PBS高端访谈:宾夕法尼亚州立大学丑闻后的教训

 　　JEFFREY BROWN: And—and we return to the Penn State story with a wider perspective on what's happened and what should be taken from it.

　　For that, we're joined by Teresa Huizar, executive director of the National Children's Alliance, which works with groups around the country to provide services for victims of child abuse, Elizabeth Letourneau, a researcher and professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and Scott Berkowitz, founder¹ and president of the Rape², Abuse and Incest National Network, or RAINN, the nation's largest anti-sexual violence organization.

　　Teresa Huizar, start with you. When you think about lessons learned here, part of this is clearly an institutional failing. What—what—you look at Penn State, what do you see that jibes³ with what you know of other cases?

　　TERESA HUIZAR, Executive Director, National Children's Alliance: I think one of the lessons learned here is that for any child-serving organization or any organization that has children on campus at all, it's entirely⁴ possible for a perpetrator, an offender⁵, to really use that organization as a way to identify potential victims and to groom⁶ those victims over time.

　　And I think that in the absence of appropriate child protection policies and procedures, that's more likely to happen than not. And so I hope that one of the lessons learned from this is the implementation⁷ of commonsense⁸ child protection policies and procedures.

　　JEFFREY BROWN: All right, let me come back to some of those.

　　But, Elizabeth Letourneau, I want to ask you, what keeps people from reporting cases? What do we know? We just heard in our report about the janitors⁹ in that case and their fear. And we heard about some of the officials. What do we know about what keeps people from reporting—or reporting in some instances?

　　ELIZABETH LETOURNEAU, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health: I think what this case really shows is that it still is very difficult for people to respond appropriately to child sexual abuse when the offender is someone they know well, maybe in a position of power, but also people who are in our social circles, in our families, people who we know, like, maybe love.

　　We have done a lot in this country over the last 20 years to really target stranger danger, but the reality is that few sex offenders¹⁰ are strangers to their victims. Most offenders are well known to their victims and well known to their victims' parents and other people around them.

　　So I think what we really need to take from this is to start looking towards primary prevention of child sexual abuse, to look at how we can take a public health approach to child sexual abuse and really emphasize primary prevention and recognize that offenders are very different from one another. They're not all the same. And they don't all fit the monster profile that I think many people have of sex offenders.

　　JEFFREY BROWN: Scott Berkowitz, what would you add to that?

　　SCOTT BERKOWITZ, Founder and President, Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network: Well, you know, I think that the report today outlined failings that went way beyond the individual that we knew about.

　　I think that this is going to put fear into a lot of university presidents and those running schools across the country, because it put them on notice that they need to take a really close look at the way they do things and change things up, or they risk devastation¹¹.

　　JEFFREY BROWN: What about my question about reporting, the rules of reporting, who is supposed to report and in what cases? I mean, there's a—many things can happen short of seeing something—as in this case, seeing terrible abuses in a locker¹² room. But many things can happen short of that.

　　SCOTT BERKOWITZ: That's right.

　　The laws are different in every state. They fall under a couple of categories. In some states, anyone who has a reasonable suspicion of abuse is supposed to report to the authorities. But in many other states, it's only required to report if they're a professional, if they're a caregiver, a doctor, teacher, or someone who is in a profession like that.

　　But regardless of your state law, you don't really need to know what your state's law is because common sense should rule here. If you have a real suspicion of abuse or in a case like this, where this went way beyond suspicion, this is people actually witnessing criminal acts, that should be enough to get you on the phone.

　　JEFFREY BROWN: Well, Teresa Huizar, common sense, you might think, and yet it doesn't hold. It doesn't...

　　TERESA HUIZAR: Well, I think two things, one that we—all adults should have a sense of moral responsibility to report abuse and suspected abuse.

　　And that's something that I think—the outrage¹³ around this case, I think it has been a watershed¹⁴ moment for this country in terms of recognizing that all adults have this moral responsibility to do that, irrespective of the law.

　　I think the other piece of this, though, is that universities and other organizations really do have to have appropriate policies and procedures limiting or eliminating one adult/one child contact, because that's really the context in which most child sexual abuse is occurring.

　　And so—and any of those kinds of contacts have to be observable and interruptible. And in this case, the sort of testimony¹⁵ we heard in the trial itself and what came out of this report today, there were just many instances where adult—one adult and one child were alone together in just absolutely inappropriate situations. All of those were preventable.

　　JEFFREY BROWN: So, this is what you were talking about earlier about what institutions could do and should do.

　　TERESA HUIZAR: Absolutely, absolutely.

　　JEFFREY BROWN: Elizabeth Letourneau, what would you add to that? What do you want to see? You were talking about the need to—for prevention. What do you want to see institutions do in particular?

