UNITED STATES
Boston Globe
By Beth Teitell
Globe Staff / December 3, 2012
Pollyanna Santos doesn’t let her 6-year-old son play at a friend’s house unless she knows all of the adults who live in the home — and those who might be visiting. “You don’t know what can happen in the next room,” said Santos, a waitress from East Boston.
In Braintree, Debbie Currie feels anxious when she leaves her 7-year-old daughter at gymnastics class. “There are 20 other kids in there, and we live in a nice town, but you just never know,” said Currie, a customer service supervisor for Comcast.
Bernice Ferrara, a retired MBTA bus driver from Brockton, will not let her 15-month-old granddaughter sit on Santa’s lap because she doesn’t know the man behind the beard. “I don’t want to feel that way,” she said. “But I do.” …
Data from the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System showed that the rate of substantiated child sexual abuse dropped 62 percent between 1992 and 2010, from 150,000 cases to 63,000 cases, said the center’s director, David Finkelhor.
The trend was confirmed by data from six other sources, including governmental agencies, the FBI, and reports by victims, he added.
A combination of factors has led to the decline, said Finkelhor, a UNH sociology professor, including: more aggressive law enforcement; prevention education; public awareness; and cultural changes such as the empowerment of women.
But even so, the list of organizations that have housed molesters keeps growing.
While the Catholic Church has been at the center of sexual abuse scandals for years, the Penn State football program and the Boy Scouts of America have now been implicated.
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