Reporting possible sexual abuse: A qualitative study on children's perspectives and the context for disclosure

Abstract

Objective

The present study investigated the context in which children were able to report their child sexual abuse experiences and the children's views as to what made it difficult to talk about abuse and what helped them in the disclosing process. The aim was to study disclosures as they were occurring in their natural settings.

Method

Data were obtained from therapeutic sessions and follow-up interviews from 20 families with 22 children. These children had said something that made their caregivers concerned about ongoing child sexual abuse. Qualitative analysis was conducted to capture the children's and caregiver's perspectives of the disclosure process.

Results

The children felt it was difficult to find situations containing enough privacy and prompts that they could share their experiences. They also were sensitive to others reactions, and whether their disclosures would be misinterpreted. When the children did disclose they did it in situations where the theme of child sexual abuse was in some form addressed or activated. The results indicate that disclosure is a fundamentally dialogical process that becomes less difficult if the children perceive that there is an opportunity to talk, and a purpose for speaking, and a connection has been established to what they are talking about.

Conclusions

It is difficult for children to initiate a conversation about something secret, confusing and distressful, and where there are few conversational routines in a family for talking about such themes. Children also are sensitive to the needs of their caregivers and fear consequences for their family and offender. Children need a supportive structure or scaffold in order to reveal their experiences of child sexual abuse.

Résumé

French-language abstract not available at time of publication.

Resumen

Spanish-language abstract not available at time of publication.

Introduction

Many children find it difficult to talk about their experiences of being sexually abused (DeVoe & Faller, 2002; Paine & Hansen, 2002). They often delay disclosing their secret of abuse, some for many years (Gomes-Schwartz, Horowitz, & Carandelli, 1990; Goodman-Brown, Edelstein, Goodman, Jones, & Gordon, 2003). Some children deny sexual abuse despite compelling evidence (DeVoe & Faller, 1999; DiPietro, Runyan, & Fredrickson, 1997; Lawson & Chaffin, 1992, Orbach & Lamb, 1999; Sjoberg & Lindblad, 2002), and even when sexual abuse is known, it is rarely talked about or shared (Russell, 1986). Many adults report never disclosing their abuse during childhood (Finkelhor, Hotaling, Lewis, & Smith, 1990; Lamb & Edgar-Smith, 1994; Roesler & Wind, 1994), and it is suspected that many never disclose at all.

Cognitive and developmental limitations (Bussy & Grimbeek, 1995; Gries, Goh, & Cavanaugh, 1996), feelings of responsibility and shame (Finkelhor et al., 1990, Lamb, 1986), factors related to post-traumatic stress disorder (Koverola & Foy, 1993), relationship to the offender (Arata, 1998), characteristics of the abuse (Faller, 1989, Sauzier, 1989), caregivers’ beliefs (Lawson & Chaffin, 1992) and threats to the child (Sauzier, 1989), have been proposed as factors inhibiting disclosure. In a study conducted by Roesler and Wind (1994), 286 women described their disclosures of incest; 64% never disclosed their abuse until adulthood. Their reasons for not disclosing included fear for their own safety (33%), shame and self-blame (33%), anticipated futility (19%), feared impact on their family (14%), and feelings of loyalty to the offender (4%). In a recent study by Goodman-Brown et al. (2003), older children who had been abused by a family member and who felt responsible for the abuse and feared negative consequences of disclosure, had the longest delays in reporting their sexual abuse experiences. On the basis of this study a model of delayed disclosure has been proposed, where age, intrafamilial versus extrafamilial abuse, feelings of responsibility and dreaded consequences are proposed as significant variables influencing delayed disclosures.

