Psychosocial Characteristics of Nonoffending Mothers of Sexually Abused Girls: Findings From a Prospective, Multigenerational Study

Abstract

This study examined psychosocial characteristics of nonoffending mothers of sexually abused girls. The sample consisted of 72 ethnically diverse mothers of sexually abused girls aged 6 to 16 years, and 55 mothers of girls who were demographically similar with the abused girls on age, socioeconomic status, and family constellation. The variables examined included measures of the mothers' childhood developmental histories and current functioning (e.g., depression, parenting), as well as their current family environment. The specific questions addressed were (a) whether mothers of sexually abused girls could be distinguished from mothers of comparison girls on various psychosocial characteristics and (b) whether three subgroups of mothers (i.e., mother and daughter sexually abused, daughter-only abused, neither mother nor daughter abused) would exhibit different patterns of psychosocial characteristics. Results show that nonoffending mothers of sexually abused girls may confront considerable psychosocial challenges following the disclosure of their daughters' sexual abuse and that mother's own childhood abuse experiences may be an important factor to understand these challenges.

Non-offending mothers of sexually abused children: How they decide whom to believe

“…Efforts to identify characteristics of non-offending mothers and other predictors of maternal support have mostly yielded inconsistent findings (Bolen, 2002;Bolen & Lamb, 2004Cyr et al, 2003;Elliott & Carnes, 2001;Kim, Noll, Putnam, & Trickett, 2007;Plummer, 2006). Much of the inconsistency may be related to methodological differences, such as: relying on clinical samples where substantiation of the abuse may be unknown (Plummer, 2006); retrospective studies of adults that rely on memory event accuracy; absence of comparison or control groups; focus on a specific child victim age group (Cyr et al, 2003); and participant samples from child protective services only, which excludes maternal intimate partners who do not reside in the home, often categorized as extra-familial.…”

“…Kim et al (2007) examined the psychosocial characteristics of the non-offending mothers of sexually abused girls aged 6-16, as compared to mothers of girls who were not sexually abused.…”

“…Examples include measures of support at the time of the allegation only (Faller, 1988), both immediately and at two months post-disclosure (Everson et al, 1989), at the beginning and the end of a child protective services investigation (Coohey & O'Leary, 2008), multiple measurements up to 467 days post-disclosure (Heriot, 1996), or prospective studies that followed sexually abused girls and their mothers through adolescence (Kim et al, 2007).…”

“…Moving beyond maternal, victim, perpetrator, or abuse characteristics as distinct variables, researchers are attempting a deeper and richer approach that a) considers the context within which the abuse occurs (Cyr, Wright, Toupin, Oxman-Martinez, McDuff, & Theriault, 2003) , b) follows participants over time (Kim, Noll, Putnam, & Trickett, 2007), c)accounts for additional victimizations , and d) highlights intergenerational risk and protective factors (Kim et al, 2007;Leifer, Kilbane, Jacobsen & Grossman, 2004) and the commonality of violence across generations (Bowen, 2000;Hamby, Finkelhor, Turner, & Ormrod, 2010;Kellogg & Menard, 2003).…”

Association of Maltreatment With High-Risk Internet Behaviors and Offline Encounters

“…10 Adolescents who have been maltreated report low-quality parental relationships and live predominantly in single-parent households. 19,20 Thus, the ability for parents to monitor media use and effectively communicate about Internet risk behaviors may be especially impaired in these households. This study had 3 major objectives: (1) after accounting for other known adolescent risk factors, to test the hypothesis that maltreatment is uniquely associated with increased rates of highrisk Internet behaviors defined as the viewing of sexual content, creating provocative social network profiles, and receiving online sexual solicitations; (2) to test a multivariate model elucidating adolescent risk variables that are independently associated with subsequent offline, in-person encounters with persons first met online; and (3) to test the hypotheses that parenting quality and level of Internet and media supervision in the home would moderate the prevalence of high-risk Internet behaviors and the impact of highrisk Internet behaviors on subsequent offline encounters.…”