Child Sexual Abuse

Forensic Issues in Evidence, Impact, and Management

India Bryce, Wayne Petherick

• Publisher: Academic Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9780128194348
• eBook ISBN:
  9780128194355
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Forensic Science
• Index: Law

Child Sexual Abuse: Forensic Issues in Evidence, Impact, and Management covers the issue of child sexual abuse from several viewpoints. The book approaches child abuse from both victimization and offender perspectives, offering applied perspectives from experts and practitioners in the field, including discussions on policing, child safety and intelligence. This is a significant divergence from the literature most commonly provided in the market. Other sections cover psychological, physical abuse, and neglect, protective factors (at individual and community levels), recognition, responses, biopsychosocial outcomes (dealt with in discrete chapters), public policy, prevention, institutional abuse, children and corrections, treatment, management, and much more. - Approaches child sexual abuse from both victimization and offending perspectives - Comprised of both empirical scholarship and applied material from global experts and practitioners - Includes significant advances in areas such as disclosure, the neurological effects of child abuse, neuroplasticity, trafficking, and online and virtual child abuse

Part One

Types of child sexual abuse

Chapter One

Child sexual abuse: Complexities and contexts

India Bryce University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, QLD, Australia

Abstract

Childhood sexual abuse (CSA) has long been a scourge on our global society. Internationally, commissions of inquiry and task forces looking into the victimisation of children, historical and present have broadened the scope and understanding of CSA. We have come to realise that the sexual abuse of children can be institutional, virtual, and global, extending its reach far beyond the confines of the familial context. The complexity of childhood sexual abuse demands that we examine the nature of these broad contexts and integrate this understanding into our practice and our research agendas. This chapter seeks to set the scene for this edited volume, to revisit our traditional understanding of CSA, and building on this, introducing readers to the current contexts of CSA. The chapter defines intra- and extrafamilial abuse, institutional abuse, virtual and global abuse, as well as outline the relationship between DFV and CSA. This chapter is an introduction to typologies and definitions, a foundation on which the collection of contributions in this book will expand and further explore the intricacies of CSA.

Keywords

Child sexual abuse; Definition; Prevalence; Perpetrators; Victims

Contents

• Definitions
  • Defining child sexual abuse
  • Defining offenders
• Historical perspectives
• Prevalence of child sexual abuse
• Theories of CSA
  • Situational crime prevention
  • Finkelhor's four preconditions model
  • Ward's pathways model
• Contexts and characteristics of abuse
  • Victims vulnerabilities
  • Perpetrator characteristics
  • Behaviours and strategies in perpetrating CSA
• Cumulative risk and harm in CSA
• Heterogeneity of responses and diversity of management
• Chapter review questions
• References

Child sexual abuse (CSA) has long been a scourge on our global society. The sexual victimisation of the vulnerable by the more privileged and powerful is not a new concept, but rather appears to be a fundamental characteristic of the human race (Conte & Vaughan-Eden, 2018). Internationally, commissions of inquiry and task forces looking into the victimisation of children, historical and present, have broadened the scope and understanding of CSA. Through the widespread public and professional attention devoted to the sexual maltreatment of children and other vulnerable persons, we have come to realise that the sexual abuse of children can be institutional, virtual, and global, extending its reach far beyond the confines of the family.

The complexity of childhood sexual abuse demands that we examine the nature of these broad contexts and integrate this understanding into our practice and our research agendas. This chapter seeks to set the scene for this edited volume, to revisit our traditional understanding of CSA, and building on this, introducing readers to the current contexts of CSA. The chapter discusses intrafamilial, extrafamilial, and stranger-perpetrated abuse, as well as abuse which occurs in care and institutional settings. The chapter reviews characteristics of victims and perpetrators and the methods of abuse employed by perpetrators in the commission of an abusive act, including grooming behaviours. This chapter is an introduction to typologies and definitions, a foundation on which the collection of contributions in this book will expand and further explore the intricacies of CSA.

Definitions

Defining child sexual abuse

Broadly speaking, abuse is complex and multifaceted, posing significant dilemmas for definition and measurement. No less so in the case of CSA, in which researchers and practitioners have attributed dissimilar meanings to the term across disciplines and professions. According to Fergusson and Mullen (1999) defining CSA is a two-part process involving the gathering of information about sexual experiences, then the evaluation of such accounts against some explicit or implicit normative standard to establish the extent to which the experience would be considered abusive. In considering these two stages, it is important to acknowledge both the heterogeneity of CSA experiences—they vary across individual, circumstances, and period of time—and the indeterminacies of the criteria for defining abuse (Fergusson & Mullen, 1999).