Children's disclosures also have been studied from a forensic perspective. A number of factors have been found to influence children's testimony in general including, interviewing conditions (DeVoe & Faller, 1999; Goodman & Aman, 1990; Hershowitz, Orbach, Lamb, Sternberg, & Horowitz, 2002; Lamb, Sternberg, & Espolin, 1998), socioemotional influences (Bottoms, Goodman, Schwartz-Kenney, & Thomas, 2002), and event memory and suggestibility (Goodman, Quas, Batterman-Faunce, & Riddlesburger, 1994; Quas, Goodman, Ghetti, & Redlich, 2000). The literature regarding forensic disclosures has drawn its conclusions primarily from analogue laboratory studies where the goal has been to study children's accuracy and credibility.

Similar studies on secrecy indicate that difficulty with disclosure is not unique to sexual abuse (Imber-Black, 1993, Rotenberg, 1995). In a study where 48, 13- and 14-year-old girls and boys were asked anonymously whether they had a serious problem which they had experienced and never told anyone, most of the children revealed having secrets about things that were important to them, such as puberty, sex, illegal activity, addictions, smoking and drinking, and physical abuse, in addition to several children reporting for the first time of sexual abuse (Fuller, Hallett, & Murray, 2001).

Self-disclosure is, on the other hand, viewed as natural in family life and social relationships (Rotenberg, 1995). Parents experience that their children often do talk to them about both trivial and significant experiences. A large research review on self-disclosures conducted by Buhrmester and Prager (1995), concluded that children often self-disclose to parents, and that there is an overall increase in self-disclosures during adolescence. This increase is due to an increase in self-disclosures to peers and is not paralleled by a decrease in disclosure to parents (Buhrmester & Prager, 1995). The failure of children to disclose personal experiences therefore constitutes a breach in normal expectations parents often have. As a result, parents can either assume that there is nothing to tell, or if the child is showing signs of distress and at the same time an unwillingness to talk, they can become equally concerned about what is troubling the child.

A review of the literature on children's disclosure of child sexual abuse by Paine and Hansen (2002) concludes that although there is a sizable body of literature on child sexual abuse, there is a need for more research on the circumstances surrounding children's disclosures of abuse. Few studies provide data regarding children's impetus for disclosure or for the circumstances that may facilitate disclosure. Most conclusions on children's disclosure are based upon retrospective reports from adults or peripheral research findings on other aspects of child sexual abuse (Paine & Hansen, 2002). Disclosures in natural contexts have rarely been investigated, and there is a need for more in-depth studies on children's disclosures of personally sensitive issues (Buhrmester & Prager, 1995; Searight, Thomas, Manley, & Ketterson, 1995) and particularly studies where the children's own fears and perceptions are explored (Goodman-Brown et al., 2003).

Studies of the circumstances that may facilitate dialogues that result in disclosure will provide valuable insight into the process of disclosure as well as increase the understanding of the dialogical processes within families. The present study contributes to the knowledge in this area by exploring disclosure of sexual abuse as a process over time, including several situations where a caregiver is trying to find out whether a child could have experienced sexual abuse. The study investigates the disclosures of alleged child sexual abuse as they occur in natural situations and the circumstances that surrounded the disclosure process. The focus is on how the involved people, particularly the child, perceive the ongoing process.

A research project was designed where clinical assistance was provided to families and their children, and where they were invited to share their experiences. A qualitative approach to data collection and analysis was employed, as it is particularly suitable for studying processes such as this. Using therapeutic sessions as data gives the researcher a unique position from which to study communication, feelings, thoughts and relationships that often are personal and private (Kvale, 2003, Stiles, 1999). Also data from clinical settings has typically been lacking in child abuse and protection research.

Because sexual abuse rarely involves witnesses and the accused seldom admits to abuse, one is always confronted with the question of what really happened. Since the focus here is on the process of ongoing disclosure as it is perceived by caregiver and child, and not children's testimonial accuracy per se, families where the child verbally articulated something that made their caregivers so concerned that they turned to professional help to clarify the meanings of this, are included in this article. It is these initial concerns that bring confusion and where caregivers are looking for ways to help their children that is the focal point of this study.