Experts Seek Ways to Save Children Who Molest Children : Behavior: Prosecution is rare, but counseling and treatment are even rarer. Victims, perpetrators both need help.

A Long Beach mother was horrified when she caught her 12-year-old son raping her 3-year-old daughter. She beat him and then called police.

But authorities could not prosecute because they could not determine whether he knew the act was wrong.

The Department of Children’s Services could not help the boy because he had not been a victim of sexual assault himself. And he did not qualify for counseling from the county Department of Mental Health.

So the boy stayed in the home. And one year later, he sexually molested his 8-year-old sister.

Experts say there are countless young molesters like him--children who do not receive help and go on to repeat their crimes. Children who molest other children are rarely prosecuted and even more rarely counseled or treated.

“These kids fall through the cracks,” said Michele Winterstein, the Sarah Center’s clinical psychologist who helped the boy’s mother and sister. “They become really (experienced) sex offenders by the time they are adults.”

Winterstein said she did not counsel the boy because her program is set up to deal only with victims. She and other experts in the city want to pool their knowledge to try to start treating molesters and prosecuting them.

Last month, 65 experts from the Police Department, the district attorney’s office and social service agencies began chipping away at the problem during an all-day conference.

Inspired by the success of the similar multidisciplinary team formed in June to coordinate investigation of rape cases, the men and women at the conference put together a list of goals to help them treat children who molest.

The team approach to rape crimes has increased prosecution rates and reduced the number of times police officers and therapists interview the victims. The Long Beach experts hope that treating child offenders in the same way will produce similar results.

Few statistics are available on the scope of the problem. But experts say they are alarmed by even a few cases, since a molester generally has numerous victims.

Of about 40 abuse cases investigated each month by the Long Beach Police Department’s juvenile section, roughly three of the offenders are molesters under 12, said Sgt. William A. Brough, a detective in the juvenile section’s child abuse unit. Sometimes the molesters have intercourse or oral sex with the victims and sometimes they attack them with objects, officials said.

In September, the juvenile section arrested two 8-year-olds. In October, they arrested a 7-year-old. In November, they arrested one 12-year-old and one 7-year-old.

“We’re not sure all of these are being reported,” Brough said. “A lot of times the parents are not reporting it. . . . Usually when it’s reported, it is by Johnny down the street.”

Police officers work to remove the young molesters from the house if they live with their victims, but rarely can children under 12 be detained. Sometimes the child stays with other relatives.

“You can’t put kids in jail who are 5 or 6 years old,” Brough said. “As a rule, they’re placed back in the house.”

Social workers say allowing a young molester to live with the victim is asking for trouble. But agencies that could intervene often find themselves tangled in red tape. The county’s Department of Children’s Services, for example, is limited to assisting only children who are victims of sexual assault.

And, a state law requires that police and attorneys determine whether a child knows the difference between right and wrong and can give valid examples. If officials cannot prove the child knew the act was wrong at the time, the case often cannot be prosecuted.

“There’s a presumption that a child . . . may not know that it was wrong to commit a crime,” said Katherine F. Pierson, the deputy district attorney in charge of the juvenile division.

Some psychologists believe, however, that many of these children know their crimes are wrong. Usually they are done in a secretive manner, suggesting that they know the act should be concealed.

Toni Cavanagh Johnson, a clinical psychologist who specializes in children who molest other children, emphasized that these children are very different from those innocently expressing sexual curiosity.

Most of them also steal, set fires and have difficulties in school. Most are raised by a single mother and have witnessed extreme violence among people who have cared for them. If a male figure is present he is authoritarian and demanding, she said.

Children who molest, like adults, target friendless, vulnerable victims who will be unlikely to tell another person. When a child molests, it involves coercion and often hostile, violent behavior, she said.

“We’re talking about little kids who have the thoughts and actions of adult sex offenders. It’s scary sometimes to meet these kids,” Johnson said. “Unfortunately, sexuality has been cast together with anger and mistrust and pain.”

For example, the 12-year-old Long Beach boy who molested his sisters lived in a home where his mother repeatedly battered his stepfather. The mother punched and slapped the boy, too, but never beat him severely enough to warrant intervention from county agencies, Winterstein said. Though he attended the fifth grade, tests showed him functioning at a second-grade level.

One of the Long Beach group’s first goals is to begin educating the public locally about the difference between hard-core molesters and children who are sexually curious. Their long-term goals include building a group home for molesters, devising a treatment plan for them and writing a grant to fund it.

“Nobody at the meeting wanted to ascribe blame. Ascribing blame is pointless,” probation officer Chris Gould said. “We need to help each other find strategies.”

The experts are researching a handful of programs in other states and have already lauded some as role models and rejected others.

Johnson, for example, favors a program expected to begin in Tennessee in February.

That state plans to contract with a private mental health agency to run a 24-hour treatment home for molesters. The home will treat only 10 children at a time to encourage a close, nurturing environment.

“We wouldn’t want to have a big campus full of sexually aggressive kids,” said Charles Wilson, Tennessee’s director of child welfare.

Tennessee has used a multidisciplinary team approach to investigate child sexual abuse since 1985.

In Long Beach, social service agencies hope to develop such a team and receive support from the community while avoiding the pitfalls associated with more controversial types of treatment, such as one used in Arizona.

A government-funded sex-offender program in Phoenix closed down this summer due to the controversy surrounding its use of a penile plethysmograph, a machine attached to a boy’s genitals to monitor his sexual response to nude pictures.

The group in Long Beach hopes to convince politicians of the need to make changes in county policies and law. One of the changes would be the definition of a victim, so young molesters can get help. Some social workers argue that a molester often may have been a victim of abuse, such as neglect or violence.

For example, a 7-year-old boy who molested other children confided to Johnson that he had been in bed with his mother, a prostitute, when a pimp came in, threw the child against the radiator and had sex with his mother. Though the child was not sexually abused, he associates loneliness with aggression and sexuality, Johnson said.

At the close of the conference, private psychologists and city professionals promised to get to work on their goals and meet again in a few months.

“Are there any other resources that anybody in the room knows about?” Johnson asked before they left. The question was met by silence.

“Well, next year there will be,” she said.