PANPHLETS
Kids Abusing Kids By DONNA CALLEA Staff Writer The names of the children and parents in this story have been changed to protect their privacy. But all are real people living in Volusia and Flagler counties. They have been interviewed at their homes or at The News-Journal. According to experts, their stories are typical of the little talked about but growing problem of child-on-child sexual abuse. Jason lives in a nice middle-class neighborhood in Volusia County where children play together after school, and the houses are decorated for Halloween. His bedroom looks like any 7-year-old's messy bedroom might look. There are toys, clothes and books on the floor, and there are shelves filled with characters and action figures from recent Disney movies. On the door is a big poster of a funny, animated bug. Only one thing seems at all unusual or out of place in Jason's room: In addition to a standard-issue lock, there's an imposing-looking deadbolt lock on his door. "I got two locks on my door," he explains on a recent afternoon. "It's so he can't get into my room," says Jason, a cute and personable second-grader who clings to his mother, Rebecca. Out of desperation, Rebecca and her husband had the dead bolt lock installed to protect Jason from his 15-year-old brother, J.L. When J.L. was about 11, Rebecca says, he began waking Jason up in the middle of the night. She discovered he was forcing his little brother, who was only 3 at the time, to perform oral sex on him. Rebecca says she did everything she could to try to get J.L. help. And for a while, the abuse stopped. Then it started again. Now "it's hard to get to sleep at night," says Jason. "It's hard to breathe." And it's very hard not to be afraid. In another part of the county, Elizabeth, Laurie and Carrie live right on a waterway. They're growing up in what looks to be an idyllic setting-the kind of place where Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn might feel right at home. But there's nothing idyllic about Elizabeth, Laurie and Carrie's childhood. At an unimaginably young age, each of the three little girls was cruelly robbed of her innocence by an adult male in their household. And for most of her life, the eldest-10-year-old Elizabeth-has been seeking retribution in terrifying ways. Her target, for the most part, has been her 8-year-old sister, Laurie, whom she's been physically, emotionally and sexually abusing for years. Recently, her mother discovered she's been sexually abusing 3-year-old Carrie as well. "It's hard to look at a child and think of them as being a perpetrator. It's even harder when it's your own child," says Lisa, the girls' mother. "You don't think of violence and abuse coming from them. It's shocking, but it is reality." Lisa's words are echoed by Beverly, a Flagler County mother whose 16-year-old son, Chris, has a lot in common with J.L. and Elizabeth. "There's got to be help for these children. There has to be," says Beverly, who is so distraught and frustrated in her efforts to get help, she has opted to come to a newspaper office, lay her soul bare and describe her family's unthinkable problem to a reporter. She's heard "through the grapevine" that a story about child-on-child sexual abuse is in the works. "I have tried every avenue. I am exhausted. I don't know where else to go," she says. Chris, whom she describes as handsome, charming and intelligent, has been hurting his younger siblings for as long as anyone can remember. Most recently, he started sexually abusing his 5-year-old sister. Although she loves him, Beverly doesn't want Chris to live in the same house with the rest of the family anymore. She's determined to protect her younger children. But she's been told that there's no place else for him to go. If he doesn't get help, "someday he'll be on the 6 o'clock news," she predicts. "He'll rape or kill somebody." He's already hurt her other children, but "whose child will he hurt someday in the future?" she asks. A growing problem There's nothing new about child-on-child sexual abuse. But "we've stuck our heads in the sand for probably thousands of years" about the problem, says Steve Blackledge, a licensed mental health counselor who works with young sex offenders at the Volusia/Flagler Threshold program in Daytona Beach. "The general public doesn't want to hear that kids are sexual." Now, however, it's becoming increasingly difficult to look the other way. This month, for example, the case of a 13-year-old alleged sex offender made the newspaper after the boy was arrested at New Smyrna Beach Middle School and charged with attacking his 7-year-old brother at the home of a relative. The younger boy sustained sexual injuries so severe he had to be treated at Bert-Fish Medical Center, where personnel notified the police. Numbers also are hard to ignore. During 1997-98, the last fiscal year for which figures are available, the