John Ringo's newest book Not That Kind of Good Guy has a very large sub-plot on the foster-care system in the United States. In the book, one of the characters quotes some astonishingly large statistics about sexual abuse rates that happen in the foster-care system. I won't quote the number, that is not the most important thing.
I thought I would dip into what the published literature says about the sexual abuse rate in foster care
Foster care is a long-running and relatively commonplace system in the US: however, in 2019 there were an estimated 400,000 children in foster care, leaving the system overwhelmed and at its peak capacity. Of those children, it is estimated that up to 40% of them had experienced some type of abuse within the system... The lasting effects of sexual abuse for children in foster care have critical implications for their futures, including heightened risk factors for teen pregnancy, drug use, and mental health disorders. Source
We investigated the 2010 year prevalence of child sexual abuse (CSA) in residential and foster care...248 per 1,000 (25%) adolescents reported having experienced CSA...We found that 3.5 per 1,000 (0.4%) children had been victims of CSA based on (professional's working in residential or foster care) reports. Source Presumably "year prevalence" is the rate for the previous 365 days
Factor in two additional items: If 2/3rds of the assaults are against girls and if the ratio of girls:boys is equal then the 40% estimate becomes 53% for the girls.
Additionally, consider that 80% of sexual criminal conduct is not reported by ADULT victims. Kids in foster care face the ultimate power inequality and are threatened with extremely dire consequences if they tell anyone, ever. If adolescents still in the foster-care system are reporting 25% victimization rate (even in supposedly confidential surveys) you can bet the rate is much, much higher. And if I read the "units" correctly, that was just for the previous year and those kids (12-through-17) have not aged-out.
Extrapolating, most girl foster kids are likely to be victimized multiple times in foster-care if they are not scooped up and adopted in the first few years. Likely half of the boys have similar experiences.
Yah, I know "BULLSHIT!!! I would have heard about it..."
OK, Warren, let me address that with a symmetry argument.
How many college coeds did your wife tell about your Erectile Dysfunction and Hemorrhoids? Zero? Well, of course it was zero. People don't talk about those kinds of things.
Being sexually assaulted is far more invasive and dehumanizing than needing a little-purple-pill or pooping Red Velvet cake batter. There is a lot of stuff that happens that doesn't get passed around in casual conversation.
So if the "professional's working in residential or foster care" aren't talking about it or reporting it (underestimating by at least a factor of 62 (Not 62%. 62X)) then what are the chances of you hearing about it when you dine with your golf buddies at Applebee's? Well, of course it was zero.
Not saying you’re wrong, Joe. But… life has been one non-stop moral panic after another for the last 20 years. And life is hard on foster kids. Many lose their innocence and become cynical, cunning and manipulative. I wouldn’t take any of those stats at face value until I saw how those studies were conducted. Often the people conducting those studies have axes of their own to grind.
ReplyDeleteThe people that decry these things are suspect too. They’ll rant and rail about stuff like this… but go quiet as church mice when boys in drag dance for crowds of gay men at the pride parades. They’ll ignore the moms that take their kids to drag queen story hour down at the public library.
I think half of America is just peachy with pedophiles- depending on who they are.
Main point being that Good Fiction depends on the reader being able to suspend disbelief and "get into the story".
DeleteThe claim by Ringo's narrative is tough to swallow until you look at peer-reviewed, published literature. After skimming through peer-reviewed, academic papers it is not too hard to accept.
I want to remind you that the gate-keepers for the academic papers are the same group of people who are very embarrassed when any foster kid gets sexually assaulted because it means "their profession" failed.
The gate keepers - IMO - are the peers. Those peers have all gathered round to review and approve all kinds of bad science. That’s not even how science works. If it did, the world today would be a climatic hellscape of flooded continents and Al Gore and Greta would rule over us! 😂
DeleteYour info and stats may be good as gold - all I’m saying is that until I see the nuts and bolts of how they were derived, I’ll withhold judgement. I trust you; but I do not trust social scientists, social engineers or anyone adjacent to them.
