INCESTUOUS SEXUAL ABUSE

"The group of people I work with primarily are college students, age group of 18 to 25. They are from middle-class backgrounds, educated, fairly privileged in the sense that they have received the kind of education that they are getting now. They read and they are well aware of what is going on in the world ... When they come to see me, these young men who have been abusing children, it's because they have read something or seen something that has shaken their complacency about what they are doing ... Their main concern is very practical - what if I get caught if I continue doing this? They wonder if they will end up being abusers and that whole thing stirs up a lot of questions in their mind about an activity about which they feel ashamed, maybe a little guilty but not necessarily perturbed.

"I don't think that when they were abusing the children they felt that it was okay because it was always a secret activity, it was always furtive, there was a sort of intimidation of the child in terms of don't tell anybody or cajoling the child to ensure that the secrecy is kept. So they knew that it was something that is not okay to do ...  A lot of them, after they've been to see me, begin to share their own experience of being fondled or sexually interfered with or molested as they were growing up. And they very frequently say, 'Nothing really happened to me, it wasn't traumatic.' So they don't think they are doing anything bad when they do it to children ...  They do have concern for the child in that they have become increasingly aware by what they have heard or read that children get damaged when they are abused and therefore they have a sense that it's wrong and they should not be doing this ...  The other myth is that what they are doing doesn't have to do with children but with sexuality. They believe that sexuality is a rampant force that cannot be controlled and therefore there is no attempt to curb it. The only control is that it has to be kept secret. I don't discount these reasons because I think they are important reasons for how they cross the threshold into wrongdoing. There is this sense of what will I do with my sexual desires, they are very pressing, they are very strong.

"I see child sexual abuse [as] a loss of empathy with the child, and one of my efforts is to try to help young men [who come to see me] to begin to reawaken their empathy for children, perhaps by going back to their own childhood, maybe not to an experience of sexual abuse but something familiar where they were frightened and intimidated by an adult - what did that feel like and how has it affected them now - in that sense, reawakening an empathy for a child. And I think that would make it very hard for them the next time an opportunity arose to [sexually abuse a child]."

"Incesters are trusted figures who abuse children. Some don't intend to abuse, they say it 'happened accidentally.' Another group plans to abuse. Some could be pedophiles ... the fixated type of pedophile or the regressed type of pedophile ...  The diagnostic definitions of pedophiles is men who have an ongoing attraction for children, not just once but recurrently. [Fixated pedophiles] have an intense attraction for pre-pubescent children, they are at least five years older than their victims, their offenses are not limited to children in their family, and they are not exclusively attracted to children ...  The regressed pedophile periodically abuses, sometimes because of stress, especially when they feel their relationships with a wife or partner is not going well. They are not fulfilled in their relationships with intimate peers. They are not in touch with their needs and cannot express their needs within the relationship. Since there needs to be negotiation with the adult wife or partner, it is easier for them to seek sex with children because of the power differential ...  Other men who have these needs but do not commit incest either have worked them out or have better coping mechanisms.

"Sexual offenses are always violent because they violate trust. But incest is usually seen as non-violent because of a qualitative difference between sexual offenses like rape that includes murder and torture. Stranger rapists seek to violate, hurt and overpower. Incesters don't. They view themselves as a 'peer' of their child. They see the sexual relationship with the child as love. Stranger rapists really don't care about the victim. Incesters make believe that they do love the victim because if they believe that they don't love the victim, then they have to believe that they hurt the child and they are not willing to do that ...  Some perpetrators, once the offense is committed, they really freak out. They can't believe they did it. These perpetrators don't premeditate before acting. They are the kind of perpetrators who say they were sitting in the living room with the child, got stimulated, and acted. They don't think until it's over. On the other hand, repeat offenders have set up a whole system in their mind that what they're doing is fine. So they continue perpetrating because they build a whole value system around the reasons for abuse, to justify the abuse. Some believe they are helping the victim grow up sexually since they are helping her grow up in other ways. They feel that if the child can trust them with other things, why not with sexual things? Many of them say the child could have run away, could have told mother. So they also believe it was consensual.

"Therapists look at the details, the minutes before the actual sexual offense. The sexual offense itself is less important because it's the details before the act that outlines the decision of the offender.

"Those who offend once, who say it was 'accidental,' the incest is about violating boundaries...  So we look at the gratification aspect of the offender, an older person who is using the child for his own gratification. Usually this type of offender will say, it was the moment or it was the child's seductiveness. But when you go deeper you find out they pick children because they are available. It is as simple as that.

"When some of the perpetrators come to see me, they say, 'I don't know why I did it, I will never do it again.' I tell them that's what they want to believe. I say to them, 'If I had asked you one week prior to your offense if you would abuse, you would have said, no! So you can't guarantee that you won't do it again.' I teach perpetrators how to prevent future abusive behavior. It's damage control. Some perpetrators can be reformed, others can't."

