The Forensic Nurse

Earlier we wrote about a Child sexual abuser detection test writen by Abel Screening to help identify those who had possibly commited (or interest) in sexually assaulting a child.

We got a few inquiries about where the name came from, so I thought we could share the story from the DianaScreen.com website.

“Diana, a beautiful and talented girl, spent her first seven years in foster care and group homes.

Starting at age five, or perhaps even earlier, she was severely sexually abused. When she was seven, she was adopted by a very loving family and under their care she thrived and became an accomplished gymnast. She was artistic, resourceful and popular. In high school she made many of her own clothes and wrote an advice column for the student paper.

Diana didn’t talk about her abuse until she became a teenager. Her mother contacted the foster care psychiatrist to report the abuse. This physician expressed her doubt about Diana’s story stating, “That is impossible, I have known this man for years. You know, children lie.” A short while later, the man who abused Diana phoned the family and confirmed that Diana spoke the truth about the abuse. He wanted to talk to Diana; he wanted to apologize. Diana’s mother said “no” and changed the phone number.

Diana’s parents did everything they could to help her heal from her past. No amount of love or therapy could bring back the self-esteem the person who abused her stole from her.

Even with her strong will to overcome her childhood trauma, Diana and her family suffered a final tragedy when she ended her own life.

The person who abused Diana, in addition to being the man who supervised the children overnight in the foster care group home, was a family man and a father. Had this man been screened, Diana and countless other children from that group home might have been saved from ever knowing the horror of sexual abuse.”

Like most of the laws and systems we have in place, The Diana Screen, came about from tradgedy just like Megans Law and  Amber Alerts.

Child Sex offenders can be exceptionally resourceful at finding ways to place themselves around children in settings that may allow them to abuse their position and sexually assault children. 

While most agencies, and places of employment targeted toward children (like day care centers, foster child homes, etc) are mandated to conduct a background screening for past child sexual assault (or any sexual assaults for that that matter), this type of arrest history check is ineffective at stopping child predators.

A simple arrest record check in most cases will come back clean. Study statistics vary from study to study, but in general they indicate that less than 1-5% of child sex abusers have a prior criminal record. Unfortunately, most child sexual abusers have dozens of victims before they are ever arrested for their crimes.

But what if there was a way to help detect these people before allowing them to commit their crimes.  While this may sound like a far fetched hollywood movie idea like “the Minority Report“, a company called Abel Screening claims to be able to do just that for detecting child sexual predators.

They call it The Diana Screen. This two part computerized test is used to determine the risk of the test-taker having sexually abused a child in the past. According to their website:

The Diana is a pass / fail test, it goes beyond a simple questionnaire to include objectively measured sexual interest in children. The technology that identifies sexual interest, which is a major part of The Diana Screen^® formula, is empirically validated and has been used by therapists and criminal justice professionals more than 100,000 times.

The website further claims The Diana Screen^®identifies over 50% of actual child sexual abusers.