Journal of Child Sexual Abuse最新文献

Sexual and gender minority (SGM) youth face a heightened risk of sexual violence, yet their experiences are often overlooked in mainstream frameworks of prevention and care. Access to appropriate support may be further limited by biased or uninformed professional attitudes toward both SGM identities and sexual victimization. This study explored how professionals in Israel understand and interpret sexual violence against SGM youth and how structural, psychological, and cultural factors shape vulnerability and barriers to healing. In-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with twenty professionals working with SGM youth in clinical, educational, and community settings. Three interconnected themes emerged: (1) Longing for Recognition, showing how unmet attachment needs and isolation drive SGM youth into unsafe digital spaces; (2) When Shame Meets Shame, illustrating how internalized stigma and identity-related shame complicate the recognition and disclosure of harm; and (3) Silenced Pain, highlighting how family rejection, institutional neglect, and intra-community denial contribute to systemic invisibility. Five subthemes, including digital risk-taking and the burden of double disclosure, further detailed these dynamics. Identity-based stigma, digital vulnerability, and institutional gaps converge to create complex pathways of harm. Trauma-informed, LGBTQ-affirming interventions are urgently needed across clinical, educational, and policy domains.

Ample research exists on sexual assault (SA) disclosure from the survivor perspective, yet studies with dyadic data, including their informal support providers (SPs), remain scarce. This is particularly true for substance-involved assaults which have been less studied. The present study of 29 survivors, 13 of whom were survivor-SP dyads, used interview data to address this gap. We examine how romantic partners, family, and friends experience SA disclosures from survivor and informal SP perspectives. SP-initiated disclosure themes include a) SPs prompting survivors to disclose after noticing mood/behavioral changes that gave them concern about the survivor, and b) SPs specifically disclosing their own past traumatic experience, which led to survivor SA disclosure. Survivor-initiated disclosure themes include a) survivor fear/anxiety related to disclosing due to fear of receiving negative reactions from SP, b) survivor disclosure prompting SP trauma disclosure, and c) positive and negative disclosure experiences affecting survivor perceptions of whether to disclose to other people. Implications are drawn for how to provide advice to survivors and SPs on improving disclosure experiences of substance-involved assaults, whether survivor or SP-initiated. Survivor anxiety regarding disclosure and feared negative social reactions are common, which requires improving societal culture to support victims and reduce social stigma via education on responding to survivors of diverse familial and cultural backgrounds. The role of survivor and SP disclosures of assault/trauma in facilitating/eliciting disclosures from the person they tell, and motivations for disclosing, are addressed to better understand mutual disclosure in dyadic relationships.

This study evaluated the proximal outcomes of the Sexual Communication and Consent program (SCC): a novel, tailored sexual assault (SA) prevention intervention implemented in the United States Air Force Basic Military Training from 2019 to 2020. Trainees received classroom instructor-led training and one of five tablet-delivered interventions that were tailored based on individual SA risk for perpetration, victimization, or revictimization assessed with a screening instrument. Using multilevel regression modeling, we assessed six proximal outcomes of SCC exposure in a sample of 3557 trainees with matched pretest and posttest data, analyzing results for both the overall sample and across the five SCC intervention subgroups. Within the overall sample, participation in SCC was associated with statistically significant increases in SA knowledge, consent knowledge, and self-efficacy to resist unwanted advances and statistically significant decreases in date rape attitudes and, unexpectedly, bystander intentions. Stratified analyses revealed consistent SA knowledge increases across subgroups, whereas consent knowledge and date rape attitudes were only significant in the male Healthy Relationships/Bystander Intervention subgroup. Self-efficacy to resist unwanted advances was significant in all victimization-focused subgroups except male Primary Victimization Prevention. There were no observed changes in protective dating behaviors in the overall sample or any intervention subgroup. Expanding the limited evidence-base of SA prevention programming in the US military, findings highlight the potential for tailored interventions that address SA risk factors for perpetration, victimization, or revictimization, to improve proximal outcomes known to be associated with SA incidence. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.

Child sexual abuse (CSA) remains a significant challenge for children in the United States. Despite this, research focused on identifying CSA among children aged 5 and under is underfunded compared to other child health issues and remains a gap in the field. This paper provides five recommendations to support early identification of CSA, including a central call for research to advance key areas such as forensic interview approaches, the use of medical histories, recognition of sexual behaviors, children's knowledge and emotional responses, and the development of trauma-informed screening protocols. The remaining focused recommendations emphasize the need to strengthen investigative protocols, build community-research partnerships, conduct comparative analyses to identify best practices, and develop innovative strategies for translating and disseminating findings - each reinforcing and amplifying the impact of targeted research investment.

Literature suggests that psychological interventions for individuals who perpetrated child sexual abuse (CSA) can be improved. Qualitative approaches are particularly valuable in this context, as they provide deeper insights into individual experiences and therapeutic processes, thereby informing the refinement of such interventions. Thus, semi-structured interviews were conducted with nine men convicted of CSA, who had completed a newly developed, structured, and manualized individual program based on schema therapy (i.e. the INSIGHT), delivered either in prison or in the community in Portugal. An inductive approach of thematic analysis was used to explore the men's perceptions of the treatment. We identified three themes: expectations before the beginning of the intervention, perceptions of the process of change, and views regarding the program and its impact. Overall, participants indicated that the INSIGHT Program contributed to favorable outcomes, further highlighting the relevance of targeting early maladaptive schemas to complement the intervention programs. Findings are discussed in terms of possible improvements to the program and to the psychological intervention with perpetrators of CSA in general.

