Child Sexual Abuse

Why Children Disclose or Deny Being Abused

Michael E. Lamb, Irit Hershkowitz, Margaret-Ellen Pipe

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN: 9781040363225
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Developmental Psychology
• Index: Psychology

This fully revised volume provides a rigorous assessment of the latest research relating to the disclosure of childhood sexual abuse, along with the practical and policy implications of the findings.

Leading researchers and practitioners from diverse and international backgrounds offer critical commentary on these findings gathered from both field and laboratory research. Building on the first edition, this book presents the research from the past twenty years on why delayed disclosure or denial is so common and what we can do about it. Chapters focus on field research interviewing reluctant children, including suspected victims of sexual abuse and other crimes, victims of trafficking, as well as young, suspected perpetrators of sexual abuse. Adding emphasis on research?based methods for overcoming reluctance, it also explores the different dynamics and circumstances which affect disclosure patterns and the ways in which interviewers can facilitate disclosures.

Child Sexual Abuse is for researchers and practitioners from child, forensic, and clinical psychology, social work, and all legal professionals who need to understand this crime. It will also be of interest to trainee social workers specializing in child welfare and intervention.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsements Page
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of contributors
• Preface
• 1 Child sexual abuse: Who, when, and what to tell?
• 2 Understanding child sexual abuse: Disclosures, delays, and denials
• 3 Challenges to identification and interviewing of suspected youth victims of commercial sexual exploitation and trafficking
• 4 Truths and lies: Making sense of denials and recantations in sexual abuse cases
• 5 Historical cases: Consequences of delayed disclosure on criminal prosecutions
• 6 When allegations of child sexual abuse are false
• 7 Disclosures and forensic interviews in the context of online child sexual abuse
• 8 Disclosures and denials by young people suspected of sexual offences
• 9 Strategies to overcome the reluctance to disclose abuse: The Revised NICHD Investigative Interview Protocol
• 10 Risks and benefits of therapeutic interventions for non-disclosing suspected victims of sexual abuse
• Name Index
• Subject Index