FLORIDA
St. Petersburg Times
By KATHERINE SNOW SMITH, Times Correspondent
Published August 7, 2005
I'd been dreading the required training for close to a year.
Though I actually had conflicts every time the three-hour class was offered, I also thought it was a huge waste of time. Why did I need to take a class about sexual child abuse awareness? I certainly have no tendencies toward such horrible actions, and I seriously doubt that any of the other volunteers at our church do either. Furthermore, if my children were ever targeted by a molester, they would tell me right away, and that would be the end of it.
I thought the Episcopal Diocese of Southwest Florida was being overly paranoid to require the course for any church member who teaches or comes into regular contact with children. But when I finally took the class on a recent Saturday morning, I actually found it eye-opening.
Sadly, I learned, a cute, normal-seeming 15-year-old volunteer or the beloved, longtime youth director can be the child molester we all fear but picture more as the creep hanging out at the park.
Research shows that only 10 percent of abuse is perpetrated by strangers, 30 percent is by a family member and 60 percent is someone else who the child and often the family knows. Furthermore, even the best parent-child relationship can be compromised by a cunning abuser who learns to gain children's trust and control them or threaten them to keep them from blowing the whistle.