The second article isn’t from the United States.
ReplyDeleteThe first article is all estimates and surveys of professionals. I find no data on sample size of anything. The best hard reference in the article is that only 3.6% of investigations of CSA against a foster kid in New Jersey were allegations against a foster parent. Most cases are older kids or other peripheral adults.
They also state that 30% of kids in foster care are already victims going into the system.
These are the same types of studies that claimed rape culture and 60% of women were raped at least once in 4 years at college for decades.
If the rape statistics were ever near 60% nobody would send their daughters. Mothers and aunts would know you would know and a generation of frat boys would be killed.
But but but the extrapolation of professional surveys says so…..
The second article is from The Netherlands. So maybe the same as suburban New Jersey or Orange County, Ca.
DeleteTake as a whole, I assume the numbers would be worse in the US than Netherlands.
Page 4 says North Carolina reports 85% of those entering foster care have experienced trauma and 52% of that is sexual in nature. Which already accounts for 40% of kids in the system as being victims.
DeleteThe document is entirely made of taking reported values from dozens of other sources and cross correlating them with no regard to sample size or methodology.
I’m sorry but there is no hard data available showing 4/10 kids get molested in or out of foster care. This is the exact kind of “research” that concludes 60% of women will be raped by the time they are 25.
Not to be an asshole, but foster-care has the issue of frequent fliers: Kids who get returned to their biological parent who screws up again and returns to foster-care.
DeleteSo maybe the kid who "entered foster-care" was actually re-entering foster-care. Maybe the sexual trauma occurred when mama pimped little Susie because she was $10 short for a fix or maybe it happened the last time Susie was in foster-care.
It is a very broken system.
Predators go where the prey is. I'd expect pedophiles to flock to elementary education, child protective services, foster care, etc. OTOH, social workers have been known to coach children to make false claims of abuse.
ReplyDeleteThe numbers and facts are hard to grasp and impossible to confirm and verify. The only clear fact here is the terrible state of moral depravity this nation has descended into and which it accepts and politicizes and tries to institutionalize. If the Right can't stop this immediately we are done.---ken
ReplyDeleteI enjoy reading your blog every day, always something to learn. I have some personal experience in the topic covered today. Read "Ghosts of the Orphanage" by Christine Kenneally for some further insight. The last half of the book is where the seventeen people, adults and children, I knew personally in that time are mentioned. It took me years to get over what I experienced between 2 yo and 18 yo. It's been sixty years since the state gave me my walking papers. As the saying goes 'What doesn't kill you makes you tougher'.
ReplyDeleteYou be a diamond!
DeleteAndrew Vachss wrote extensive fiction on the subject many years ago.
ReplyDeleteThe longer I live, the more convinced I am we need capital punishment distributed swiftly.
It looks like he wrote a truckload of books. Can you mention one title that you thought was a well-crafted, engaging story that is relates to foster-care?
DeleteWhile I have no idea what the actual statistics are, I KNOW they are bad.
ReplyDeleteIn many states, the system for approving foster parents seems to be designed to get the worst possible foster parents; I know of cases where they intentionally weeded out good parents with stupid and conflicting requirements.
Jonathan
My wife and I have adopted three medical special needs children that were in foster care. The system is far from perfect. But what can replace it? Woody
ReplyDeleteThe Progressive movement is pushing to treat drugs as if it were a "victimless crime". About a third of those kids are in foster-care because of the parent being too drugged up to be responsible. Stop enabling druggies would be a good start.
DeleteI looked for statistics on how many kids originated in two-parent, married families. I couldn't find any. I suspect that they are underrepresented in the ranks of the foster-kids. Maybe change the tax code so married couples are not penalized. Ditto for means-tested anything.
That would be my two recommendations:
Stop enabling druggies
Stop punishing married couples
What can replace it?
DeleteStop rewarding women for evicting dads from their families. Enforce and incentivize intact two-parent families.
