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Officials: 1st- And 2nd-grade Boys Sexually Assau
Topic Started: May 14 2006, 06:27 PM (287 Views)
abuturab82
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Officials: 1st- and 2nd-grade boys sexually assault girl

Wednesday, May 10, 2006; Posted: 2:18 p.m. EDT (18:18 GMT)


ST. LOUIS, Missouri (AP) -- Twelve boys in the first and second grade at a St. Louis elementary school are accused of sexually assaulting a second-grade girl during recess, authorities said Tuesday.

One teacher who was supposed to be supervising the recess has been fired, and another suspended with pay, school superintendent Creg Williams said.

Ten of the boys, ages 6 to 8, were suspended for the rest of the school year, and the other two received five-day, in-school suspensions. (Watch to see the scene and what the school plans for alleged attackers -- 2:44)

No names were released.

The girl, who is 8, was unharmed physically but will not return for the rest of the school year. "We don't know what type of emotional scars it will have on the young lady," Williams said.

The incident happened Friday at Columbia Accelerated Community Educational Center, a school with 400 students in pre-kindergarten through sixth grade on the city's north side.

During the recess shortly after lunch, a student alerted a teacher when he saw several boys huddled around the girl who was on the ground.

Police turned the investigation over to juvenile authorities. A court official said the boys could face misdemeanor counts of sexual misconduct and assault.

Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/05/10/gradescho...t.ap/index.html
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abuturab82
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Sex assaults by children set off experts’ alarms
By RICK MONTGOMERY and ERIC ADLER
The Kansas City Star

Bewildered by a possible sexual assault of a second-grader by a dozen boys on a school playground in St. Louis, school superintendent Creg Williams on Wednesday asked:

“How is it this kind of thing is even in the minds of young men?”

Much less boys ages 6 to 8.

The alleged assault occurred during recess Friday at Columbia Elementary School. The assault ended when teachers pulled the girl from a huddle of boys.

According to the girl’s great aunt and others who spoke to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the boys pawed at her underpants while touching and kissing her.

As word spread nationwide about the incident, many people were shocked to hear of young children sexually abusing other children, but therapists were not.

They even have a term: sexually reactive behavior.

“The fact that a group of kids would get together and sexually assault another child — that is alarming, but it is happening more,” said Joseph Beck, director of therapy services at Spofford Home, a Kansas City nonprofit that treats young children with severe emotional problems.

Reporting methods vary from school to school, making the frequency of sexually reactive behavior difficult to track.

“I think what’s unusual,” said Beck, “is the fact it’s becoming more and more prevalent and that (such assaults are) something being done publicly.”

Teachers are hardly blind to the problem. In Kansas City, for example, at least one grade school recently ruled that pupils could no longer go to restrooms unattended after some children were discovered in bathrooms acting out sexually and, in some cases, forcibly.

In decades past, social workers would recognize such behavior as a red flag of similar abuse in the home: Typically, youngsters committing sexual offenses were found to be sexual victims, as well.

But experts now worry about some children “acting out” because of the proliferation of sexuality on the Internet and in graphic video games, on cable TV and in their parents’ stash of explicit DVDs.

“Things are getting crazy. How’s that for a psychological assessment?” said Paul Tamisiea, director of treatment and intervention services at the Metropolitan Organization to Counter Sexual Assault in Kansas City.

“I’ve been with MOCSA for 17 years. When I first started out, the natural, logical assumption was that kids who acted out sexually were likely to have been victims themselves … but you can’t make that blanket assumption anymore. We’ve dealt with kids acting out and saying they saw it in Dad’s porn.”

Ken Trump, an Ohio-based safety consultant for schools nationwide, said: “I’m not shocked at all. It’s occurring more and more in schools, and the children get younger and younger.”

At Columbia Elementary in St. Louis, 10 of the 12 boys involved in the recess incident have been suspended for the rest of the school year, district officials said. The other two landed in-school suspensions. At least one teacher was fired and another suspended, for a lack of attentiveness.

The 8-year-old victim is undergoing counseling and won’t be returning to class this school year. Superintendent Williams said she suffered “emotional scars” but is physically sound.

St. Louis Family Court Assistant Administrator Kathryn Herman said she was expecting to receive referrals on all 12 boys within a week on misdemeanor charges of first-degree sexual misconduct and third-degree assault.

A cursory check of the boys’ backgrounds found at least one who had been previously referred to the family court as an alleged victim of sexual abuse, Herman said.

Commonly the children who molest other children or who act out in inappropriate sexual ways have endured some type of trauma. It’s not always sexual abuse, and when it is, it’s not always at the hands of an adult.

Margaret Comford, director of clinical services at The Children’s Place, a Kansas City nonprofit working with traumatized children, said that many of the children they see who have been sexually abused arrive at The Children’s Place having sexually acted out on another child.

“Young children, they act out, to make sense of their world,” she said. “That is something that has been done to them. It is very confusing. They can’t sit down and talk about it, so they re-enact it.”

Comford said that children suffering post-traumatic stress disorder, also known as PTSD, often re-enact and re-experience the abuse as a way to deal with it. And sexual abuse of other children can be a way to wrest power and control when life seems uncontrollable.

“I don’t think people want to acknowledge that kids are sexual at all, or that this problem exists to the extent it does,” Comford said. “We have difficulty explaining to parents normal sexual development. People don’t want to hear this.”

About four years ago, sexual reactive behavior in children became a large enough issue regionally that the Spofford Home began a new program known as STAR, for Specialized Treatment of Sexually Reactive Children.

“We were seeing kids who would come to us for other reasons,” said Spofford’s Beck. “But they would come to us and be exposing themselves inappropriately. It needed to be dug into deeper.”

The good news, Comford said, is that children who are sexually abused and those who do the abusing can be helped through education and therapy.

“The other piece of the story is hope,” Comford said. “There are treatments available.”

In Washington state, the Sexually Reactive Youth Program of Lutheran Community Services has been helping children and their families for several years. “We work with kids as young as 3 and 4,” said program supervisor Amanda Briggs.

“If we’re able to start working with them when they’re really young, we have good success at changing their behavior.”

Others recommend that parents –– besides talking to their children about good touching and bad touching –– monitor their time on the Internet, in front of the TV and at the video game console. The more exposure to sexual violence, many believe, the less apt children are to view it as abnormal.

“The explosion of access to technology that makes sexual aggression seem acceptable is what makes parents feel so overwhelmed,” said David Walsh, president of the National Institute on Media and the Family.

“They used to just worry about what their kids could see on TV. Now I’m hearing: ‘My 10-year-old son downloaded pornography on his cell phone. How’s that possible?’ ”
Dealing with inappropriate behavior

Experts say signs of sexually reactive behavior include:

■ Sexual molestation of other children

■ Mutual advanced sexual

activity with other children

■ Excessive, age-inappropriate sexual play with other children

■ Excessive masturbation, sexual thoughts, gestures

■ Public masturbation or

exposure

■ Use of force, bribery or

coercion to engage in sex play with friends

■ Oversexualization in drawings, paintings, play with dolls
Resources

■ Spofford Home: (816) 508-3400

■ The Children’s Place: (816) 363-1898

■ The National Child Traumatic Stress Network: (310) 235-2633; (919) 682-1552

■ Metropolitan Organization to Counter Sexual Assault in Kansas City: (816) 931-4527, www.mocsa.org .

http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/14549589.htm
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