The Department of Justice recently released 3 million pages of files related to sex-offender Jeffrey Epstein. Although ideas of rich and famous men flying on luxury jets to private islands continues to attract endless media attention, none of this has brought relief to the 60,000 children in the U.S. who are sexually abused each year.
Annually, child welfare agencies investigate nearly 300,000 cases of reported child sexual abuse. Less than a quarter of those cases are “substantiated,” but this is not because there is a high number of false accusations — those account for only about 2 to 5 percent of all allegations. Rather, most cases remain unsubstantiated because the current system for detecting child sexual abuse is broken. This, in turn, means that we often fail to prosecute and punish abusers, or even separate them from their victims.
Detecting child sexual abuse requires timely and thorough action when a disclosure or allegation is made. This response includes forensic interviews, forensic medical exams, gathering and synthesizing physical evidence, and assessing caregiver and family dynamics to see whether family members are responsible or have knowingly allowed the abuse to go on.
Continue reading the entire piece here at The Hill
______________________
Scott Dziengelski is a consultant at King and Spalding LLP and an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Naomi Schaefer Riley is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
Photo by kieferpix/Getty Images