Education Week - April 2, 2014 - 12

'Erin's Laws' Enlist
Teachers to Prevent
Child Sexual Abuse
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1
common warning signs masked as
behavior issues, she said.
"We have to teach kids the differ-
ence between a safe touch and an
unsafe touch, a safe secret and an
unsafe secret," Ms. Merryn said.
"Without it, kids get one message,
and it's from their perpetrator who
is victimizing them."
Experts say sexual abuse-prevention
programs in public schools
have fallen by the wayside in recent
years in favor of new efforts targeted
at issues like bullying. And
the sexual abuse-related programming
that remains is often taught
to high school students and not in
earlier grades.
Ms. Merryn, 29, suffered two periods
of sexual abuse as a child growing
up in a Chicago suburb. After
she was raped at 7, she shoved her
hand through a window and became
disruptive at school, she said.
School leaders matched her with
a social worker, Ms. Merryn said,
and created an individual education
plan to address her behavior.
"But they weren't asking the important
question: 'Erin, why did you do
this?'" she recalled. "I am confident
I would have told."
Statistics and Symptoms
Various analyses of federal data
estimate that around one in five
girls and 1 in 20 boys are sexually
abused as children. Rates are difficult
to pinpoint because many
incidents go unreported and not
every report is confirmed, researchers
say.
Data from the U.S. Department
of Health and Human Services
show that 16.6 percent of the more
than 2 million child-abuse and
-maltreatment reports in 2012-
the most recent year with data
available-were made by education
personnel.
But while teachers are required
under state and federal laws to
report suspicions of sexual abuse,
many fail to do so, said David Finkelhor,
the director of the Crimes
EMPOWER
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Against Children Research Center
at the University of New Hampshire
in Durham.
"It's easy in a school environment,
unlike, say, a medical environment,
for a teacher or somebody
who recognizes something to
think it's really somebody else's
responsibility to do something," he
said."There's kind of a diffusion of
responsibility that can happen."
In addition, teachers get inconsistent,
often minimal training in
how to make reports, and sometimes
fail to recognize the signs of
child sexual abuse, Mr. Finkelhor
said.
Children who have been sexually
victimized often demonstrate sudden
changes in behavior at school,
such as social withdrawal, aggression,
or constant crying, said Brigid
A. Normand, a program-development
manager for the Seattlebased
Committee for Children, a
nonprofit organization that develops
programs to address children's
mental and emotional issues.
"Behaviors teachers see in chil-
dren are always saying something,"
said Ms. Normand, who is working
on professional-development materials
to help teachers recognize
signs of abuse and mistreatment in
students. "We need to teach [educators]
to reframe behaviors they're
seeing to ask themselves, 'I wonder
what's going on with this child?' "
Behaviors like those Ms. Merryn
demonstrated after her own
abuse are common, child advocates
say. Some victims also masturbate
compulsively, wear extra layers of
clothing out of an instinct for selfprotection,
or draw pictures that
are unusually sexual for their age,
Ms. Normand said.
The Committee for Children's
new materials will help teachers
learn how to have open, nonleading
conversations with students if
they suspect a problem, and how to
"pool knowledge" with other adults
in a school if they see red flags that
may trigger a report, Ms. Normand
said.
Ms. Merryn, who spoke up about
her own situation only after she
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learned her sister was also being
abused, said classroom lessons on
the subject give children open doors
to report abuse if it is occurring.
"We need to give kids a voice and
the tools to tell," she said.
An analysis by the National Conference
of State Legislatures that
was last updated in 2013 showed
laws in Vermont, California, and
Texas that predate Erin's Laws efforts.
And many districts implement
programs on their own.
There was a national push for
sexual abuse-prevention programs
in schools in the 1980s, Mr. Finkelhor
said. But the programs were
largely adopted at the school and
district level, and school leaders
abandoned them as budgets grew
strained and prevention programs
for issues like bullying, dating
violence, and gang activity were
added.
Prevention Efforts
A study that Mr. Finkelhor co-authored
with other researchers from
his university and the University
of the South, which was published
in March in the International Journal
of Child Abuse and Neglect,
found that few young children are
taught about sexual assault and
abuse in schools. Of 3,391 respondents
to a national phone survey of
children ages 5-17, 21 percent reported
having participated in a prevention
program related to sexual
assault, and 17 percent said they'd
participated in such a program in
the past year. Of respondents ages
5-9, 9 percent had participated in a
sexual assault-prevention program,
and 7 percent had done so in the
past year.
In comparison, 65 percent of respondents
reported having participated
in bullying-prevention efforts.
A task force assembled in Illinois
to design its version of Erin's Law
found that the state mandated
sexual-abuse discussions only in its
secondary schools. That's too late
for many students, experts said,
because sexual-abuse rates peak
at earlier ages.
While some states that have adopted
Erin's Law allow parents
to opt out of the lessons for their
children, most concerned parents
change their minds when they study
the materials and see that they are
not graphic or overtly sexual, Ms.
Mitchell said.
Utah's New Law
Utah's legislature-the most recent
to act-passed an Erin's Law
bill on March 12. It will go into effect
in the 2016-17 school year if it
is signed into law by Gov. Gary R.
Herbert, a Republican. A spokesman
for the governor said his office is reviewing
the bill to determine if he
will sign it.
The Utah bill requires schools
to use instructional materials approved
by the state board of education
to provide prevention training
to school personnel and parents. It
makes student lessons optional and
subject to parental approval. Utah
state Rep. Angela Romero, a Democrat
and a sponsor of the bill, said
she proposed it after reading about
Ms. Merryn in People magazine.
Ms. Merryn said the biggest objections
to the bills are from state lawmakers
who don't want to impose
additional mandates on schools and
those who fear the programs will
create a cost burden for districts.
Illinois' task force acknowledged
the burden of adding a mandate
without new funding in its report.
Materials and training, offered by a
variety of third-party groups, carry
varying costs. But Ms. Merryn said
much of the programming can be
financed by grants and led by current
employees, such as nurses and
social workers.
"You can't put a dollar amount on
a child's life," she said.
Coverage of school climate and student
behavior and engagement is supported
in part by grants from the Atlantic
Philanthropies, the NoVo Foundation, the
Raikes Foundation, and the California
Endowment. Education Week retains sole
editorial control over the content of this
coverage.
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n States that have passed
versions of Erin's Law
n Illinois became the first state to
pass an Erin's Law measure in
2011.
Note: Utah's measure was passed by
the legislature this year, but has not
yet been signed by the governor. It is
not scheduled to take effect until the
2016-17 school year.
SOURCE: Erin Merryn
wErin Merryn, an activist and
former victim of child sexual
abuse, speaks at a news
conference in Hoffman
Estates, Ill., last year after
Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn signed
an "Erin's Law" bill in that
state. Persuaded by Ms.
Merryn's efforts, 26 states
have considered or are
considering similar bills in
their 2013 or 2014 legislative
sessions.
George LeClaire/Daily Herald/AP-File
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Education Week - April 2, 2014

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