Tell kids the risk, FBI agent and abuse expert urges
Parents need to teach their children the dangers of sexual predators rather than encourage a culture of silence and shame, a visiting former FBI agent says.
Jim Clemente, 58, worked as a profiler for the law enforcement agency for 22 years, becoming an expert in child sexual victimisation, abduction and homicide.
He said to reduce rates of sexual crime against children – for which New Zealand is one of the worst countries in the OECD – people need to feel empowered to talk about it with their children.
‘‘Could you imagine a world in which you lived down a busy street and, in order to protect the kids from the dangers of getting hit by a car, you don’t tell them that it’s dangerous? Of course not.’’
‘‘You have to tell them ‘this is the risk … and I’m going to hold your hand and do it with you every time until you can do it on your own’,’’ he said.
‘‘Why don’t we do that with sex and sexual victimisation? It doesn’t help them to not know that ... the biggest danger is people they know, trust and love.’’
Clemente is in Christchurch this week to speak at the SouthSouth Institute on Sexual Violence Against Men and Boys conference at Ara Institute of Canterbury. He is one of about 30 speakers and events.
The conference brought together more than 130 male survivors of sexual abuse and aimed to create a national network of support services for them.
Ken Clearwater, of the Male Survivors of Sexual Abuse Trust, organised the conference – which follows others in Uganda and Cambodia.
Clemente spoke not just as a veteran FBI profiler, but someone affected by sexual abuse.
Before his time in the bureau, as a young New York City prosecutor he went after a man who molested him as a teen.
It stemmed from a phone call with his brother who told him ‘‘we should go after the guy who ran the camp’’ from their childhood.
‘‘I said ‘why?’ and he said ‘because I snuck into his office once and found three bags filled
''The biggest danger is people they know, trust and love."
Jim Clemente
with pictures of him molesting boys’,’’ Clemente said.
‘‘I said ‘I thought I was the only one’. I’d never told anyone up to that point.’’
Clemente went to the FBI and NYPD the following day. He would eventually go undercover and wear a wire to gather evidence.
After the sex offender was convicted and sentenced, Clemente was recruited.
Clemente later used his personal experiences to write a series of episodes about male sexual victimisation.
Clearwater said having Clemente at the conference – along with speakers including former All Black Norm Hewitt – showed what someone who had trauma in their childhood could achieve.
He hoped it would encourage sexual abuse victims to seek help.
‘‘As men, we think we’re tough and staunch and we’re not allowed to talk ... whereas it’s about encouraging young men to speak.
‘‘If you’re an All Black or an FBI agent, people look up to [you] and think ‘wow, they’ve achieved that’, and then you find out there’s actually trauma in their childhood.’’
Clemente said putting his attacker behind bars upset the balance of power perpetrators have over victims, which had stayed with him for years.
‘‘That power differential makes someone feel like they don’t know what to do, or how to get out of it ... and, many times, the victims are re-victimised over and over again.
‘‘The fact is, the more we talk about it, the less the offenders can get away with it.’’