Abductors and Molesters

Dr. Spock On Parenting
by Benjamin Spock, M.D.

(Page 4 of 4)

Two child safety proposals have been much discussed lately and put into practice in some localities: the fingerprinting of children and the inviting of police officers to give talks in schools warning children against abductors and molesters. There is an obvious appeal to these suggestions. I myself would be in favor of any proposals that offered real protection. But I believe that on balance these particular precautions are likely to do more harm than good, because they will make millions of children fearful without a redeeming benefit.

There is no doubt that children have morbid imaginations and are easily frightened. Studies have shown, for example, that children entering a hospital for as ordinary an operation as a tonsillectomy have developed all manner of dreads — that the operation is necessary because they have not obeyed their parents, that their necks would be sliced open from ear to ear, or that their parents would never be able to find them again to take them home.

You can guess, then, what a child's imagination will make of a policeman's lecture on kidnapping, rape, and murder. For one thing, to many children, police represent not protection but punishment. And I can easily imagine a young girl who has passed a raggedy-looking man on the way to school exclaiming to her friend, "I saw a kidnapper this morning and he was looking at me!"

In fact, the overwhelming majority of molesters are people the child knows well — a relative or a friend of the family whom the child is accustomed to respect. How can a police officer explain sexual molestation or warn children not to trust close relatives? I feel that these are jobs better done by parents, who know their child's sensitivities.

An overwhelming majority of the children who "disappear" fall into two categories. The first are those picked up by a divorced, noncustodial parent who feels resentful about unsatisfactory visitation rights. Obviously, having children fingerprinted will not prevent such abductions. The second large group are young teenage runaways, mostly girls, who have felt misunderstood or insufficiently loved by parents. Their fingerprints will not help anyone to discover them. When they are eventually picked up by the police it will be because of their evasive behavior. They soon identify themselves anyway.

Actually the only real use of fingerprints that I can see would be to hasten the identification of recently murdered children, who usually get identified anyway because police and parents are on the alert. (I say "recently murdered" because decomposition of the body soon destroys fingerprints.)

How can parents themselves go about protecting their children against molesters, to the extent that this can be done at all?

To me it seems easier and less traumatic to talk first about sexual proposals from other children, of your child's age or older. The subject might come up through some sex question your child asks or her report of such an incident, or because you've discovered sex play. Children get interested in the origin of babies and also get involved in sex play at three and four years. You can say to a girl that if a boy asks to see or touch her vulva (or whatever the family word is), she doesn't have to let him. She can just say, "No! I don't want you to do that!" Then the parent, say it's the mother, can repeat the same advice as applying to an older boy. Finally she can repeat it as applying to a man. The repetition is valuable to help any child take in a new idea and to prepare the child to make the same speech herself. In fact the parent can invite the child to practice the recitation with her, right then: "Let's say it together: 'No! I don't want you to do that.'" This should to some degree help the child to call her body her own if and when a suggestion comes from an adult relative or family friend.

To give a young child some protection against abductors, I'd say, matter-of-factly, "Don't get into a car with anybody but us. And don't go with anybody to his house. If somebody asks you to, you tell them, 'No! I don't want to!' and run the other way." You are telling the child that she doesn't have to obey a stranger (abductor or molester), and that there are a couple of things she can do, so she has some power. If she wants to know what a stranger might do, I'd say, "There are a few mean people in the world and they might be mean to a child."

If a child, having heard some report of molestation from a friend or television, asked why a person would do such a thing, I'd try to be low-key. "There are a few men," I might say, "who are mixed up in their heads; they think it's okay to make a boy or girl who isn't a member of their family come live at their house, or touch them in ways that make them uncomfortable." I would be trying to put the mildest interpretation on such behavior because that would be sufficient warning, and I feel it is important to raise children with as much trust as possible in their fellow beings.

If the child were reacting to a specific television report of a murdered boy or girl, I would say more: "A few people were treated so badly when they were children that now they want to hurt others — not only children but grown-ups too."

Whether children have been molested in a brief, incomplete way or more aggressively, it's essential for parents to realize that the children always feel guilty and that you should do your best to minimize this guilt. "It's not your fault at all," you might say. "You didn't want him to do that. He was mixed up. He was mean." You shouldn't pretend nothing has happened: that tells the child that it's too awful to talk about. At the same time, don't carry on as if a terrible tragedy has occurred, one that can never be overcome.

It is wise to secure help for the child and for yourselves from a family guidance clinic, an agency that specializes in sexual trauma, or a family social agency.

The long-range solution for all kinds of violence toward children, including sexual abuse, is to raise future generations in such an atmosphere that they will grow up to be kindlier adults — parents, teachers, and people generally — than many who are alive today. In other parts of the world the figures for violence of all kinds — toward adults as well as children — are much lower than here, which should give us hope that we too can make a better society if we will recognize the problems and work on them.

All schools should be friendly, creative places like the best I've seen. We should wean ourselves away from physical punishment. We should demand challenging television and movie programs in place of the present violence. We should have more and better social services to rescue the children who are presently being neglected and abused so that the pattern will not be passed down.

Copyright © 1988 by Benjamin Spock

About the Author

Benjamin Spock, M.D., practiced pediatrics in New York City from 1933 to 1947. He then became a medical teacher and researcher at the Mayo Clinic, the University of Pittsburgh, and Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. The author of eleven books, he was a political activist for causes that vitally affect children: disarmament, day care, schooling, housing, and medical care for all. He had two sons, a stepdaughter, and four grandchildren. Dr. Spock, who died March 15, 1998, at age ninety-four, was married to Mary Morgan. Dr. Spock's Baby and Child Care has been translated into thirty-nine languages and has sold fifty million copies worldwide since its first publication in 1946.