What Did the Child Tell? The Accuracy of Parents’ Reports of a Child’s Statements When Suspecting Child Sexual Abuse

Abstract

Often cases of suspected child sexual abuse (CSA) come forward through children’s accounts to their parents and the parents’ subsequent reporting thereof. In this study (N = 22), randomly assigned parents listened to a mother-daughter conversation concerning suspected CSA. When freely reporting “what the child told,” participants assessed most of the information brought up by the mother as being brought up by the child. However, when asked to assess the source for each utterance, participants differentiated better. Interestingly, who they deemed brought up an event was not associated with how probable participants deemed it was that the event had occurred.