The media plays a significant role in our lives and constitutes a very powerful socialising agent with the potential to influence public opinion and policymakers regarding social issues, such as child maltreatment. The present study was designed to explore how child maltreatment is portrayed in the media and to examine public perception regarding this phenomenon, as expressed by reader comments. Articles about child maltreatment published on the five official news websites in Israel were assessed using descriptive and qualitative analysis. It was found that most of the coverage of child maltreatment could be characterised as episodic. The majority of news articles failed to provide information regarding the potential risk/causal factors and often missed opportunities to discuss solutions to maltreatment. Of the stakeholders presented in the articles, only rarely could the voices of child victims or their families be heard, whereas the presence of legal professionals was frequent. A high frequency of reader comments referred to rage and despair. The results demonstrate the need to develop various practices in order to narrow the gaps between findings and statistics about child maltreatment and the way in which the phenomenon is currently portrayed in the media, as such portrayals exert an impact on both public perceptions and policymakers' attitudes. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Key Practitioner Messages The media is a significant tool with the potential to influence public opinion and policymakers regarding social issues. The study indicates that media coverage of child maltreatment often fails to present it as an extensive social problem and does not discuss possible solutions and prevention strategies for this phenomenon. Practitioners within the field of child maltreatment should be provided with training in working with the media. Joint collaboration between practitioners, the media and researchers is needed in order to narrow the gap between the worrisome figures regarding this phenomenon and its non‐proportional representation in the media.

The phenomenon of Internet child sexual abuse (ICSA) has been receiving growing attention over the last decade, and studies have promoted knowledge with respect to the phenomenon's epidemiology, as well as to characteristics of the victims, perpetrators, and dynamics in these cases. The current retrospective study sought to delve into the disclosure component in cases of ICSA. The sample comprised 52 cases of adolescents who arrived at a child advocacy center (CAC) following ICSA. Analysis of these cases was targeted to capture the multifaceted nature of disclosure using those perspectives that could be documented by the CAC staff-of the practitioners, the adolescents, and their parents. Beyond the descriptive results regarding the victims and the nature of the abuse, the case analyses illustrate the disclosure process as experienced by the various parties involved, highlighting the challenging nature of this aspect of the phenomenon. For the parents, the disclosure experience can perhaps be best epitomized by the expression that was heard repeatedly-"Stop waking the dead"-an expression that indicated their wish to bring the subject to a close. The difficulty in disclosing such incidents was also illustrated by the fact that 20 children in the current sample were reluctant to collaborate during the CAC process. In fact, according to these data, most of the incidents were revealed following a police investigation rather than by a disclosure initiated by the children themselves. Focusing on this specific aspect of ICSA-that is, disclosure-enables a new perspective on it and stresses the need to further study it in such cases. A better understanding of the disclosure experience as it pertains to the individuals involved in cases of ICSA may improve and help modify future prevention and intervention efforts in the field.

Gender-specific intervention (GSI) with at-risk adolescent girls (ARAGs) is highly prevalent in Israel and elsewhere; professionals commonly consider GSI to be beneficial for ARAGs. However, despite the popularity of such programmes, there is little empirical support for their effectiveness and almost no critical examination of their theoretical rationale. The aim of this qualitative, naturalistic study was to explore how experienced professionals in this domain perceive the value and rationale of GSI with ARAGs, based on in-depth, semistructured interviews with 15 female Israeli professionals. All of the interviewees claimed that overall, GSI is the "right" or most effective way to work with ARAGs. The discussion reviews the empirical support for participants' assumptions regarding the value of GSI for ARAGs and critically considers the potential drawbacks of GSI with ARAGs.

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