Just Perfect for Pedophiles Charitable Organizations That Work with Children and Their Duty to Screen Volunteers
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Just Perfect for Pedophiles? Charitable
Organizations That Work with Children and Their
Duty To Screen Volunteers
The volunteer organizations are just perfect for pedophiles, in
the sense that they are just the ideal situation if they can get to
a large number of kids, to kind of check out which ones might be
the easiest victims. l
The sexual abuse of children is one of our most pressing national
problems. In 1995, more than 350,000 incidents of child molestation were
reported in the United States,2 reflecting only a fraction of the assaults that
actually occurred.3 Before they have reached age eighteen, an estimated
one in three girls and one in seven boys will be sexually abused.4 Various
studies demonstrate the tenacity of child sex offenders, reporting a recidi-
vism rate as high as 74% and an average of 117 children molested during
the lifetime of one offender.5
1. Dr. Gene Abel, director of the Behavioral Medicine Institute of Atlanta and one of the nation's
leading experts on sex offenders, quoted in PATRICK BOYLE, SCOUT'S HONOR: SEXUAL ABUSE IN
AMERICA'S MOST TRUSTED INSTITrUTION 70 (1994).
2. See Jacqueline L. Salmon, Youth Groups' Worst Fear: The Helping Hand That Harms, WASH.
POST, Aug. 13, 1996, at CI (citing a report by the National Committee to Prevent Child Abuse).
3. Child sexual abuse is one of the most underreported crimes. Estimates show that as many as
90% of all child sex offenses are never reported to police. See Federal Recordkeeping and Sex
Offenders: Hearings Before the Subcomm. on Crime of the House Comm. on the Judiciary, 104th Cong.
44 (1996) (statement of Ernest E. Allen, President of the National Center for Missing & Exploited
Children) (citing an FBI law enforcement bulletin).
4. See Michele L. Earl-Hubbard, Comment, The Child Sex Offender Registration Laws: The
Punishment, Liberty Deprivation, and Unintended Results Associated with the Scarlet Letter Laws of
the 1990s, 90 Nw. U. L. REV. 788, 789 (1996) (citing ELLEN BASS & LAURA DAVIS, THE COURAGE
TO HEAL: A GUIDE FOR WOMEN SURVIVORS OF CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE 20 (1992), and Judith L.
Herman, Foreword to SANDRA BUTLER, CONSPIRACY OF SILENCE: THE TRAUMA OF INCEST at ix
(1978)).
5. See Earl-Hubbard, supra note 4, at 795 (citing results from a National Institute of Mental Health
study finding that 74% of imprisoned child molesters had a previous conviction for a similar offense);
Protecting Children in Daycare: Building a National Background Check System: Hearings on the
National Child Protection Act of 1991 Before the Senate Comm. on the Judiciary, 102d Cong. 5 (1991)
[hereinafter Senate Hearing] (statement of Sen. Thurmond) (citing a National Institute of Mental Health
study finding that a single molester abuses an average of 117 children). A more recent study of](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/tlr76&div=14&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Just Perfect for Pedophiles Charitable Organizations That Work with Children and Their Duty to Screen Volunteers
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