The voices of individuals convicted of sexual offenses - including the voices of females - are often silenced in research. Exploring the user voice has many advantages, including service improvement and enhanced evidence-based program development and design. The current study utilized the user voice by attaining perceptions of women sentenced for child sexual abuse (CSA) in Australia - to identify what they perceived as missed opportunities for support that may have forestalled onset of their CSA perpetration. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 18 women across three jurisdictions in Australia who had been sentenced for CSA offenses. Two themes were identified from the inductive analysis: (1) desire for early intervention supports and (2) multi-level barriers to accessing support. Although a range of supports were desired spanning various developmental life-stages, personal, relationship, and system-level factors impacted accessibility to services. Three implications were identified from our findings: (1) further research could explore ways to enhance service accessibility, not just availability, ensuring those at-risk of offending are aware of - and can access - various services; (2) a gender-responsive lens in the prevention of female-perpetrated CSA could be adopted; and (3) prevention efforts could utilize a developmental life-course perspective. Such prevention needs to be practical and direct. Limitations and ideas for future research are discussed.

This study examines mothers' decisions to disclose past experiences of sexual assault to their children. These survivors reported their assaults to the police years ago, but no action was taken in their cases. When new DNA evidence came to light, prosecutors re-opened their cases, which caused significant disruption in survivors' personal lives and in their family dynamics. We examined whether the mothers in our sample decided to tell their children about their past sexual assault and pending court cases, and whether these decisions varied by the current age of their children. We conducted exploratory qualitative interviews with N = 32 sexual assault survivors and completed a content analysis to identify why the subsample of n = 23 survivors who had children did or did not disclose to their children. 30% of mothers disclosed to their children, all of whom were currently adolescents/young adults. Some felt compelled to disclose because the police's attempts to recontact them prompted questions or concerns from their children. Other mothers disclosed intentionally so they could explain why they had been depressed and anxious for years, and how this distress shaped their parenting relationships. 70% of the mothers did not disclose to their kids, most of whom were currently youth/pre-adolescents, to protect their emotional and/or physical safety. Overall, sexual assault survivors were hesitant to tell their children about their past victimization experiences and wanted more choice and control over if and how to share their information with their kids.

For women who experienced sexual abuse during childhood, motherhood represents a period of heightened psychological vulnerability, often reactivating past trauma and influencing the development of the maternal bond. This qualitative study, grounded in an Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) approach, explores the experiences of ten women involved in judicial proceedings who had been victims of early sexual abuse. Drawing on their life narratives, the analysis highlights the specific psychological effects of parenthood within trajectories shaped by trauma. Pregnancy, childbirth, and the early stages of motherhood are perceived as critical periods, often marked by fears of trauma recurrence, loss of control, and unconscious projections onto the child. These projections, frequently linked to the child's gender, may evoke symbolic identifications with either the aggressor or the victim, rendering the initial bonding process particularly complex. The mother - child relationship is often strained by a tension between overprotection, mistrust, and uncertainty regarding maternal competence. However, for some participants, this period of crisis also contained transformative potential. For several women, motherhood became a pivotal moment that led to the disclosure of past abuse, the initiation of psychological work, and the beginning of a reconstruction process. The desire to protect their child served as a powerful catalyst for change. These findings highlight the importance of clinical support attuned to the traumatic and identity-related dimensions of motherhood in order to foster mentalization processes and prevent the intergenerational transmission of trauma.

Child sexual abuse and exploitation (CSAE) poses risks to the wellbeing of survivors, families, and society. The purpose of this exploratory research was to identify challenges, gaps, and opportunities of the Irish response to CSAE based on perceptions of professionals involved. The sample (n = 10) consisted of professionals from various fields, representing legal, social work, practitioners, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) relating to CSAE prevention or intervention work. Qualitative data was collected via one-to-one structured interviews. Data was thematically analyzed. Four main themes arose: (1) ease of access; describing accessibility to problematic material, perpetrators' access to children, and access of big tech to children. (2) Awareness; detailing parental awareness of CSAE, awareness of the prevalence of children with harmful sexual behaviors (HSB), as well as education on CSAE. (3) Resources; referring to pressure on NGO's and charities to combatting CSAE, funding required, a lack of policy and regulations to protect children, and availability of accessible services to victims and families. (4) Victim-focused; acknowledged by a need for holistic prevention, a more equitable justice system, and advocacy for victims' independent needs and ongoing respectful care. The results highlight the ongoing and accelerating use of technology in CSAE perpetration, calls for greater awareness and resources by professionals combatting CSAE, and the need to consider holistic preventative strategies, as well as individualized care for survivors. These insights have implications for practitioners and policy makers concerned with strategies of CSAE prevention and intervention.