　　ELIZABETH LETOURNEAU: Well, what I want to see a nation do is really put the resources into testing interventions¹⁶.

　　So we have a lot of interventions that sound on the face of them very defensible, very commonsense, but we have done nothing to test interventions to prevent sexual abuse. We have got to start putting more money into that.

　　Right now, we focus all of our energy, all of our resources on known offenders. And if we had done things right back in 1998, if Penn State had done the right thing, they would have prevented 13 years of sex offending, but they wouldn't have prevented that first offense¹⁷.

　　And so we have got to put science, resources, money into the effort of identifying best practices for institutions, for youth-serving institutions, schools, youth-hosting institutions and for parents to keep their children as safe as possible.

　　JEFFREY BROWN: Scott Berkowitz, one of the interesting aspects of this is that while we focus on these very high-profile cases, I know there are some studies that suggest that the number of cases in the U.S. has actually been declining.

　　I gather there's some debate about how you count these things, but it struck me as interesting. Is that true? Or does it tell us anything about where we're at?

　　SCOTT BERKOWITZ: It is true.

　　All the data suggests that child sexual abuse and sexual abuse of—sexual assault of adults has dropped significantly over the last 15 years or so. But there's still a sexual assault in this country every two minutes. So we have got a long way to go before we fix the problem.

　　JEFFREY BROWN: Does that suggest, though, that this awareness¹⁸ that we're all talking about is getting out there? Or what accounts for the drop? Do we know?

　　SCOTT BERKOWITZ: I think that the—I think that people are far more aware of it.

　　I think that one of the best things that came out of this case was seeing the almost universal revulsion. The way the media handled it, I think they handled it very responsibly overall, and the way the public reacted almost universally. So I think that there's a much better understanding now than there was a year ago of how serious a crime this is.

　　JEFFREY BROWN: You're agreeing with that?

　　(CROSSTALK)TERESA HUIZAR: Absolutely.

　　Over the past 30 years, there have been many interventions. And I think it's something that we should understand that those had had some effect, which means that more resources should go to interventions that are demonstrated effective. And I think the other thing is that this community awareness and this lack of tolerance¹⁹ in the public for child sexual abuse is all a positive thing.

　　It's simply a shame that it has to come on the heels of these tragic²⁰ cases, of course. And, as you pointed²¹ out, there's much work yet to be done.

　　JEFFREY BROWN: And, Elizabeth Letourneau, just briefly²² with you at the end here, we have mentioned laws. It sounds to me like all three of you are suggesting it's not really so much about laws at this point, even though the laws are there.

　　ELIZABETH LETOURNEAU: Yes, I think we have done everything we can with laws that really target stranger danger. And we have done that effectively.

　　We have had a reduction for 20 years in child sexual assault rapes²³. But that reduction has plateaued. And I think it's because we have gone as far as we can with the criminal justice system. We have got to start putting other resources into a broader public health approach and again, like I said, really focusing on primary prevention if we want to keep those rates going down.

　　JEFFREY BROWN: All right, Elizabeth Letourneau, Scott Berkowitz, Teresa Huizar, thank you all very much.

　　TERESA HUIZAR: Thank you.

　　SCOTT BERKOWITZ: Thank you.

　　ELIZABETH LETOURNEAU: You're welcome.

1 Founder   

n.创始者，缔造者

参考例句：

• He was extolled as the founder of their Florentine school.他被称颂为佛罗伦萨画派的鼻祖。
• According to the old tradition,Romulus was the founder of Rome.按照古老的传说，罗穆卢斯是古罗马的建国者。

2 rape   

n.抢夺，掠夺，强奸；vt.掠夺，抢夺，强奸

参考例句：

• The rape of the countryside had a profound ravage on them.对乡村的掠夺给他们造成严重创伤。
• He was brought to court and charged with rape.他被带到法庭并被指控犯有强奸罪。

3 jibes   

n.与…一致( jibe的名词复数 )；（与…）相符；相匹配v.与…一致( jibe的第三人称单数 )；（与…）相符；相匹配

参考例句：

• He made several cheap jibes at his opponent during the interview. 在采访中他好几次对他的对手粗俗地加以嘲讽。
• The report jibes with the facts. 报告与事实相符。 来自辞典例句

4 entirely   

ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地

参考例句：

• The fire was entirely caused by their neglect of duty. 那场火灾完全是由于他们失职而引起的。
• His life was entirely given up to the educational work. 他的一生统统献给了教育工作。

5 offender   

n.冒犯者，违反者，犯罪者

参考例句：

• They all sued out a pardon for an offender.他们请求法院赦免一名罪犯。
• The authorities often know that sex offenders will attack again when they are released.当局一般都知道性犯罪者在获释后往往会再次犯案。

