Democrat and Chronicle from Rochester, New York • Page 19

DEMOCRAT AND CHRONICLE DemocratandChronicle.com SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 2011 19A Abuse FROM PAGE 1A are fearful of making false accusations, or are unsure of their obligation. "I think that we fail miserably in mandated reporting," said Legislation would close what they see as a loophole in the state's mandated reporting statute, which unlike Pennsylvania's law excludes college coaches and administrators in the belief that colleges have little contact with children. "We have to to look for other types of explanations: The child must have been confused or misinterpreted the touch or the child has a vendetta. Those explanations are comforting to us as adults and help us to explain away these situations very easily." The key is better educating adults about found guilty of sex acts involving six of the boys in 2008 and ordered to prison for up to 39 years. One of the boys testified that he had told a teacher of the abuse, but that she hadn't reported it.

Karle, who prosecuted that case, said the boy's claim was investigated but no charges were filed. RESOURCES To learn more about the signs and symptoms of child sexual abuse, or for resources for victims of childhood sexual abuse: oc Darkness to Light: d2l.org oc National Center for Missing and Exploited Children: ncmec.org oc Bivona Child Advocacy Center: bivonacac.org versation about preventing and stopping child sexual abuse, Whittier said. TALKING IS GOOD "There really is some hope in this for kids: hope that we can band together like we did against polio, or AIDS, or breast cancer, and do a whole lot better with education and awareness," she said. "If there's a bright side to any of this, it's that people are now talking about child sexual abuse. It's men in locker rooms, on the sports channels, on the baseball diamonds.

People are saying, 'Hey, wait a minute. We need to talk about That talk is also happening on Rochester-area college campuses, where athletic directors said they would welcome an the signs and symptoms of child abuse and about their moral responsibility to report suspected abuse, Whittier said. "It's a misnomer that you have to know for sure that something happened," she said. "You just have to have a suspicion, and you call CPS or law enforce ment and they will look into it." Suk said there are numerous and anonymous ways people can report suspected abuse to authorities for investigation. Ward "The reality is if we don't take some personal steps to intervene and protect children, then we're really missing the boat when it comes to trying to end this type of victimization of kids," he said.

If there is a sliver of good that can come from the Penn State scandal, it is that what happened there is driving a national con- expanded reporting law. "It puts more teeth into the kinds of actions we should be taking," said Lou Spiotti executive director of intercollegiate athletes at Rochester Institute of Technology. "I don't think we can do too much to protect the welfare of children." Bob Ward, athletic director at St. John Fisher College, said he and other coaches would follow the law, if it's passed. But he said he believes coaches and educators generally don't need a law to make them do the right thing.

9 Monroe County Assistant District Attorney Kristina Karle, who prosecutes cases of child sexual abuse. "In my experience, there have been situations where there are Karie people who should have reported and didn't. People don't want to get involved. They don't want to make waves. But it is essential for mandated reporters to be the gatekeepers because we don't find out what happens to these kids without them." Indeed, the Rochester case is an example.

In that incident, the school district didn't call a child-abuse hotline, which would have triggered a criminal investigation, after hearing an allegation that elementary school teacher David Heil twice touched a 9-year-old boy under his clothing in 2000. To justify the failure, the district years later said it didn't have to call the hotline because Heil wasn't the boy's classroom teacher a defense a judge said amounted to "legal gymnastics." Heil wasn't charged until 2006, when the boy's mother, who had been assured by school administrators that Heil would never teach again, went to police after discovering he had merely been transferred to a different school. Heil was convicted of a felony of sexual abuse and sentenced to three years in prison, but his conviction was overturned on appeal. The case wasn't resolved until 10 years after the molestation, when Heil pleaded guilty. But he continued to maintain his innocence, insisting he wanted only to put the case behind him.

