Summary Of Child Sexual Abuse By Mintz

An article written by Mintz (2012) gives an accurate timeline of the history of undocumented child sexual abuse that dates back to the 1970s. It was noted in that same article that child sexual abuse was not taken seriously until 1974 when Congress passed the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act, whereby states were required to establish reporting requirements in suspected cases. Mintz (2012) states that “ During World War II, concerns about working mothers, latchkey children, and absent fathers sparked a public anxiety because in the 1970s, a sharp increase in divorce, single parenthood, and working mothers contributed to a heightened sensitivity to childhood sexual abuse”(pg. 1). On the other hand, he depicts that in the twentieth century sexual abuse of children was treated as an “anomaly and aberration perpetrated by moral monsters who were increasingly understood in psychological terms as dirty old men, sexual fiends, perverts, predators and pedophiles, or sexual psychopaths” (pg. 1).
According to Frontline documentary (1998), a four year old boy, who was a student of Kelly Michaels at the Wee Care Day Nursery, made a statement saying “That’s what my teacher does to me at nap time at school,” when a nurse put a thermometer in his rectum at the pediatrician clinic. After that statement was made a thorough criminal investigation was conducted on Kelly Michaels which led to Michaels being charged with 131 counts of sexual abuse against twenty children. She allegedly raped three to five year old with knives, spoons, and Lego blocks. She was later convicted of 115 counts of abuse, and in 1988 sentenced to forty-seven years in