Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Stephen Collins - Victim Comes Forward, Rotherham child sex abuse scandal, Adverse childhood experiences - allostatic load

Stephen Collins
L.A. County Sheriff Investigates Sex Crime
Victim Comes Forward

10/15/2014  BY TMZ STAFF
Stephen Collins is now under investigation by a third law enforcement agency for allegedly molesting and/or exposing himself to young girls ... TMZ has confirmed ... and the victim herself is the one who came forward to make the complaint.

Law enforcement sources tell TMZ ... the woman was 13 at the time and she has now gone to law investigators with her allegations.

Our sources say ... the incident involves a relative of a neighbor when Collins lived on Havenhurst Drive in West Hollywood during the summer of 1983.

Collins confesses to exposing himself to the girl on the audio tape posted on TMZ last week. We redacted her name and address. 

Collins also says on the audio ... he went back to the victim and "made amends" years later.... 
http://www.tmz.com/2014/10/15/stephen-collins-sex-crime-la-neighbor-sheriff-audio-investigation/

Rotherham child sexual abuse scandal is tip of iceberg, says police chief
Child exploitation is a hidden crime, and offences at home are the biggest concern, says Norfolk chief constable Simon Bailey
Randeep Ramesh, Social affairs editor
The Guardian, Wednesday 15 October 2014

There will be more Rotherham-style child sexual exploitation scandals unearthed in the coming months as the “stone is lifted” on the scale of abuse perpetuated on the young, one of Britain’s top police officers has warned.

In an interview with the Guardian, Simon Bailey, chief constable of Norfolk police, who is the leading officer concerned with child abuse within the Association of Chief Police Officers, said that sex crimes involving children had for “too long been a hidden crime”.

He also sparked a clash with fellow professionals by calling on teachers and doctors to take on more responsibility over detecting signs of abuse.

Bailey warned that the scale of the problem was far larger than previously thought, with the latest research estimating that the number of children suffering sexual abuse at some point in their childhood could be as high as 600,000. “We don’t know for sure. But I think it’s tens of thousands of victims [a year] of an appalling crime.”....

The concern of the police is that it is not gangs that are the biggest problem when it comes to sexual abuse, but the home.

Bailey said: “[This fixation] is rather overshadowing a far, far, bigger picture, and that bigger picture is that 90% of child sexual abuse takes place in the home where crimes are being perpetuated upon victims by people they know already. It is really important that we get some context around this.”....
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/oct/15/rotherham-child-sexual-abuse-scandal-tip-iceberg-police-chief 

National household survey of adverse childhood experiences and their relationship with resilience to health-harming behaviors in England
Mark A Bellis, Karen Hughes, Nicola Leckenby, Clare Perkins and Helen Lowey BMC Medicine 2014, 12:72  doi:10.1186/1741-7015-12-72

Results

Almost half (47%) of individuals experienced at least one of the nine ACEs. Prevalence of childhood sexual, physical, and verbal abuse was 6.3%, 14.8%, and 18.2% respectively (population-adjusted). After correcting for sociodemographics, ACE counts predicted all HHBs, e.g. (0 versus 4+ ACEs, adjusted odds ratios (95% confidence intervals)): smoking 3.29 (2.54 to 4.27); violence perpetration 7.71 (4.90 to 12.14); unintended teenage pregnancy 5.86 (3.93 to 8.74). Modeling suggested that 11.9% of binge drinking, 13.6% of poor diet, 22.7% of smoking, 52.0% of violence perpetration, 58.7% of heroin/crack cocaine use, and 37.6% of unintended teenage pregnancy prevalence nationally could be attributed to ACEs....

Neurobiological studies have already identified changes to the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex associated with ACEs, while epigenetic studies are exposing gene-environment interactions with negative health consequences once exposed to stressors. 

Danese A, McEwen BS: Adverse childhood experiences, allostasis, allostatic load, and age-related disease.
Physiol Behav 2012, 106:29-39.
http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7015/12/72


Adverse childhood experiences, allostasis, allostatic load, and age-related disease
Andrea Danese  Bruce S. McEwen  DOI: 10.1016/j.physbeh.2011.08.019 Physiology & Behavior
Volume 106, Issue 1, 12 April 2012, Pages 29–39 Allostasis and Allostatic Load
Abstract

How do adverse childhood experiences get ‘under the skin’ and influence health outcomes through the life-course? Research reviewed here suggests that adverse childhood experiences are associated with changes in biological systems responsible for maintaining physiological stability through environmental changes, or allostasis. Children exposed to maltreatment showed smaller volume of the prefrontal cortex, greater activation of the HPA axis, and elevation in inflammation levels compared to non-maltreated children. Adults with a history of childhood maltreatment showed smaller volume of the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus, greater activation of the HPA axis, and elevation in inflammation levels compared to non-maltreated individuals. Despite the clear limitations in making longitudinal claims from cross-sectional studies, work so far suggests that adverse childhood experiences are associated with enduring changes in the nervous, endocrine, and immune systems. These changes are already observable in childhood years and remain apparent in adult life. Adverse childhood experiences induce significant biological changes in children (biological embedding), modifying the maturation and the operating balance of allostatic systems. Their chronic activation can lead to progressive wear and tear, or allostatic load and overload, and, thus, can exert long-term effects on biological aging and health.

Highlights

We reviewed the physiological correlates of adverse childhood experiences. We examined the effects on the nervous, the endocrine, and the immune systems. These systems are abnormally active in maltreated children and adults. These effects may be adaptive in the short term but subsequently become detrimental. These effects may explain why maltreated individuals are at greater risk of disease.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0031938411004045 

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