According to the latest survey of criminal victimization by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, "In 2005, 47 percent of violent crimes and 40 percent of property crimes were reported to police. Thirty-eight percent of rapes and sexual assaults were reported to the authorities, as were 42 percent of simple assaults" ("Violent Crime Rate Unchanged During 2005, Theft Rate Declined," 10 September 2005 <http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/press/cv05pr.htm>). Crimes are generally underreported, and so are rapes. But apply the rate of underreporting of rape estimated by the BJS to the data collected by National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS) (see the Children's Bureau, Administration on Children, Youth and Families in the Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, "Table 3-11 Victims by Age Group and Maltreatment Type, 2004" of _Child Maltreatment 2004_ , 2006, <http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb/pubs/cm04/table3_11.htm>) or even double or triple that, and sexual abuse of young children is still rare, which is why many think it is abnormal.
Moreover, one can reasonably suppose that underreporting was either constant from 1977 to 1998 or (much more likely) that data from earlier years were more affected by underreporting than data from later years, when the police, social workers, medical professionals, and so on were more trained to identify and investigate child sexual abuse than before. Therefore, the trend stands even after taking underreporting into account.
Based on available facts and trends of crime victimization, as well as the tragic history of the "recovered memory" mania, I'd really recommend that, when a person alleges a very uncommon crime based on "recovered memory," it is not a good idea to assume that it is true, without any investigation whatsoever.
If you claim to have more reliable data than the Children's Bureau and the Bureau of Justice Statistics, however, you might present them to us and explain why your data are more reliable than theirs. But it seems to me that your belief about child sexual abuse is based on your impressions from the mass media, folk beliefs, and so on rather than research, leading to your blind faith in Bettina Aptheker's accusation. I say that it is blind faith because you seem to believe it based on her account alone and nothing would shake your belief in it.
Of course, paranoid styles of law and order politics encourage us to disregard all available facts and trends and put blind faith in one's feverish imagination based on what the mass media market or what political leaders instruct us to believe. But when the public succumbs to paranoid styles, as too many Soviets under Stalin did and too many Americans have in recent decades, the nation gets burdened with fewer and fewer rights and liberties and a higher and higher incarceration rate.
But do you really want to live in a place where accusation equals guilt? Because you think that such a principle will never be applied to you? -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>