Child abuse cases could bring topic into the light

CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) – Twenty years ago, you didn't talk about breast cancer. Now NFL players wear pink on their uniforms in October, road races are staged nationwide to raise money for research and women describe their battles with the disease in the media.

What's not talked about now is child sexual abuse. Some advocates for victims of abuse hope the recent publicity about cases at The Citadel, Penn State and Syracuse University will help change that.

“Part of our mission is to bring this issue out of the dark and make this a public dialogue,” said Jolie Logan, the CEO of Darkness to Light, a Charleston-based group that during the past decade has taken its program to educate adults about the signs of child sexual abuse worldwide.

“I hope the positive that comes out of this is that the dialogue has been started,” she added.

The Citadel has been sued by a mother whose says her son was molested by Louis “Skip” ReVille, a one-time counselor at The Citadel's summer camp. The college received a complaint in 2007 from a camper who said he had been sexually abused five years earlier. The military college did an internal investigation, but did not notify police at the time.

ReVille is now charged with molesting nine youngsters when a teacher and coach in Charleston area schools, recreation programs and churches. The mother said her son would not have been molested if the school had reported ReVille.

At Penn State, former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky is charged with assaulting children over the span of 15 years. Four people have accused former Syracuse University assistant basketball coach Floyd VanHooser of abusing them as children. He was fired last month, has denied wrongdoing and has not been charged.

Nationally known victim's attorney Jeff Anderson said that three things would help South Carolina and the nation deal with such incidents.

He said adults working with children should be trained to recognize the signs of sexual abuse. Such adults should all be required by law to report sexual abuse to authorities and statutes of limitations on childhood sexual abuse need to be repealed.

Often, he said, people won't make reports of abuse until they are older and more emotionally able to deal with it.

“The statutes of limitations in this country and South Carolina protect offenders and those who protect them better than the kids,” said Anderson, who is representing the mother in The Citadel case. “We can do better in public policy in South Carolina and elsewhere.”

South Carolina's law lists specific groups of adults as required to report child sexual abuse.

Logan said Darkness to Light doesn't have a position on whether every adult should be made a mandatory reporter.

“There are definitely some pros and cons to that,” she said. “Regardless of who the mandatory reporters are, education is critical for them to understand what they are seeing and how exactly to go through that process of reporting. Focusing on mandatory reporting in our opinion kind of misses the point that we want to prevent it.”

During the past 11 years, Darkness to Life has had more than 300,000 adults take its 2-and-a-half hour training program to learn the signs of child sexual abuse and how to deal with it. This year alone, 75,000 adults will have taken the training offered in 49 states and 15 foreign nations.

Sometimes organizations don't want to have their workers and volunteers take the training because they feel background checks are enough, she said.

“I don't think there's a bad intention. I believe the people who choose not to do it just don't understand the importance,” she said.

Child sexual abusers are attracted to place where they will come into contact with children and there are advantages to having such training in a group setting in schools, churches and other places.

She said it educates all the adults and “it also puts perpetrators on notice that we know what to look for and this will not be an easy place for you to have access.”

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Online:

Darkness to Light: www.d2l.org/