Reporting Abuse/Sexual Abuse Training

FIRST General Forum
1

Sobering topic, I know.

I searched for similar threads on this matter, but only came up with some from 2003/2004 that discussed the policy that apparently FIRST had tried to implement at the time.

It is estimated that 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 6 boys will have experienced an episode of sexual abuse while younger than 18 years. The numbers of boys affected may be falsely low because of reporting techniques (Botash, Ann, MD, Pediatric Annal, May, 1997).

Quick background: I teach preschool, and have participated in leading my church’s youth group, so I have been through a few trainings on Sexual Abuse for minors over the past few years. Today I had another one, and this time it made me think of FIRST.

I am a Mandatory Reporter, as are all teachers in Michigan. (I am unsure about other state’s policies). This means that if I suspect that a child (in this case defined as a person between the ages of infant-17) has been abused in any way that I am required by law to report it. This is NOT as easy at it seems. In order to insure victim’s safety, and the protection of innocent people accused (“innocent until proven guilty”), there are regulations in place on how to go about reporting a possible abuse situation. Please, check what your state’s requirements are as soon as possible so that you know what to do. For those of us in Michigan, you may go here: http://www.michigan.gov/dhs/0,1607,7-124-5452_7119_44443—,00.html

I know that the mentor’s on my team have been through abuse trainings before, and I am sure many (hopefully most, if not all) other teams have policies in place to protect students and mentors alike. Still, I think that this is something that should be publicized more.

What I propose:
Offering a training for mentors of FIRST to participate in, in order to raise awareness of this epidemic of abuse. This should be easy to organize (I have the contact information for people who lead trainings like this.) Each team would have to decide on their own policy on mentor’s participating in a training like this, obviously.
Personally, I offer to organize a training day and would like to open it up to Michigan mentors (or anyone if they really want to travel here!) who would like to participate. I think that it would be ideal to have other state’s follow suit, if other people are willing to lead up this effort.

Check out this article in the NY Times for a very good reason why I think this is important: http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/sexting-may-place-teens-at-legal-risk/

This, along with the epidemic of teen suicides that have been reported in the news lately, is reason enough for me to learn how to better protect my students.

2

I concur with you that sexual abuse, especially sexual abuse by an adult towards a child, is reprehensible. It should not be tolerated.

Team 1640 has been a coed team since its inception. Mentors are both men and women. About half of our mentors are parents of students participating on the team. We do watch what happens during meetings and events.

I agree than an awareness of the laws is this area is entirely appropriate.

I am not sure that the use of the word “epidemic” is appropriate. The numbers you present are high, but I don’t know the context. I am not a teacher. I do work for a company in which sexual abuse is not tolerated. Nor does it exist as far as I am able to see. I may be very, very naïve, but sexual abuse seems to be exceptional in the professional world within which I travel and live.

I’ve put three daughters through FRC. I am sensitive to your concerns. I have not observed the problems.

3

I’ll echo both your setiments regarding the absolutely reprehensible nature of this type of offense. I have very close friends who went through this during their childhood. The damage and issues it can cause last forever.

Let me also temper that: common sense absolutely must be applied in reporting this type of incident. Far too often “zero tolerance” policies have unintended and serious negative consequences. “Zero tolerance” means “Zero sense”, and too often they are put in place in a misguided attempt to remove all liability.

Always think before you act.

4

I don’t mind if you don’t like the use of the word epidemic…usage of a specific word isn’t really the point of this thread. Perhaps it was a bit extreme, but the fact remains that the numbers stated are only the numbers that are officially reported. And, as far as I know, while those numbers are from 1997, it has not decreased at all.

What I think is important is being aware of how to keep everyone safe: mentors and students alike. And what to do if you are aware of a situation of sexual abuse. And what sexual abuse really is. It’s not always black and white.

I agree: common sense must be used in reporting stuff like this. Which is why a training session could help people understand when it is important to report something. It is also helpful to knowing how to protect ourselves, as mentors, from a situation that could be damaging for life.

In most churches (and all American Catholic churches now), if you are working with minors in any way you have to go through a training on sexual abuse. I believe the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts are working on implementing a similar program (if they haven’t already). FIRST is a similar situation: adults working with minors. Part of mentoring should be knowing what to do if this situation ever comes up.

I am offering to organize a training session on the topic of Sexual Abuse…I would like to open it to any FIRST mentors in the Michigan area (specifically Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties, though anyone else would be welcome).

Are there people interested in attending something like this? I realize that it’s a very depressing topic. But I also think that it’s important in order to know how to protect ourselves and our students.

5

May I ask where you got the above citation?

I took your post seriously enough to search for “Pediatric Annual” but could find no such journal.

I did find a brief on-line article by Dr Botash with the same quote (“It is estimated that…”), but there was no citation for the source of that estimate in that article.

Thank you.

**

6

Yep, I got it from a handout at the training that I had yesterday for my job. The training was done by Care House (Child Abuse and Neglect Council of Oakland County, Michigan). Here is a link to their website: http://www.carehouse.org/

Also, here is a link to part of their website that has more information.
http://carehouse.org/intervention/getinvolved.html

7

This appears to be the article: Examination for sexual abuse in prepubertal children: an update - PubMed

8

Thanks Joe.

@Carolyn: The journal is “Pediatric Annals” (not Annual).

IUPUI appears to have fulltext hardcopy and online.

**

9

Boy Scouts has offered Youth Protection Training for many years (as long as I can remember), and as of June every adult volunteer is required to take the course to register as a Boy Scout Leader. It covers the BSA’s Youth Protection policies, kinds of abuse, signs of abuse, how to respond to disclosure of abuse, and proper reporting procedures. It goes beyond sexual abuse and (in a reasonable manner and time frame) covers a variety of situations that, if handled poorly, could have a drastic negative impact on the organization.

