Children Rarely Lie About Abuse

The 9-year-old boy had drawn a picture just for me on the day I arrived to visit him in the juvenile psychiatric ward as his guardian ad litem. The picture was of children playing basketball, except down in the corner, blocked off , was a stick fi gure child watching. I asked him to explain the picture and his reply still resonates in my consciousness: “Get me out of here.”

The child and his brother had been subjected to horrific emotional, physical and sexual abuse and the trauma had taken a severe toll on the children.

My eventual reports to the juvenile court judge fulfilled the “get me out” part, but the end results did not protect the children.

Truth did not win, but an ambiguous decision of parental rights and an unspecified meaning of “reasonable doubt” sent the boys back home to the victimizers as if they were a prize awarded. I can still conjure up their faces in my mind as they left thecourtroom 27 years ago, looking at me as if I had betrayed them.

Soul murder done unto children is not compartmentally hidden in their mind. The split off unconscious memories are sequestered to manifest in the future as emotional and psychological situations that will affect us all.

Much has changed in the quarter of a century since those two boys: Children’s advocacy centers, more effective child protection laws, forensic child Interviewing training protocols, mandated reporting and increased public awareness of the crimes against children.

Despite these remarkable gains over the past two decades, there is still a myth that needs to be addressed: Children lie about abuse.

Evidence over the past 25 years continues to prove that false allegations about child abuse are rare. A Department of Health andHuman Services study of 149,081 substantiated cases in Florida, Missouri, Vermont and Virginia show that only 1,803 cases (1.2 percent) were intentionally false. Two studies in Denver over a 12-year period shows that 1 percent and 1.5 percent were false in the respective studies.

The studies indicate children tend to minimize and even deny the abuse, not exaggerate or overreport. To protect children, we must believe the child.

There is no excuse in today’s America to read or hear about an inept investigation, a melancholic prosecution, a tepid voir dire of prospective jurors or a lenient sentencing of a convicted predator.

Children are devalued when this happens by adults who have chosen to serve and protect, especially the most vulnerable of our society - children. Children do not make up sex crimes against them; they do not have that knowledge.

Believe the child and seek the truth.

Arkansas has theopportunity and privilege to be the second of four National Child Protection Training Centers in the world. This already functioning training center at NorthWest Arkansas Community College already has hosted police oftcers, nurses and prosecutors from many states on the disciplines of protecting children.

Despite the publicity and the many requests of individuals to give, the silence of generosity seems as loud as the circle of trust violations against children. Those of us who have chosen to believe the children may not stop injustice, but we will not fail to protest until the children are safe from predators.

“Nothing can make injustice just but mercy,” wrote the poet Robert Frost. Mercy on behalf of children is to believe the child. To the vulnerable, voiceless children, to do less is moral cowardice.

DAVID ENGLE IS EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF RESTORATION MINISTRIES INC. IN ROGERS.