Hundreds meet to discuss child abuse prevention.

Byline: SUSAN PALMER The Register-Guard

Forget stranger danger. Parents who want to protect their kids from sexual predators need to look closely at their circle of family and friends.

That's the message abuse prevention expert Cory Jewell-Jensen will deliver to parents in a free evening workshop Wednesday.

Her presentation on how and why sexual predators go after children is just one session of a three-day regional symposium on child abuse that has attracted 600 to 700 people from 14 states.

Sponsored by SCAR/Jasper Mountain, the symposium is geared for professionals who work with children, from police and counselors to teachers and clergy.

It brings together eight nationally recognized experts who will offer a variety of sessions on preventing abuse, treating traumatized children, investigating missing and abducted children and the increasing danger of sexual predators on the Internet.

SCAR/Jasper Mountain offers long-term treatment for children who have been severely abused or neglected.

Jewell-Jensen of Beaverton - a nationally known expert on sex offenders who runs the Center for Behavioral Intervention with her husband, Steve Jensen - designed the workshop for parents after years of presentations to law enforcement agencies on the techniques offenders use to get next to children.

The Beaverton center provides counseling and sex offender treatment programs for molesters, and the offenders themselves have explained how they target children.

Jewell-Jensen's most sobering message for parents is that they can't rely on current prevention training programs being used in schools and children's club organizations.

"There's this myth afoot that kids can protect themselves with `No, go, tell' strategies," she said.

Those strategies urge children to say no to molesters, get away from them and then tell a responsible adult, but Jewell-Jensen and others say molesters can easily overcome children's defenses over time, often making them feel complicit or responsible for the abuse.

"Parents don't understand that there is a segment of child molesters for whom this is a game. They are the population who molest hundreds of kids," she said.

Jewell-Jensen will talk about prevention strategies that work, indications that a child is being abused, why molesters don't always get caught, how they get access to children and how to talk to children about sexual abuse, among other things.

"Parents have to take the responsibility to be more critically aware of who has access to their kids and not take anything for granted," she said.

Molesters are typically not strangers; they're usually well-known by the family and the child they target, she said.

In 1998, the last year that the Oregon Department of Human Services reported the relationship between victims and their molesters, 63 percent of the children had been abused by family members, stepfathers or live-in boyfriends.

Fathers or father figures represented 34 percent of the offenders.

In Lane County, the number of sex abuse victims from infant to age 18 has ranged from 400 to 500 annually from 1996 to 2000, according to the state police records.

Molesters may be men or women, married or single, children or adolescents themselves. They may espouse any religious belief and have any sexual preference, according to Jewell-Jensen's research. They're just as likely to be stable, well-educated and employed as not.

The frank discussion at the parental workshop isn't suitable for children, organizers said, and no one under 18 will be admitted.

SYMPOSIUM AT A GLANCE

When: Wednesday through Friday at Valley River Inn. $120 for a single day to $330 for all three days. Student rate: $60 a day. For more information, call 741-7402. Full schedule is online: www.scar-jaspermtn.org/symposium_brochure_dl.html

Free session for parents: 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. Wednesday at the Valley River Inn McKenzie Room. Speaker Cory Jewell-Jensen on how to protect children from abusers. No children under 18 will be admitted.