Community Corner

Cathy Malloy: Sex Assaults Continue Not Only in Real Time but on the Internet

Local officials and sexual assault counselors mark Sexual Assault Awareness Month.

Not only does sexual assault continue, but as it has spread to the Internet and cell phones, observers sometimes seem to forget that what's happening is a serious victimization of people, said Cathy Malloy, director of the Center for Sexual Assault Crisis Counseling and Education.

"Sexting", the sending of sexually explicit messages and images over cell phones, is often simply sexual harassment or even sexual assault, Malloy said Thursday, when she delivered the keynote address at an event marking the start of Sexual Assault Awareness Month.

Similarly, the spreading around of "smut lists," which has been done for a while but recently received quite a bit of attention in Westchester and Fairfield counties, needs to be recognized as sexual harassment and sexual assault, she said.

The teenage victims of "smut lists" which name girls and identify them as sexually promiscuous on the Internet, can cause enormous trauma that sometimes can lead to suicide, Malloy said.

"Tell the parents they better monitor these young women who are on these lists, and keep them safe, because you don't know how they're going to react to that," she said after noting that there were three suicides nationwide after similar incidents.

"There's a lot of anger—or something—going on in the schools, and we're seeing a lot of sexual harassment, particularly at the high school level," Malloy said. "We're trying to intervene and work on that issue. Those are some of the things that we're working on. We're looking for ... all the help we can get to raise awareness."

Malloy, who is married to Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and is leaving her job as director, said her Stamford-based organization continues to focus on counseling victims, training professionals in medical and law enforcement fields, and educating the public.

The annual event, held this year at Norwalk City Hall, attracted less than 30 people. Also in attendance were Norwalk Mayor Richard A. Moccia, who thanked Malloy for her 10 years of service as head of her agency, and officials from area town governments, including first selectmen from Gordon Joseloff of Westport, Peter Tesei of Greenwich and Gayle Weinstein of Weston.

Sherry Perlstein, executive director of Stamford-based Child Guidance Center of Southern Connecticut, praised Malloy's organization for keeping its focus on the problem and not chasing grant money that might lead it away from the agency's central purpose.

"The only way the number of sexual assaults is going to be diminished at all is by peole understanding a little more about the predators and what the problem is,"  and groups like Malloy's need to continue that, Perlstein said.

In Stamford, Perlstein's child and family counseling organization works with law enforcement and state social services agencies as a team when children need to be interviewed about possible child abuse.

Her organization has counselors trained in interviewing young sexual assault victims, and they do so in rooms monitored by police and state child welfare officials in one room and the child's parents in another. As they're talking with the children, counselors wear ear phones and sometimes get messages through them from police to ask more about a particular topic or follow up on a previous answer.

The same closed-circuit television system that allows monitoring also tapes the sessions, and the coordinated effort helps children avoid going through repeated interviews on a sensitive topic.

In Norwalk, Children's Connection, a small agency in the Human Services Council's building at 1 Park St., performs the same function, with two trained counselors, a similar room and the same equipment. Children, families, police and child welfare professionals from Norwalk, New Canaan, Wilton, Weston and Westport use the facility in cases of suspected child abuse.

Kari Pesavento, director of the agency, said she can act like a "one stop shop" for information parents want about the roles of various agencies. She can also help parents find some of the services they may want to help deal with the difficult situation. At the same time that a parent is reacting to an accusation against the other parent, they're dealing with their own feelings and the feelings of the victim.

One area where Malloy's organization is trying to increase its effectiveness is in counselling victims who have one of the various forms of autism. People with developmental disabilities often can't articulate how they've been harmed by a sexual assault, she said, and many legal cases have to be dropped as a result.

Malloy said her agency has been trying to develop effective counseling techniques that can help people with autism more effectively communicate what happened to them.


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