"We need to remember, when we are thinking about generating sympathy or looking at perpetrators empathetically, that many perpetrators actually have the support of the community in which they live. After all, it's that kind of support that has allowed them to come this far. The fact that they can commit a variety of sexual acts against children -- which people may be aware of but don't take action - grants them, if you will, a level of protection. The fact that many victims can't come forward because they are afraid or ashamed or blame themselves - in a sense this silence also protects the perpetrators. The fact that even when victims take them to court or confront them, and nothing happens a lot of the time - again protects the perpetrators. So in some ways, perpetrators do have the support of many systems ...  As well, there are many perpetrators who have committed sexual crimes against children, some of their own children, in a very deliberate, systematic, premeditated, thoughtful, manipulative and conniving sort of way. These are not sick, demented, abnormal people. These are ... thoughtful, intelligent, planned initiatives undertaken by perpetrators to get what they want.

"I don't have the confidence that the South Asian public actually considers this a serious enough crime or even views this as a heinous enough offense to shame the perpetrator. My experience has been, so often, it has turned on the victim. It's the victim's shame. The perpetrator in a sense has been let off the hook, not been held accountable.

"Public shaming is a device which I think can be an extremely effective social mechanism by which to hold perpetrators accountable. And certainly there have been many instances in South Asia, particularly around the issue of dowry, for example, where public shaming has been very effectively used to shame the family or to shame the bridegroom who has been demanding dowry. At the same time, I realize that using this mechanism in Canada, for example, can be somewhat difficult because, first and foremost, we're assuming that the people want to engage in shaming the perpetrator ... but does the South Asian community view incest as being 'shame worthy' on the perpetrator's behalf? I'm not convinced of that. Secondly, in Canada, the South Asian community is not really cohesive. Many of them are scattered in different places. Many of them are quite different from each other in terms of their background or where they come from. There are different types of South Asian communities. There are people from Sri Lanka, from Pakistan, from Bangladesh, first generation immigrants, second generation immigrants ... so in many places there isn't a sense of community outside of the perpetrator's house. Who would take the responsibility of grassroots consciousness raising among the South Asian community?"

"I think all the women I know, whether they are 10 years old or 60 years old, are afraid to be on the streets after dark, are afraid to be in their homes alone. And what is this fear? It's not the fear of your house being burgled or someone taking your jewelry or favorite silver. The fear we all live with, that is so much a part of our lives, is a fear of sexual assault. For somebody who has been abused, this fear is even more. It's a fear that's very difficult to explain to people because it is often used against you, to curb women's mobility ... so we don't want to make our fear public in case whatever freedom we have is taken away. That is what we are up against.

"On the other hand, there is this temptation to call those who perpetrate incestual sexual abuse, mentally ill. It's really letting off opportunistic, insensitive men by placing the responsibility on some kind of phantom illness. I would probably say that somebody who wants to abuse a 10-month old baby needs help but all the boys on the street who are happily rubbing up against girls who walk on the same pavement, or all the uncles who, when they get a chance to have a niece alone, try to touch her, or the brothers-in-law who have made a pass at the younger sister-in-law, these are opportunistic, calculated, rational moves ...  I would like to see them all punished and to create a system where there is a stigma attached to the perpetrator so that he is afraid of abusing anybody and he is afraid of being found out, rather than the fear [of being abused] being carried by women of all ages.

"The perpetrators that offend will not offend if they can't get away with it. It's as simple as that. If there are strong sanctions in our criminal justice system that will ensure that perpetrators are going to jail and that they are going to go to jail for a long time because they have committed a heinous crime against society and against a child, then the chances of that person getting out [of jail] and re-offending are probably lower ...  It's true that very few people who have committed acts of incest actually go to trial and actually get convicted. This has largely to do with the fact that not many of these crimes are reported. I get a lot of cases that come through my door, that after meeting with me, after hearing from me their options, many of my clients decide not to make a complaint to the police, and their biggest fear is of being victimized, of being put on the stand, of having to prove that, in fact, they are telling the truth. And for a lot of victims, they are not able to deal with this -- whether they are children at the time that the crime is reported and adults at the time of the trial or whether they report the crime at the time it occurs. The system doesn't necessarily feel safe to a lot of people ...  Also the range of sentences [for incest] in Canada varies. We have situations where a person is convicted and sentenced to six or seven years ...sometimes four years in prison for perpetrating sexual abuse or assault against a child. That's not a lot of years when we look at the level of trust that has been violated in that relationship. I've seen property crimes getting harsher sentences than that and to think that we as a society don't necessarily catalogue crimes against children at the same level as crimes against a person's property, there's something very negative about that."

"The victims of sexual abuse who I deal with on a day to day basis, frankly, don't care whether that perpetrator gets counseling or therapy because there is so much pain, there is so much anger. Their first concern is punishment, to perhaps take something away from the perpetrator given that they have had something taken away from them. But I think as a society, we have to look beyond that perspective because the perpetrator is going to be coming back into society. We don't have a system where we are locking people away forever because they have committed a crime of sexual abuse. So given that, to not focus on attempting to rehabilitate the perpetrator is, I think, dangerous -- because at some point perpetrators will come into contact with children. We cannot monitor them 24 hours a day. We cannot legislate and say they can never have children."