HJAR Nov/Dec 2024

DIALOGUE 22 NOV / DEC 2024 I  HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF ARKANSAS So, I'm very passionate about it. When I was ridiculed, I thought about it for a moment. And the very day that I brought this bill, there was a gentleman who was caught that had molested … I forgot the age. I don't know if he was 12 or 14, but come to find out, he had raped a 5-year-old. And I was like, “That's it. I am so done.” I can go into a whole lot more things. I serve on the Child Death Review Panel. First of all, let me just say this: I've always had an affinity for children since I was a child growing up — just always concerned about what happened to kids. Being in this arena, serving as the administrator for a counselor who saw many children in state custody who had been abused, I have seen abuse on so many different levels. I've seen children pimped out by their parents. I was like, “We can't keep doing this.” I've watched this. I've been here almost two decades, not to include my years work- ing as an administrator, and we're doing the same thing. Many of the perpetrators are just getting a slap on the hand. They're not even being charged with a crime, are walk- ing away, and then inflicting that same trauma on another child. Enough. Editor This is a topic a lot of us don’t seek to understand. One of the things that surprised me when I was doing a little research is that the majority of molesters are not pedophiles — that they just don't have access to being able to gratify themselves with an adult, and the child happens to be available. A pedophile is interested in children only; they wouldn't be interested in an adult. What is happening in the vast majority of child sexual abuse in the U.S. is that the perpetrator just wants to sexually unleash their pent-up desires, and the child is then targeted because they are easy and accessible. That is why the majority of victims know and trust, or at least trusted, their abuser, and in many cases why the families did as well. They couldn’t imagine that level of perversion aimed at their child, but, 1 in 4 kids have. Sen. Barrow When we brought this bill back in 2022 as Senate Bill 252, there was a lot of pushback, even from people that I thought would be with us — folks against sexual crimes. I'm trying to remember if I heard that, but for me, it really does matter because this applies to everybody. I want it to apply for everybody that hurts children. Editor Just curious. Are you calling an adult someone who's 18 or older? Sen. Barrow Yes. I think I need to say that because that was a provision that I added to the bill that was not initially on the bill. Some of my colleagues asked, “What about someone who's 16, 17 who thinks a girl is older, they don't tell them, and then their whole life is messed up forever?”I say, “OK, we're going to see how this goes while I'm here because if I have too many cases like that, then we're going to take it down.” I'm trying to not make this a penalty for a young person. “You've made a mistake. This is what we're going to do to you.” My intent is for individuals who really prey on children, who prey on young people, and, like you said, whether it's a pedophile or someone who says, “This is what I want right now, and this is who's here,” it doesn't matter either way. You will get the same consequence. Editor Do you have any idea how many cases would have qualified for this to happen last year? Sen. Barrow No, I don't. Let me tell you what has happened, though, that really bothers me — how the cases are actually going. When an individual is picked up, they may be booked under indecent behavior with a juvenile. But by the time they go to court, it's changed to something else. That is something that I'm going to work on because I want to know how often that actually happens. What we've been told is sometimes it's hard to prove, so they try to get something that they’re able to prosecute somebody on. To some degree, I understand. The other part of me is [asking] howmuch investiga- tion, how much work is really being done to ensure that we charge them with the proper crime? That, to me, is a gray area in law enforcement. I kind of drilled them in one of the committees because I was very concerned with what they were giving us in terms of the data and saying, “We know it's happening, but the data doesn't line up with what we know.” Even with the “1 out of 4,” the data still doesn't line up. The arrest does not line up or the prosecution does not line up with those numbers. And we know that it's happening. “We don’t do enough frommy perspective ... When I see howwe try toprotect adults who have inflicted dire situations on children, that is what really forced me to move to something that some considered drastic measures.”