Florida Abuse Hotline recorded 227 reports of child-on-child sexual abuse in Volusia and Flagler counties alone. Statewide, the number was 5,976. In 1996, 3,700 juveniles nationwide were arrested for forcible rape, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, including 2,000 who were 14 or younger. And locally, Julie Ozburn, juvenile division supervisor for the State Attorney's Office in Daytona Beach, reports that between January 1999 and September 1999, there were 51 cases of child sexual offenders referred to her office. About seven or eight of those children were 12 and under. "It's a little scary," she says. "Last year was a real bad year for very young sex offenders." The Volusia/Flagler Threshold program, which is funded by the state Department of Juvenile Justice and operated by the Brown Schools of Florida, treats adolescent sex offenders 12 through 18 who've been referred through the juvenile justice system. Currently, 12 boys, ages 13 to 16, attend a day treatment program there full time. Another eight youngsters are Threshold outpatients, according to Annette Hilbert, director of the program. "They all look like your next-door neighbor," says Hilbert. And "most of our kids," who come from a wide spectrum of cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds, "are not delinquents," aside from their sexual crimes. Meanwhile, another 30 juvenile sex offenders live at Three Springs Daytona, a prison-like treatment center on Indian Lake Road. Three Springs opened in July and was almost immediately filled to capacity, according to Jan Abee, manager of the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice for District 12, which encompasses all of Volusia and Flagler counties. Three Springs Daytona is one of four residential sex abuse treatment centers for adolescent sex offenders in Florida that are funded by the state. The others are in Miami, Pembroke Pines and Marianna. "There are waiting lists for all the programs," says Abee. She notes that "out of 1,500 kids" in Volusia and Flagler counties who have found their way into the juvenile justice system for various crimes, "there are at least 100 kids who've committed sex offenses." 'No respite from terror' There is likely an even larger number of sexually abusive children, who, for one reason or another, have not gone through the juvenile justice system. For the youngest of these offenders, there's the Children's Advocacy Center of Volusia & Flagler (formerly I-CARE). A nonprofit United Way agency, the Children's Advocacy Center is dedicated to preventing and treating all types of child abuse through a variety of direct services. "Our agency's mission is to break the cycle of child abuse," says Darlene Stewart, director of counseling at the center. Which is why specialized counseling services are made available to child sex offenders as well as to the child victims of sexual abuse. "About a tenth of our caseload is child-on-child," says Stewart. "We have 20 or so open cases at any given time," with the young abusers ranging in age from 11 to as young as 3 years old. "These are the kids that are referred to counseling and come," says Stewart. "There are twice as many who are referred and their parents don't bring them." The Children's Advocacy Center, which has been in existence here since 1977, always has dealt with some cases of child-on-child sexual abuse, according to Stewart. But "the numbers are increasing significantly and have been over the past few years." And "we're seeing very serious offenses." Many of these cases involve children who've sexually abused their siblings. And one of the biggest problems with this kind of child-on-child sex abuse is that, all too often, the victim must live, on a continuing basis, with his or her attacker. "There are no placements in the community for these child offenders," says Stewart, "so most live with their victims." As a result, "these victims have no respite from the terror ..." It also can be a nightmare for parents like Rebecca, Lisa and Beverly, who say they desperately want to make things better for their children, but are faced with gut-wrenching, seemingly unsolvable dilemmas. "When an offender and a victim live in the same home, it's a double nightmare," says Stewart. "You've got the hawk living in the chicken coop." No crime, no help Even though their children present a danger not only to their siblings but to other children as well, Rebecca, Lisa and Beverly say they've been stymied for years in their attempts to get the kind of intensive help they feel J.L., Elizabeth and Chris desperately need. Rebecca says she first realized something was seriously wrong with J.L. when he was 8 years old and was caught sexually abusing her friend's children, ages 3 and 5. She began taking him to a counselor and thought he was getting better. Then, when he was 11, he was caught sexually attacking his brother, Jason. "I