On Thu, 24 Feb 2000 01:26:22 -0500, Erin Clarke <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said:
>Hmmmm, did the part where I mentioned 7 years of shelter work and
>more of socio-political activism somehow deregister as a valid source
>of "evidence"?
No, in fact it motivated my reply.
>Let's see, I worked in one shelter in one major urban centre, where I
>counselled, advocated and made referrals for something in the
>vicinity of a few thousand women from all manner of circumstances
>that lead to their need for shelter. I have worked with other
>shelters, committees and advocacy groups, conducted research,
>collected and compiled information, read numerous reports produced by
>government, medical, community, institutional groups and which
>included ample statistical data. There are thousands of women working
>in thousands of shelters (not to mention the thousands more living in
>them) all over the world, carrying out this work. The accumulated
>experience, information and knowledge can not be ignored or so easily
>refuted.
I quite clearly said that I did not believe that abuse does not occur.
What I was trying to say (and probably badly) is that good evidence of
the relative incidence of abuse by sex, especially in children, is
lacking: we really don't know which sex gets more of it. I'm a
trained child advocate and have served as a court-appointed guardian
ad litem for three children in two cases. I am well aware that sexual
abuse takes place (fortunately, not in either of my cases, although it
had taken place in one of the cases in our office while I was there).
It is the considered experience of the professionals in the office
where I worked (specifically, an attorney with a dozen years of
experience in child advocacy and a clinical social worker with at
least ten years experience working with neglected and abused children)
that crisis centers have severely biased points of view on abuse.
Crisis centers are without a doubt valuable services, but not valuable
sources of unbiased statistics: their clientele is not representative
of the population, and statistics within their clientele almost
certainly do not generalize to the population as a whole.
Of course, I said all of this in my prior message (although in not as
much detail), so I imagine it will be ignored this time as well.
Kelly
************
[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.linuxchix.org
