Nation's dark, dirty secret blighting many young lives

By EUGENE BINGHAM AND CATHERINE MASTERS

Child sexual abuse, the secretive crime ruining young lives, appears to be increasing. Social workers are finding five new cases a week and many of the victims are preschoolers or toddlers.

The Department of Child, Youth and Family confirmed 1284 reported cases of sexual abuse last year, a 7 per cent rise on the previous year.

Other departments have tracked an increase too - Ministry of Justice figures show the number of convictions against adults for child-sex offending was 1357 last year, up 100 on 2001.

Three-quarters of all convictions for violent sex offences were against children.

Hundreds of victims are very young. In 1999 and 2000, CYFS confirmed 940 cases of abuse against children aged under 10. Of those, 253 were aged between 1 and 4. Eight were not even 12 months old.

Police recorded 1500 complaints of child sexual offences last year, an 18 per cent increase on the previous year. It was the highest number of complaints for six years.

A Weekend Herald investigation into the extent of child sexual abuse has found that the Palmerston North man released last week after serving a sentence for raping a 2-year-old was one of 250 paedophiles who will be freed this year.

On average, five child abusers are released each week, many going back into homes with children. Despite fears about stranger danger, research shows that most offenders are known to their victims.

Thirty-five per cent of cases reported by the Herald between 1990 and 1999 involved family members or caregivers.

The director of the Safe programme for child sex abusers, John McCarthy, said about 80 per cent of abusers targeted children they knew.

"The vast, vast majority of child sex offenders don't abduct children off the street and parks and rape your child," said Mr McCarthy. "Most are people that kids know. They befriend families, they befriend children and they take some time to do that."

Most offending was not detected. For every offence a paedophile was convicted of, he would tell counsellors of another 40 undetected crimes, said Mr McCarthy.

"So the scale of the problem is pretty huge, without trying to overdramatise it," he said.

"It does require some response and simply ignoring it or pretending it isn't there isn't going to make it go away."

Justice Minister Phil Goff said that the ongoing nature of abuse was one of the reasons he wanted to introduce long-term supervision of high-risk offenders. "They generally have a broad track record of abuse against children, most of which never comes to the public surface and most of the offender probably never enter the criminal justice system.

"I have a particular concern about the way a kid's life can be ... screwed up into adulthood.

"That's why I think the area needs a lot of emphasis ... I think I've carefully balanced the rights of the individual and the rights of the community to be protected."

CYFS general manager of social work and community services, Ken Rand, said his department was working with other agencies to better manage child sex offenders.

"I think that government agencies have worked hard to develop a comprehensive response. Obviously we can't cover off every situation but we have looked to put together as comprehensive a response as we can."

ACC figures show that the sensitive claims category, which mostly involves sexual abuse complaints, costs $15 million a year. More than 40,000 people have lodged claims in this category since 1994.