Climate Change and Child Sexual Abuse

In recent years I've been focusing more on the environment and child sexual abuse. This week while reading Betrayal: The Crisis in the Catholic Church, a book by the Boston Globe about its Spotlight investigation on child sexual abuse, I've been reminded more strongly that central to both problems are outrageous failures to act on obvious evidence that simple steps must be taken. Not acting as soon as possible made matters much worse. This past December I felt similar shock and even anger about this while reading a good summary of climate change published by Oxford University Press--Climate Change: What Everyone Needs to Know, by Joseph Romm. It was the 2014 first edition, so his discussion about how climate change increases the likelihood of wildfires in California exasperated me.

Climate change and my own health have combined to motivate me since I was an undergrad to walk to reach places. I've nearly always lived within less than a twenty-minute walk of at least one grocery store. In this century, in places like Gettysburg, Madison, and Baltimore, it's usually been at least two grocery stores, which is great for taking advantage of sales.

My concern about child sexual abuse has increased while thinking about what to cover in criminology and intro sociology classes I teach, after learning about Adverse Childhood Experiences research, and when people have confided to me about this happening to them. Many of my students have told me that they'd learned nothing or very little about this before. I wish that I'd known years earlier about the extent and harms of child sexual abuse. Another thing I have been doing is contacting legislators and the news media to get more done. A couple of examples are to enact Erin's Law to teach about sex abuse prevention K though 12 and for public radio talk programs to do shows on the topic. I'd thought that sending letters glued into greeting cards would more likely get attention and action, but I'm very disappointed that I got almost no response. Because of the renewed attention to child sexual abuse in recent months, I'm trying again. I suppose people who were abused would feel a lot worse if they got no response.