Extensive literature has tackled the dilemma of defining CSA; however, no single, universal, cross-cultural definition exists, due to the subjective nature of the normative and moral standards, by which we judge unacceptable childhood sexual experience. There has been a fundamental shift in the last few decades from conceptualisations that attempt to reify CSA as a set of indictors and presentations, to a deconstructed definition of CSA which takes into account the multitudinous nature of CSA experiences. Exhaustive evidence attests to the view that both the harm perpetrated and harm incurred through the acts and behaviours classified as CSA inhabit a spectrum of diversity. The complex nature of the CSA experience can be articulated as a prime example of both multifinality and equifinality. In the case of multifinality, similar initial conditions may lead to dissimilar outcomes, depending on the particular mix of ecological risk and protective factors. Equifinality holds that multiple causal pathways can result in the same outcome, in this case, maltreatment (Feiring & Lewis, 1987; MacKenzie, Kotch, Lee, Augsberger, & Hutto, 2011).

The meanings practitioners attribute to the events, experiences, actions, and problems associated with CSA profoundly influence the way these situations are understood and addressed publicly and professionally (Conte & Vaughan-Eden, 2018). Legal definitions tend to be the most widely utilised, particularly in government policy, child protection, policing, and welfare practice; however, these tend to be fragmented across jurisdictions. Across Australian criminal law for example variations exist pertaining to the age which classifies abuse as child sexual abuse (under 16 years or under 18 years) (Quadara, Nagy, Higgins, & Siegel, 2015). Academic literature often places limitations on the categorisation of child sexual abuse, such as the perpetrator being an ‘adult’ (over the age of 18), the exclusion of non-contact abuse (such as online grooming and CEM), or non-penetrative action (Quadara et al., 2015). Institutional and organisational definitions of CSA tend to be broader, reflecting a public health model, such as that proposed by the World Health Organisation (WHO) (1999):

The involvement of a child in sexual activity that he or she does not fully comprehend, is unable to give informed consent to, or for which the child is not developmentally prepared and cannot give consent, or that violates the laws or social taboos of society. Child sexual abuse is evidenced by this activity between a child and an adult or another child who by age or development is in a relationship of responsibility, trust, or power, the activity being intended to gratify or satisfy the needs of the other person. This may include but is not limited to:

• • the inducement or coercion of a child to engage in any unlawful sexual activity;
• • the exploitative use of a child in prostitution or any unlawful sexual activity;
• • the exploitative use of a child in a pornographic performance and materials (p. 62).

Following a comprehensive review of the issues present in defining CSA, Mathews and Collin-Vézina (2019) concluded that

Child sexual abuse should be considered to exist when: (1) the person is a child (from either or both developmental and legal standpoints); (2) there is no true consent (due either to lack of capacity to provide consent, or presence of capacity but lack of consent in fact); (3) the acts are sexual (being contact or non-contact acts done to seek or obtain physical or mental sexual gratification, whether immediate or deferred in time or space, or otherwise legitimately experienced by the child as a sexual act); and (4) the acts constitute abuse (due to the presence of a relationship of power, the child's position of inequality, and the exploitation of the child's vulnerability) (p. 41).

For the purpose of this chapter, these aforementioned considerations are accepted and the following definition provided by WHO is adopted, with further clarification stipulated by Conte and Vaughan-Eden (2018) in APSAC Handbook on Child Maltreatment:

….including contact such as touching (with or without penetration) of a child's genitals, anus, or breasts, and/or having a child touch the sexual parts of a person's body. It also includes non-contact sexual behaviour such as exhibitionism, voyeurism, involving children in the making or watching of pornography, and propositioning or harassing a child in a sexual manner. The presence of force, manipulation, or coercion makes it abuse, regardless of the age difference between the child and the...

Table of contents

• Cover image
• Title page
• Table of Contents
• Copyright
• Preface
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• About the editors
• Contributors
• About the contributors
• Part One: Types of child sexual abuse
• Part Two: Impact and outcomes of child sexual abuse
• Part Three: Management: Responding to child sexual abuse
• Index