DENVER — The problem of sexual abuse of children has reached near-epidemic proportions, but the culture has yet to confront its most common causes.

Most people have heard about the sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church. They also hear about the children who get abducted by strangers or get lured by Internet perverts.

And occasionally, newspapers will run a story about a teenage boy having sex with a beautiful 20-something teacher.

They seldom hear of the biggest threat of childhood sexual abuse: cohabitation and the single mom’s boyfriend.

What used to be called “living in sin” might now be called “living in danger,” at least for any children involved.

“The media love telling us of the teenage boy and the gorgeous teacher,” said Sherryll Kraizer, executive director of The Safe Child Program in Denver. “And the societal myth says, ‘Oh, he got lucky.’”

Though most molestation, according to data and observations of experts, involves adult relatives or friends of the victims, Kraizer said it just doesn’t have the same audience appeal as the boy with the female teacher or the boy with a priest.

“Despite what we read and hear on TV, 85% to 90% of childhood sexual abuse involves perpetrators known to the child,” Kraizer said. “Of that 85% to 90%, 35% involves a family member. Boyfriends, step-parents, foster providers and other guardians aren’t usually counted in that 35%. And single women who have boyfriends living in the home may be putting their children at the highest risk of all.”

Though popular media haven’t adopted the phrase, some sexual abuse counselors are referring to the “cohabitation crisis,” said Phoenix sociologist Roberta Brown.

“Many of us in the social sciences community are keenly aware of the ‘mother’s boyfriend phenomenon.’ It’s a growing phenomenon, as more and more young divorced or unmarried women are allowing men they hardly know into their homes,” Brown said. “You can’t start dating someone, move him in and immediately leave him to baby-sit the child. Statistically, you’re putting the child at a tremendous risk.”

Case in point: The young mother in Pittsburgh who recently thought she was in love with Clinton Smith, 30, her new boyfriend. She allowed Smith to stay home with her 10-month-old child, Da’Niyah Marie Jackson, while she went to work as a waitress. She came home at 9:30 p.m. to find the child unresponsive, with bruises all over her body.

Paramedics rushed Da’Niyah to the hospital, but the baby later died. Smith was charged with rape, aggravated assault and homicide.

“This is the dark underbelly of cohabitation,” said Brad Wilcox, a University of Virginia sociologist, as quoted by the Associated Press. “Cohabitation has become quite common, and most people think, ‘What’s the harm?’ The harm is we’re increasing a pattern of relationships that’s not good for children.”

Based on a study of Missouri statistics, as published in the American Academy of Pediatrics in 2005, children living in households with unrelated adults are nearly 50 times more likely to die of inflicted injuries as children living with their biological parents.

David Finkelhor, director of the university of New Hampshire’s Crimes Against Children Research Center, has found that children living in broken homes or with single parents are at a higher risk of physical and sexual assault than children living with two biological or adoptive parents.

“Certainly, a lot of men come into a home with good intentions and provide a good male role model for children,” Kraizer said. “But the single woman with a child is the perfect opportunity for an abuser. She provides a victim and a place.”

Kraizer, who’s quick to admonish past Church officials who covered up abuse by clergy, said the media’s obsession with clergy abuse of children reached absurd proportions. She said it has caused more fear of men in the collar than of live-in boyfriends.

“With the help of the media, we’ve developed a fear factor toward clergy that is overblown,” Kraizer said, adding that fear of stranger abuse is also overblown.

“In the mid-’80s through about 1995, there was a lot of awareness about the true nature of child sex abuse,” Kraizer said. “People were aware that strangers weren’t the big issue. In the last 10 years, however, things changed. The high publicity crimes became the agenda, and the issues have become completely distorted. My experience is that new parents have no understanding of what the real threats are.”

Though a recent series by the Associated Press showed an epidemic-like phenomenon of sexual abuse in public schools throughout the country, Kraizer said few people have developed a fear of teachers. Nor, she said, should they.

Few newspapers ran the AP series, and Kraizer said the media seldom pay attention to teacher/student abuse unless it involves a male teen and a female teacher with cover model looks.

Still, she said, schools pose nowhere near the danger children face in private homes.

“Schools may be at least as big a threat to children as churches and clergy, but it’s still a relatively small part of the problem,” Kraizer said. “About 50% of abuse takes place in the home of the child or the offender. All the rest is divided up between schools, daycares, group homes, hospitals, churches, camps, locker rooms and other community settings. Yet those are the places parents tend to fear.”

Data from the National Clearinghouse on Family Violence upholds what counselors and researchers claim, showing that 50% of child victims are molested in their own homes or in the offender’s home.

The Clearinghouse reports that 29% of offenders are relatives, 60% are acquaintances and only 11% are strangers. Only 3% of offenders are caught, and only 1% are ever arrested, convicted and jailed.

Another subject of misplaced fear, said Kraizer, involves the Internet. She said televised sting operations, in which cops act like children and lure online perverts to a home, have distorted the truth.

“It happens, but it’s incredibly rare that a child communicates with an adult online, agrees to have sex, and then follows up by actually meeting someplace with that adult,” Kraizer said. “That’s in the same category as sexual assault by strangers. It’s incredibly rare. It’s a small fraction of the sexual abuse that’s perpetrated on children. The threat is at home.”

Wayne Laugesen is based

in Boulder, Colorado.