By Michael Brindley
Nashua Telegraph
December 15, 2011
http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/news/943266-196/high-profile-child-sex-abuse-cases-resonate-locally.html
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| Kristie Palestino sits in the interview room at the Child Advocacy Center in Nashua Wednesday, December 14, 2011. |
Inside the Child Advocacy Center in Nashua, there is a room where small pairs of handprints in varying colors cover the walls. Kristie Palestino, executive director of the center, explains to children entering the room that these are the “hands of hope.”
“These are all the kids that have come here,” Palestino will tell the children. “That’s telling them they’re not alone.”
Children come to the center because they have been sexually abused. It is there where they will talk about what happened to them, with representatives from different agencies watching on a monitor in another room. The interviews are used as part of the investigation.
This is the work going on behind the scenes to handle cases of child sexual abuse, a subject Palestino said, unfortunately, is still somewhat taboo. There was even a time when Palestino would lie when asked what she did at social gatherings because of the awkward response.
She stopped doing that when she realized it was only continuing a dangerous pattern of brushing the subject under the rug. Now, Palestino is hoping there’s a silver lining to the high-profile sex abuse cases to recently come out of Penn State and Syracuse universities and that is a willingness to have an open dialogue about it.
“This is an opportunity to educate people,” she said. “Hopefully, this will bring it to light.”
Palestino has been following the reports of Penn State officials who allegedly turned a blind eye to the abuse.
“I feel disappointed. I feel like we let down a lot of children,” she said, of the allegations. “But I think it can be a great lesson for us.”
The hope is the high-profile cases will result in states, agencies and organizations re-evaluating whether they are doing everything they can to protect the children in their charge.
David Finkelhor, lead researcher for the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire, said sexual abuse cases in the media can trigger many different responses. Parents may start to think more about who has contact with their children and how well they know them. It can also prompt adults who have been hiding their own sexual abuse experiences to open up about what they went through.
“When you have a lot of news coverage of sexual abuse, it provides the opportunity for people to think about their own experiences,” Finkelhor said. “These are the silver linings: the opportunities created by these cases.”
Such was the case with previous abuse scandals, such as with the Catholic church and with public figures revealing they were sexually abused as a child. One example of that was Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown, Finkelhor said.
With recent cases taking place in the world of youth and college sports, Finkelhor said it could resonate more with men who have been afraid to come to terms with abuse that happened in the past.
“Sports tend to involve more boys. It is conventionally more difficult for boys to disclose. Boys aren’t seen as victims as much, and because most of the perpetrators are males, there are stigmas about homosexuality,” he said.
The worst mistake people can make is to assume New Hampshire is immune from child sexual abuse, Palestino said. Between the Nashua and Manchester facilities in Hillsborough County, the Child Advocacy Center sees 600 children every year. Roughly 90 percent of those cases are sexual abuse. The average age when abuse will occur is 9 years old.
There is still the prevailing misconception of abusers as strangers, when 95 percent of the time, it is someone known and trusted by the family, she said. The most concerning statistic for Palestino is that only one out of 10 children who have been sexually abused will come forward and report what happened.
At the Child Advocacy Center, representatives from police department, state prosecution and DCYF will watch the interviews without the children knowing they’re watching. The goal is to make the setting as comfortable as possible for the children and not make them go through several sets of interviews with various agencies.
There is a play area for children in the waiting room.
“They feel like they’re a bad guy if they’re going to the police department,” Palestino said.
Nashua police Lt. Michael Moushegian works with the Child Advocacy Center on sexual abuse cases. He said people would be surprised how common it is for someone they know to have experienced abuse as a child.
“We all know victims of this type of abuse, but we may not know we know them,” he said.
Moushegian, who sits on the board of directors for the Child Advocacy Center, said the organization plays a vital role in addressing cases of sexual abuse. The tragedy is the effect that being sexually abused can have on the victims for the rest of their lives, he said.
“There are so many lifelong consequences to being victimized in that way, as it relates to depression, relationship issues, physical issues,” he said. “The important message for people to understand is that we’re all personally responsible to help the children, the victims of these horrible crimes.”
The Learning Curve appears Thursdays in The Telegraph. Michael Brindley can be reached at 594-6426 or mbrindley@nashuatelegraph.com
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