freaked out," says Rebecca, who took him for more counseling. But when he was caught doing it again two years ago, "I called the cops." Law enforcement, however, declined to follow through on charges against the boy because he was getting treatment, according to his mother. And instead of being handled by the Department of Juvenile Justice, J.L.'s case was handled by the Department of Children and Families' Alcohol, Drug and Mental Health (ADM) unit. That, Rebecca says, was a mistake because he hasn't gotten the help he needs - the kind of residential treatment he would have been more likely to receive if he had gone through the juvenile justice system. So now she's trying to get him criminally charged. Chris's mother also says it would have been better for her son, and especially for her younger children, if the Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) rather than the Department of Children and Families (DCF) had been involved from the start. And even the mother of 10-year-old Elizabeth is now trying, out of desperation, to get her daughter criminally charged, although residential treatment facilities of any kind are practically nonexistent for sexually reactive girls. Local experts agree that parents do have a better chance of getting residential treatment for their sexually abusive children, past a certain age, if the kids are charged with the crimes they've committed. If it's a criminal offense and "evidence exists," says Peter Begalla, the Child Resource Team facilitator for DCF's ADM unit, "they are better off" going through the Department of Juvenile Justice. For one thing, if a child is charged, one of the first steps would be a "psycho-sexual assessment" through the Brown Schools' Threshold program, says Ozburn of the State Attorney's Office. "But we don't do an assessment unless there's a police report." Moreover, "if we thought a child was in need of treatment we would not drop the case," she says, unless the child was already receiving treatment outside the juvenile justice system. Residential treatment for sexually abusive children outside of the juvenile justice system, however, "is very expensive and not readily available locally," Ozburn notes. 'A monster within' Although there are waiting lists for residential treatment programs within the juvenile justice system, those children who go through DJJ don't wait at home, according to Jan Abee, District 12 manager. They wait in detention. That, say Rebecca and Beverly, would be far better than having to deal with their boys at home. Both J.L. and Chris, according to their mothers, need to be supervised every minute. But that's extremely hard to do. J.L., for example, who has been deemed too dangerous to attend public school, is schooled at home by a Volusia County teacher. But during much of the day, while his parents are at work and Jason is at school or at a baby sitter's, J.L. is home alone in a neighborhood full of children. Lisa says she's also afraid of what Elizabeth may do to other children. When she was in a foster home for a time, she sexually attacked other foster children, her mother says. And while staying with relatives, the little girl made blatant sexual overtures to boys who were much older. She's also demonstrated that she's capable of doing physical as well as sexual harm to her siblings. But Elizabeth-who's an attractive and highly intelligent girl-also knows how to manipulate adults, according to her mother. To others she seems like "a sweet 10-year-old girl," says Lisa. "She's a perfect student ... A straight-A student. Last summer she participated in a Stetson (University) program for gifted children. "But there's a monster hiding within her," her mother says. Her sisters are terrified of her. And "in public school she's around hundreds of other people's innocent kids every day." Lisa, in fact, says she felt compelled to notify the principal at Elizabeth's elementary school about her problem, although she doesn't know what the school plans to do about it. As for counseling, Lisa says, it's not enough to fix the problem. Her younger daughters, she says, are getting counseling at the Children's Advocacy Center, but they are still forced to live with their attacker, who has to be watched constantly. Meanwhile, Elizabeth - whose case, like J.L.'s and Chris', has been handled through the Department of Children and Families - has had a psychosexual evaluation by a therapist who says she needs to be put in a facility, although there isn't any place for her to go. He is now treating her on a regular basis. "But seeing a psychologist once a week for an hour is not going to help her," says Elizabeth's mother. "She needs to be in a facility where they'll watch her 24 hours a day, seven days a week." "She's capable of physically, mentally and sexually abusing other children. She's capable of killing ...," says Lisa. "She scares me to death."
