I investigated child abuse in Iowa for decades. Kim Reynolds is wrong about the threats.
Gov. Kim Reynolds, Republican legislators, and their anti-LGBTQ+ supporters are protecting pedophiles and placing children at risk of sexual abuse by advocating and advancing their predator-protection agenda.
I was a child abuse investigator for the state of Iowa, primarily in Polk County, for 34 years. In over three decades of investigations conducted jointly with area law enforcement agencies, I never investigated a child sex abuse case perpetrated by a drag queen. Never, in over three decades, did I ever hear a child report during a forensic interview at the Regional Child Protection Center that he/she was assaulted in a bathroom by a drag queen or trans stranger. Never did I even read such an account when reviewing thousands of case histories over decades. Although, I heard many children’s accounts of being groomed by a sexual predator, not one child mentioned being groomed by a school library book.
Why? Because the overwhelming majority of child sexual abuse is perpetrated by male members of the child’s family (fathers, stepfathers, mothers’ paramours, uncles, grandfathers, siblings, cousins) or the family’s inner circle (pastors, youth leaders, coaches, babysitters, neighbors). I investigated hundreds of such cases.
The vast majority of child sexual abuse, like most violent crime assaults, is perpetrated by those who are close to the child/family and have easy access. These are the predators who are grooming children, not the author of a memoir or a book with a LBGTQ+ character.
Predators threaten children not to report sexual abuse. They tell them they will not be believed if they do. Are Republicans trying to make it less likely for a child reporting sexual abuse to be believed by legislating these lies?
Since Reynolds and legislators, book ban advocates, and don’t-say-gay propagandists initiated their assault on the LGBTQ+ community, I’ve taken note of news stories further documenting that most convicted child sex perpetrators are purportedly heterosexual, often married, men. Often they are youth pastors, family members, neighbors, health care professionals.
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These facts are available to Reynolds and legislators through crime, court, and Child Protective Services records. So why do they not cite this information? Why are they protecting sexual predators and pedophiles instead of Iowa children?
Iowans need to have factual information to protect children from predators. Children need to know how to identify their body parts with correct names, be it an elbow, a penis, or a vagina. They must be educated to identify and report unwanted touch. It is imperative that they are not misled by politicians to fear drag queens instead of the statistically more predatory members of our society, often in their own families.
This is not to suggest that women or trans persons are not or cannot be predators. Those who truly oppose child sexual victimization must prove it by abandoning the propaganda and demanding dissemination of factual information and education.
If this information upsets you — and it should — contact Governor Reynolds and her fellow propagandists and demand that they stop protecting pedophiles through their LGBTQ+-vilifying campaign.
Laura Hansen retired after more than three decades as a social worker with the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services/Child Protective Assessments Unit in Polk County. She resides in Des Moines.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: I investigated child abuse for decades. Kim Reynolds isn't helping.