'JUDGE AND JURY' "Mandated reporting of abuse only works as well as the people it's reported to," said Dan Gleason, a retired Rochester Police Department investigator who is now a private investigator. "People sometimes try to be judge and jury when the victim discloses. If they don't believe it, they don't report it." After the Penn State scandal, but before Syracuse University associate basketball coach Bernie Fine was accused late last week of molesting two team ball boys in the 1980s and '90s, legislators in New York proposed adding even more mandated reporters. make it obvious to people that you need to report it," said state Assemblyman Mark Johns, R-Webster. "You see it, you report it." Police say they are in the early stages of the Syracuse University investigation, and so far there is not an obvious reporting issue in that case.

Assemblyman Joseph Morelle, D-Iron- dequoit, is drafting a bill that would expand the list of mandated reporters to recreation program workers and coaches of elementary and high school-age Whittier children. But a national educator urged caution. Although she supports tough reporting laws, she said they're less important than making sure those who are already mandated reporters receive proper training so they know what to do and how to do it. "Oftentimes, legislators have a reactionary response to something without taking a look at what's in place now and why it isn't working," said Amy Russell, deputy director of the National Child Protection Training Center at Winona State University in Winona, Minn. "One of the things we're working on is legislation to provide resources for programs to train people whether it's mandated reporters or child abuse investigators." Every state has a law that requires professionals to report all suspected cases of child abuse or maltreatment they encounter professionally.

Under New York's law, enacted in 1973, mandatory reporters include physicians, nurses, teachers and school officials, social workers, police officers, day care and social service workers, and therapists. According to New York law, it's a misdemeanor, punishable by up to one year in jail, for a mandated reporter to fail to report suspected abuse. But no one has been prosecuted locally for failing to report. A case where prosecution was possible occurred after the trial of Andre T. Johnson, a City School District sentry who was accused of sexually assaulting 10 boys who were students from 2000 through 2006.

Johnson was ij Do Not Open Until Thanksgiving Day! 7 What to Mary Whittier, executive director of the Bivona Child Advocacy Center in Rochester, said she supports expanding the list of mandatory reporters to col Spiotti leges. "I think it's absolutely necessary," said Whittier, whose nonprofit agency provides a one-stop venue for interviewing and treating children who have been sexually or physically abused. "And, in my personal opinion, every adult should be a mandated reporter. Certainly, professionals who deal with kids on every level should be mandated reporters." But she said simply passing a law requiring more people to report suspected child abuse isn't enough. "About 24 percent of mandated reporters already don't report," she said.

"Either they don't recognize the signs and symptoms or they simply need more education." STARK REALITY The reality of child sexual abuse is stark. According to the child advocacy group Darkness to Light, one of every four girls and one in six boys will be sexually abused before they turn 18; 20 percent of child sexual abuse victims are under the age of and 90 percent of all child victims of sexual abuse are abused by someone they know and trust. And most never report that they've been abused. The misperception that children are endangered more by strangers than by those they're close to only compounds the problem of underreporting, said Edward Suk, executive director of the National Center for Missing and Exploited ChildrenNew York Branch in Rochester. "It is very difficult for people to entertain the thought that a well-respected and trusted member of their community could be sexually or physically abusing a child," he said.

"Think about it. It's challenging for an adult to believe a doctor, or a lawyer, community leader, teacher, coach or professor might be committing that type of crime against a child and in general we try USING YOUR USE IT OR LOSE "My gut feeling is that fairly sane people would probably handle these things in appropriate ways 99.9 percent of the time." He worries that legislators could go overboard with new mandated reporting rules and ruin the good work being done by coaches and teachers. "At St. John Fisher, I'd feel badly if we had a rule that says we couldn't take a CYO basketball team into the locker room under the supervision of a coach or something like that. How far do you want to go down that road to where we become counterproductive and hurt the 99.9 percent of the coaches and educators who are trying to do a great job?" MZEIGLERDemocratandChronicle.com MCDERMOTeDemocratandChronkle.com Includes reporting by staff writers Leo Roth and Jill Terreri.

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