An important note on youth protection is that it’s not only important to protect youth from possible harm, but also to protect adults from false accusations.

The training offered by the BSA doesn’t take long and I think it provides valuable information. I think FIRST would probably benefit from something similar but they do not appear to be set up in a way that would facilitate mass training opportunities. There is a lot of infrastructure that would need to be put in place.

~Allison

10

I was a boy scout leader when the training and standards were first coming into use. Although the adults on the team are not trained we do follow many of the Boy Scout guidelines. Other school rules also dovetail into the Boy Scout training. A simple list is this…

  1. No ‘one on one’, adult with student ever. Two adults required for any activity, more preferred. Ideal two adults and two students minimum.
  2. Adults may not give rides to students under any circumstances, even with parent permission.
  3. Any suspected warning flags of abuse must be reported to lead teacher for evaluation and further investigation.
  4. All adult leaders must go through annual background checks and submit to fingerprinting at start of mentoring.
  5. Each adult reads and signs a list of school imposed restrictions for mentors annually.
11

Every time I go to an event and I see those kids giving out free hugs I keep thinking FIRST is flirting with a sexual harassment lawsuit at every event. Sure it’s all in the name of fun but if a girl doesn’t want to be grabbed by some random guy then you cannot touch her. At all.
If her request goes ignored and she is upset enough about the whole thing she tells mommy and daddy who go out and get a man eating lawyer who sues the sponsor, the event and FIRST and everybody’s good time is ruined.
Maybe teams need to start thinking about schooling their kids about what it and what isn’t appropriate behavior at the competitions before somebody gets in big trouble.

12

These are great, and most likely most teams follow something similar to these guidelines, but I want to point out something about your #3. (bolding in the quote is mine):

Investigation by someone who is not officially allowed to investigate can be extremely detrimental if there is actual abuse happening. The only two questions allowed to be asked are, “Where did this happen?” and “When did this happen?” If any other questions are asked, they can be considered “Leading questions” which can result in most/all evidence in a case being thrown out, if anything should come to a trial situation.
NOW, this is obviously an extreme case, where you are dealing with actual abuse, but it’s important to know what to do if you are ever put in this position.

13

I have attended training workshops sponsored by “Friends for Youth, Inc” based in Redwood City CA. They have excellent presentations containing some very sobering statistics. Here is one presentation: http://www.mentoring.org/downloads/mentoring_1252.pdf

One of the quotes that sticks with me is from a cop who said 'I have investigated hundreds of predators cases involving thousands of victims. In almost every case there was a woman who said something like “I thought something wasn’t right.”

Friends of Youth has a paperback titled “SAFE” Screening Applicants for Effectiveness: Guidelines to Prevent Child Molestation in Mentoring and Youth-Serving Organizations" containing various tools and resources.

Other resources include a “Document Kit CD” with examples of documentation necessary to implement best practices into a mentoring program, as well as Webinairs.

A challenge for FIRST is that there is no one way a team is created and run. But there is enough literature out there to create some “best practices” examples to help teams and the adults involved do the right thing.

14

In this training/training proposal - is there anything written that helps to protect mentors from false accusations? That’s the flip side of this.

Jane

15

I would have to talk to the group/person who would lead the training (that I propose to organize) about focusing on adults working with teenagers, because the training that I attended recently was definitely based more for adults working with children between the ages of 1-12 (where most cases are NOT false accusations). Still, the training did have an emphasis on protecting yourself from false accusations. In all honesty, for most of us working with high school students, this would be the main concern. And the best thing to do is to avoid one-to-one time with students. If it can not be avoided, make sure that one-to-one time is in a public place where anyone can drop in at any time. Hopefully this is a practice already in place for all teams.

16

Carolyn,
That statement is meant to involve someone who has the training and skills. It is meant to bring someone else into the equation who is better prepared. If a student brought a complaint to me, I am not trained nor have I been given the responsibility to follow through. I must inform the teacher of the complaint I have received.

17

I don’t know about the laws in other jurisdictions, but in British Columbia teachers are legally obligated to report to the ministry of social services and/or police when they have reason to believe that a child has been abused (sexually or not).

As most (not all, but most) FRC teams are associated with high schools, presumably the districts/schools have guidlines for preventing abuse at school events. In BC we have strict policies on criminal record checks for volunteers and the districts have proactive policies regarding field trip supervision. We also have education for students, beginning in elementary school, on their rights and how to seek help if those rights are violated.

And those all help reduce abuse… but there are still incidents of children being abused by those in positions of responsibility. Very, very few, but still too many.

So as far as adult/student sexual abuse, unless there are jurisdictions or schools that are far behind the times in their policies, protocols and procedures, it would seem to me that an FRC session would be somewhat redundant.

But certainly it never hurts to remind people… adults and students alike… that there are boundaries that must not be crossed.

Jason

18

Not all teams have teachers helping out, and some teams only have one teacher helping out (like ours). The rest of the mentors are engineers, or mechanics, or some sort of professional outside of teaching. This is where I think the need is.

My opinion is that all mentors on the team should be trained in this, mostly to protect themselves, not just one adult on the team.

But, if there isn’t interest, then it’s not worth it to organize, so it really depends on what other’s opinions are.

19

It is where the team is formed. That is the connection. It isn’t necessarily that a teacher is helping out - it is the fact that the teacher is often the direct connection/link. Other teams are connected to organizations like Scouts and 4-H. That is their direct connection/link. If there are any teams that have formed without any links - then they would definitely want a handbook with set policies to protect the team.

If you are interested in pursuing this discussion, the NEMO forum might be a place of discussion among mentors. That’s just a thought.

Jane