6 groom   

vt.给（马、狗等）梳毛，照料，使...整洁

参考例句：

• His father was a groom.他父亲曾是个马夫。
• George was already being groomed for the top job.为承担这份高级工作，乔治已在接受专门的培训。

7 implementation   

n.实施，贯彻

参考例句：

• Implementation of the program is now well underway.这一项目的实施现在行情看好。

8 commonsense   

adj.有常识的；明白事理的；注重实际的

参考例句：

• It is commonsense to carry an umbrella in this weather.这种天气带把伞是很自然的。
• These results are no more than a vindication of commonsense analysis.这些结果只不过是按常理分析得出的事实。

9 janitors   

n.看门人( janitor的名词复数 )；看管房屋的人；锅炉工

参考例句：

• The janitors were always kicking us out. 守卫总是将～踢出去。 来自互联网
• My aim is to be one of the best janitors in the world. 我的目标是要成为全世界最好的守门人。 来自互联网

10 offenders   

n.冒犯者( offender的名词复数 )；犯规者；罪犯；妨害…的人（或事物）

参考例句：

• Long prison sentences can be a very effective deterrent for offenders. 判处长期徒刑可对违法者起到强有力的威慑作用。
• Purposeful work is an important part of the regime for young offenders. 使从事有意义的劳动是管理少年犯的重要方法。

11 devastation   

n.毁坏；荒废；极度震惊或悲伤

参考例句：

• The bomb caused widespread devastation. 炸弹造成大面积破坏。
• There was devastation on every side. 到处都是破坏的创伤。 来自《简明英汉词典》

12 locker   

n.更衣箱，储物柜，冷藏室，上锁的人

参考例句：

• At the swimming pool I put my clothes in a locker.在游泳池我把衣服锁在小柜里。
• He moved into the locker room and began to slip out of his scrub suit.他走进更衣室把手术服脱下来。

13 outrage   

n.暴行，侮辱，愤怒；vt.凌辱，激怒

参考例句：

• When he heard the news he reacted with a sense of outrage.他得悉此事时义愤填膺。
• We should never forget the outrage committed by the Japanese invaders.我们永远都不应该忘记日本侵略者犯下的暴行。

14 watershed   

n.转折点，分水岭，分界线

参考例句：

• Our marriage was at a watershed.我们的婚姻到了一个转折关头。
• It forms the watershed between the two rivers.它成了两条河流的分水岭。

15 testimony   

n.证词；见证，证明

参考例句：

• The testimony given by him is dubious.他所作的证据是可疑的。
• He was called in to bear testimony to what the police officer said.他被传入为警官所说的话作证。

16 interventions   

n.介入，干涉，干预( intervention的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Economic analysis of government interventions deserves detailed discussion. 政府对经济的干预应该给予充分的论述。 来自辞典例句
• The judge's frequent interventions made a mockery of justice. 法官的屡屡干预是对正义的践踏。 来自互联网

17 offense   

n.犯规，违法行为；冒犯，得罪

参考例句：

• I hope you will not take any offense at my words. 对我讲的话请别见怪。
• His words gave great offense to everybody present.他的发言冲犯了在场的所有人。

18 awareness   

n.意识，觉悟，懂事，明智

参考例句：

• There is a general awareness that smoking is harmful.人们普遍认识到吸烟有害健康。
• Environmental awareness has increased over the years.这些年来人们的环境意识增强了。

19 tolerance   

n.宽容；容忍，忍受；耐药力；公差

参考例句：

• Tolerance is one of his strengths.宽容是他的一个优点。
• Human beings have limited tolerance of noise.人类对噪音的忍耐力有限。

20 tragic   

adj.悲剧的，悲剧性的，悲惨的

参考例句：

• The effect of the pollution on the beaches is absolutely tragic.污染海滩后果可悲。
• Charles was a man doomed to tragic issues.查理是个注定不得善终的人。

21 pointed   

adj.尖的，直截了当的

参考例句：

• He gave me a very sharp pointed pencil.他给我一支削得非常尖的铅笔。
• She wished to show Mrs.John Dashwood by this pointed invitation to her brother.她想通过对达茨伍德夫人提出直截了当的邀请向她的哥哥表示出来。

22 briefly   

adv.简单地，简短地

参考例句：

• I want to touch briefly on another aspect of the problem.我想简单地谈一下这个问题的另一方面。
• He was kidnapped and briefly detained by a terrorist group.他被一个恐怖组织绑架并短暂拘禁。

23 rapes   

n.芸苔( rape的名词复数 )；强奸罪；强奸案；肆意损坏v.以暴力夺取，强夺( rape的第三人称单数 )；强奸

参考例句：

• The man who had committed several rapes was arrested. 那个犯了多起强奸案的男人被抓起来了。 来自辞典例句
• The incidence of reported rapes rose 0.8 percent. 美国联邦调查局还发布了两份特别报告。 来自互联网