NEW YORK (NY)
New York Times
March 8, 2019
By Shaila Dewan
The explosive documentaries “Leaving Neverland” and “Surviving R. Kelly” have reignited a national conversation about child sex abuse.
“Leaving Neverland” profiles two men who say Michael Jackson sexually abused them when they were children. Jackson faced several allegations that he molested young boys dating back to 1993, but was never convicted of any charges.
For more than two decades, R. Kelly has been trailed by a series of allegations of sexual misconduct with minors. Then in February, after “Surviving R. Kelly” aired, the authorities in Chicago charged him with 10 counts of sexual abuse. He denies the charges.
With these developments coming years after the alleged abuse, many are asking why victims can take so long to come forward, why they might at first deny the abuse and whether their parents could have done more. Here are some answers to those difficult questions.
Why do some victims take so long to come forward?
It can take decades for people who are sexually abused as children to come forward, for a multitude of reasons. They may suffer from effects of trauma or believe they are to blame, and it can take years for them to even identify what happened as abuse. In one German study, the average age of disclosure was 52. Despite that, some states in the United States gave victims only two or three years after reaching the age of 18 to seek criminal action.
The Catholic church child abuse scandal in the early 2000s drove most states to change their statute of limitation laws, extending the time those abused as children had to come forward. More recently, a wave of reports like one in Pennsylvania that found more than 1,000 child victims of Catholic priests has renewed a push to allow more time.
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