KS- ‘It’s a reporting issue’

4-7-2009 Kansas:

Risk factors for abuse not easy to pinpoint

The area of southern Lawrence between Holcom Park and Louisiana Street, south of Clinton Parkway/23rd Street, is a mixture of apartment complexes, single-family homes, churches and businesses.

What sticks out here is that nothing sticks out. This section of the city is characteristically Lawrence in many ways.

But it is also home to nearly a quarter of all the reported sexual assaults against children reported to Lawrence police between 2004 and 2008.

Why?

What is it about this area that makes it, statistically, the place where sexual assaults against children are most often reported?

There doesn’t appear to be a simple explanation, and an examination of the data points to much complexity in trying to determine why sex crimes against children are more commonly reported in certain areas.

The Journal-World and 6News used 2000 U.S. Census data to compare this part of the city with the city as a whole, looking for some characteristics that might help explain the higher concentration of offenses.

(Posted by eAdvocate)

Factors

The first question to ask is the most obvious: Are there just more people and children in this neighborhood?

In looking at both population density and percentage of the population under 18, there were no consistent differences. For instance, this section of the city is as heavily populated as northwestern Lawrence, where only six crimes were reported.

In regard to percentage of children in the area, again, there were differences among the areas of Lawrence, but this section of the city did not have the highest, or lowest, percentage of children.

Other socioeconomic factors, including education and poverty level, also did not point to any clear connection for this section of the city to have the most reported sexual assaults against children.

Local and national experts on the issue of child sexual assault and abuse say that pointing out specific factors in explaining where child sexual assaults occur is difficult.

Yolanda Jackson, a Kansas University psychology professor who specializes in child abuse, said the statistics can sometimes be misleading.

“Where someone lives or their economic status oversimplifies the issue a bit,” Jackson said.

Jackson pointed out different factors involved in the reporting of child sexual assaults that can skew statistics.

“It’s a reporting issue,” she said.

Sexual assaults that occur in poor families are more frequently reported because of the increased contact with social service agencies who may notice signs of abuse. Abuse in wealthier families is more likely to go unnoticed, she said.

Risk factors

But environmental risk factors for child sexual assaults do exist, said Laura McCloskey, a psychology professor at the University of Michigan who specializes in sexual abuse. Factors sometimes associated with single-parent households, such as a lack of supervision and an increased number of people who come into the home, increase the risk of sexual assaults against children.

During the data comparison, the Journal-World found that the two areas of Lawrence with the most reported child sexual assaults also had the highest percentage of single-parent households. In part of both of the neighborhoods, the percentage of single-parent households was more than 16 percent, compared with the roughly 6 percent average for the city.

Douglas County District Attorney Charles Branson said that in cases his offices sees, lack of parental supervision can be a factor, but that it isn’t necessarily a case of parental neglect. He said that a lack of supervision sometimes results when single parents are forced to work longer hours and have few options with regard to whom they put in charge of their children.

The dynamic of a single-parent household, particularly households with single moms, can be a situation sex offenders exploit.

“Single moms are sometimes targeted by pedophiles,” McCloskey said.

And with the statistics that most sexual assaults against children are perpetrated by someone the child knows, looking in the neighborhood for potential threats may be less useful than looking in the home.

“What people need to realize is that the vast majority of sex offenders are in their circles,” McCloskey said. “Be more cautious about the people you bring into your home.” ..News Source.. by Shaun Hittle