Children’s disclosures of sexual abuse in a population-based sample

Abstract

Most previous studies on disclosing child sexual abuse (CSA) have either been retrospective or focused on children who already have disclosed. The present study aimed to explore the overall CSA disclosure rate and factors associated with disclosing to adults in a large population-based sample. A representative sample of 11,364 sixth and ninth graders participated in the Finnish Child Victim Survey concerning experiences of violence, including CSA. CSA was defined as having sexual experiences with a person at least five years older at the time of the experience. Within this sample, the CSA prevalence was 2.4%. Children reporting CSA experiences also answered questions regarding disclosure, the disclosure recipient, and potential reasons for not disclosing. The results indicate that most of the children (80%) had disclosed to someone, usually a friend (48%). However, only 26% had disclosed to adults, and even fewer had reported their experiences to authorities (12%). The most common reason for non-disclosing was that the experience was not considered serious enough for reporting (41%), and half of the children having CSA experiences did not self-label their experiences as sexual abuse. Relatively few children reported lacking the courage to disclose (14%). Logistic regression analyses showed that the perpetrator's age, the age of the victim at the time of abuse, and having no experiences of emotional abuse by the mother were associated with disclosing to an adult. The results contribute to understanding the factors underlying children's disclosure patterns in a population-based sample and highlight the need for age-appropriate safety education for children and adolescents.

Usability and Effectiveness of the Finnish Investigative Instrument of Child Sexual Abuse

“…It is complicated to estimate the extent of the under-reporting of CSA. However, a recent study estimated that approximately 20% of CSA victims do not disclose the event to anyone [4]. In this study, the question whether cases reported to someone reached the authorities remained unanswered, as 48% of the disclosures were to friends, and only 12% were disclosures directly to authorities.…”

“…However, Melkman, Hershkowitz and Zur [3] estimated that about 58% of disclosures made by the alleged victims could be considered credible. Comparable results have been reached by 4 Korkman, Antfolk, Fagerlund, and Santtila [5], who report that 25-40% of CSA allegations in Finland might be unfounded. Panel A shows a base rate of .03 and no other observation has been made yet.…”

Reported Levels of Upset in Youth After Routine Trauma Screening at Mental Health Clinics

“…There may be several reasons why youths who have been exposed to trauma are not identified in youth mental health clinics. For instance, children with sexual abuse experiences often do not disclose their abuse, 10 and therapists may not link children’s problems to trauma if the therapists do not ask about abuse. This is alarming, since an increase in time from incident to disclosure among adult female survivors of childhood sexual abuse has been found to be significantly associated with an increase in symptoms of posttraumatic stress, anxiety, and depression, 11 underscoring the importance of early detection.…”

Gender and generation perspectives in the narratives of sexually abused women in childhood

“…However, only 7% had reported it to the police, 5% to a teacher, 4% to a social worker, 3% to the school counselor and 2% to the school nurse. The main justification for not revealing it was to consider the experience as irrelevant (41%) 18 .…”