The safest place statistically for kids is with their biological fathers. The system itself ensures that this is the least likely outcome.
You and your wife are saints.
DeleteI worked for the state foster care system in Wayne county for over a quarter century, served on the state foster care advisory committee for years and have a couple of random thoughts.
ReplyDeleteandrew vachss, worked in the foster care and delinquency system and a number of his books damn the system. Its been over 20 years since I read his books so I cant specify which ones. His books depressed the hell out of me.
I saw very few kids being raised by both parents, even unmarried, come into the system. What you will find in most cases is a single mom, probably young, uneducated with mental health and drug problems and a poor support system.
While there are some folks who get involved with the foster care system to prey on kids most are at worst venal or greedy.
Residential facilities are different, kids are isolated and likely are in residential because they have “issues”, behavior or mental health. This is fertile ground for staff abuse and peer abuse.
Most kids in the system have issues that they bring into care after years of neglect. They can be difficult to care for, the idea that “ if you just love ‘em they’ll be ok” doesnt work a lot of the time.
Be mindful that typically, foster parents are unpaid volunteers who are partially reimbursed for expenses. This alone is worth a disertation.
This is just my personal observations and opinions about one
system.
A reasonable argument can be made that kids are better off in an orphanage than in foster care...
ReplyDeleteI wont disagree with you. About 30 years ago the philosophy about caring for children turned away from congregate(residential, group home, orphanages) to focus on foster homes then emphasis changed further to relative care. This change included delinquency as well as foster care kids in care for being neglected and abused. You’d be surprised at the screwed up kids living next door- delinquency will put a little murderer or rapist in a foster home in your neighborhood if a social worker convinces a judge its safe.
DeleteOnce again, you can't find 'hard' numbers, because nobody in the system 'wants' hard numbers out there. Period...
ReplyDeleteFostering is a huge risk. A coworker was well known for taking in the most difficult to place. The state asked him to take another hard to place male. "If you don't take him, he'll go to jail." Big mistake. A year later their farming community was plagued with never-before-seen crimes. The cops caught the perps, who ratted each other out. The foster child told the cops he was committing his crimes because the foster father was molesting him. The fat, ugly, man hating lesbians at the state's CPS declared war on the foster father. He lost his security clearance and was moved out of his job. He was saved because the governor and former governor knew of him and came to his rescue. Another couple in his same community, had a troubled daughter who got into drugs. She ran away from home, hooked up with a drug addicted illegal, and got pregnant. Her parents took her and her baby in, cutting off baby daddy's access to her welfare money. Illegal and drug addicted daddy convinced the daughter to tell the state that her dad was molesting her. Again, the state declared war on him, put the baby in foster care, where the baby was beaten to death. Then, our daughter had a new student put into her class. The young girl was obviously in need of counseling. The new student told a school counselor that her new foster father was molesting her. The state declared war, had him jailed, seriously damaged his reputation, cost him a lucrative government contract. A defense attorney discovered this child had a long record of making the same accusations, none of them that held up in court. But the damage was done. Off topic a bit: Another coworker's girlfriend's daughter told a teacher that her recently divorced mom's boyfriend was molesting her. The state declared war on him, called in the media, destroyed his life. A medical exam cast serious doubt on the young girl's story. Court appointed Psychologist did not do the DA any favors. Three years later the supposed victim told her mom that she made up the story, hoping her mom and dad would get back together again.
ReplyDeleteYears ago had a 17 year old client who didn't like her moms boyfriend/ husband and wanted to get him out of the house so she accused him of molesting her. She ended up brought into care and sent to a residential facility. She didnt think it was fair that she got removed, not him. She recanted her story so she could go home- but no one believed her, thought she was just trying to get out of the system.
DeleteIt is beneficial if we know how these systems and processes work (or fail). But I always come to the conclusion that we don't have good alternatives. There is no way to tailor this to each and every individual involved, many of whom are flawed, possibly irredeemably.
ReplyDelete