look at the sample community and additional resources on the subject. Better education for both children and parents is a solid recommendation found in the sexual abuse prevention literature. Such education must however, be tailored to the particular needs of the community, such as a rural locale. Children need to be explicitly taught the parameters of acceptable behaviour from adults. Parents need to be taught to recognize symptomatic behaviour and then given information on who to go to and how to react.

Family problems need to be acknowledged and addressed before they reach crisis levels. The literature shows that children who witness violence in their own families are particularly vulnerable. Services must be extended to allow for the long-term counselling and resource management necessary to keep families healthy. By doing so, the vulnerability of children will be hopefully be reduced through stronger parent/child communication and more stable family support systems.

The special concerns of rural communities need to be incorporated into the management of local health resources. The lack of service provision in the sample community had already reached crisis levels by the time the first disclosures were made. Several more perpetrators were identified in the ensuing years, which worked to prevent healing. The community was under siege and without the means to begin the path to effective healing.

The following specific recommendations are based on interviews with community members, professionals, parents and our own observations. Included are both prevention and response recommendations.

A) Immediacy of Response

Immediate emergency action including emergency funds for hiring additional help is crucial to successful intervention. The need for information, support, and direction is paramount at this initial stage. This need is felt at a number of levels, for affected children and their families, for the local professionals who will be working with them, and for other community members who also require accurate information and support.

B) Locally Based Resources

Another set of recommendations is related to the issue of trust. It was stressed that professionals known and respected by the community be the ones to offer the necessary services. These service providers would not necessarily need to be local residents of the community but be familiar with the area or reside at a reasonable distance from it. In addition, continuity is considered an important factor. Rather than having many different professionals entering and leaving town, it would be beneficial to have the same staff available for as long as it is considered necessary. The training of local residents and extra support for the groups and services already in town is seen as a key factor in the success of intervention efforts. In the current community, some of this training is already taking place. For example, there is a six month course on sexual abuse issues in a nearby larger community which has been attended by several teachers and counsellors.

C) Clear Guidelines and Lines of Responsibility

Clear guidelines and jurisdictional responsibility need to be established for all the agencies involved. Every community should have clear guidelines for emergency response to such situations and have immediate access to both services and funding. It is crucial to recognize that not only the direct victims in a multiple abuse case, but also the community as a whole need to be served. In addition, local professionals and service providers may also need help and support from other professionals in order to deal with the impact of the case on their own lives as community members and as service providers.

D) Small towns are not big cities

It is important to be aware of the importance of small town dynamics and sensitivity to local issues by new service providers. The community's perceived needs and concerns need to be heard and addressed in the context of awareness of local interrelationships and dynamics. The small size of such communities and the consequent concerns about privacy, confidentiality, dual roles and relationships, all need to be borne in mind. It may be possible, for example, to provide some initial services in the parents' homes rather than in ministerial offices, to bypass reluctance to use services based on fear of being observed and further stigmatized by others.

E) Long-Term Service Provision and Follow-up

Evaluation and follow-up of the victim's coping is needed at different periods during and after the termination of interventions. Services need to be long-term, tied not to an externally imposed time frame of how long they should be needed, but to how long they are needed by victims and community members. The previous government report (B.C. Ministry of Health, 1991) suggests the evaluation of services. We would like to emphasize here the importance that such evaluation be formalized so that the actual effectiveness of interventions can be determined and not only on a one-time basis.

F) School-Based Programs

Programs which address self-esteem, communication skills and discussion of important issues in the schools can be useful in helping victims to cope and receive support and clarification and discussion can help to avoid stigmatization. School-based programs focused on development of self-esteem are important. In addition school-based prevention programs would be an important component of the curriculum in all communities, rural communities in particular.

G) Recruitment Efforts to Small Communities

The difficulty in filling needed positions was mentioned frequently during this study, seen as resulting from low interest of highly skilled professionals to move to small communities. Recruitment efforts need to be improved in their scope and thoroughness and the challenge of such positions stressed.

Endnotes

1. Finkelhor, Hotaling, Lewis, & Smith, 1990.

2. Finkelhor, 1984; Van Scoyk, Gray & Jones, 1988.

3. Glancy & Regher, 1991.

4. Briere, Evans, Runtz & Wall, 1988; Freeman-Longo, 1986; Freidrich, Beilke & Urquizaa, 1988; Pierce & Pierce, 1985; Reinhart, 1987.

5. Vander-mey, 1988; Cavaiola & Schiff, 1988.

6. Conte & Schuerman, 1987; Mannarino & Cohen, 1986; Adams-Tucker, 1982; Browning & Boatman, 1977; Justice & Justice, 1979.

7. Conte & Schuerman, 1987; Gomes-Schwartz, Horowitz & Sauzier, 1985; Adams-Tucker, 1982; Browning & Boatman, 1977; Gelinas, 1983; Justice & Justice, 1979.

8. Browning & Boatman, 1977; Justice & Justice, 1979; Alter-Reid, Gibbs, Lachenmeyer, Sigal & Massoth, 1986; Cavaiola & Schiff, 1988.

9. Adams-Tucker, 1982; Conte & Schuerman, 1987; Justice & Justice, 1979; Tong, Oates & McDowell, 1987.

10. Browning & Boatman, 1977; Adams-Tucker, 1982; Browne & Finkelhor, 1986b.

11. Beitchman, Zucker, Hood, daCosta & Akman, 1991.

12. Deblinger, McLeer, Atkins, Ralphe & Foa, 1989; Einbender & Friedrich, 1989, Friedrich & Luecke, 1988; Goldston, Turnquist & Knutson, 1989; Kolko, Moser & Weldy, 1988.

13. Fagot, Hagan, Youngblade & Potter, 1989.

14. Tong, Oates & McDowell, 1987

15. Gomes-Schwartz, Horwitz & Sauzier, 1985; Sansonnet-Hayden, Haley, Marriage & Fine, 1987.

16. Mannarino & Cohen, 1988; Einbender & Friedrich, 1989, Tong, Oates & McDowell, 1987.

17. Waterman & Lusk, 1993.

18. Mannarino & Cohen, 1988; Goldston, Turnquist & Knutson, 1989; Kolko, Moser & Weldy, 1988.

19. Finkelhor, 1984; Regehr, 1990; Van Scoyk, Gray & Jone, 1988.

20. Glancy & Regehr, 1991.

21. BC Ministry of Health, 1991.

22. BC Ministry of Health, 1991.

23. The Gove Report, Vol.2, p.26.

24. BC Ministry of Health, 1991.

25. Conte & Schuerman, 1991.

26. We say "he" because the majority of multiple victim sexual abusers are men. BC Ministry of Health, 1991; Dezwirek, 1993.

27. The abuser could hold such positions as teacher, health care worker, clergy, leader of boys and girls activities, baby sitter, music teacher, etc.

28. According to DSM III R, a pedophile is someone who has had "recurrent sexual urges and sexually arousing fantasies involving sexual activity with a prepubescent child or chldren; the person has acted on these urges, or is markedly distressed by them; and the person is at least 16 years old and at least 5 years older than the child or children" involved.

29. Vancouver Sun, April 4, 1986.

30. BC Ministry of Health, 1991.

31. BC Ministry of Health, 1991.

32. Sas & Cunningham, 1995.

References

Achenbach, T.M. & Edelbrock, C.S. (1983). Manual for the Child Behaviour Checklist and Revised Child Behaviour Profile. Burlington: University