Child Sexual Abuse

Additionally, courts in several states have uniformly excluded evidence derived from Summit’s study that has been used to persuade juries that a child’s testimony is truthful or indicative of abuse. To put it more bluntly, “syndrome evidence” has been largely discredited.

So, the question remains. How do children report that they are being sexually abused? A major comparison of 17 different child sex abuse disclosure studies was conducted by researchers from Johns Hopkins, Cornell, and Southern Methodist Universities. Among their findings:

Failure to report abuse is common among sexually abused children.

When children do disclose abuse, it takes a long time for them to do so, sometimes more than 6 months to even a year.

Children who feel responsible for their own abuse may delay reporting.

Disclosure happens more often and sooner when the abuser is a stranger or non-family member.

Children under age four are more likely to make accidental disclosures in the form of spontaneous statements that may not be relevant to the topic of conversation or the activity going on around them.

School-aged children are more likely to disclose abuse with purposeful statements made during formal interviews or evaluations.

There may be specific teen disclosure patterns, namely that this age group has a greater awareness of the negative consequences of reporting intrafamilial abuse and, as such, may withhold reporting. They may also be reluctant to disclose abuse because they consider it to be a private matter or they have already told their friends.

The most significant predictor that a child will disclose in a formal interview is whether or not he has disclosed before, either to a teacher, parent, etc… So, once children have made an initial disclosure, they are likely to maintain their story during later during formal interviews.

If they have not been suggestively interviewed, most children will disclose abuse within the first or second interview and only a small number of these will later recant their reports.