Written by Georgia Wright, PhD student, Crime and Conflict theme, Centre for Applied Psychological Science & Dr Sam Richardson, Crime and Conflict theme, Centre for Applied Psychological Science
Child Sexual Abuse (CSA) is a widespread issue that has detrimental effects to victims’ mental and physical health worldwide. In the year ending March 2019, the Crime Survey for England and Wales estimated that 3.1 million people or 7.5% of the population aged 18-74 had experienced CSA. They found that 2.4 million of these were female (11.5%) and 709,000 were male (3.5%). These CSA trends continue globally however, true prevalence rates are likely to be much higher than the current estimates due to victims not disclosing abuse (Attrash-Najjar et al., 2023).
Victims not disclosing abuse or delaying disclosure not only inhibits their access to essential support services but also can impact investigations which reduces the possibility of prosecuting CSA perpetrators. Victim disclosures are largely impacted by the response and perceived response from the victim’s parents, peers and wider society. Believing CSA myths and misconceptions – often due to a lack of awareness – can result in negative responses when a victim discloses abuse (Berkmen & Seçim, 2019). Common examples of these myths include that CSA perpetrators are strangers to the victim, that children can enjoy the abuse and that children often fabricate stories of abuse. These myths pose severe negative consequences to victim’s mental and physical wellbeing including being at an increased risk of depression, suicidal thoughts, substance misuse, chronic pain and obesity.
The consequences of believing CSA myths are particularly detrimental when evident in parents and caregivers. This is due to parents and caregivers integral role of reducing a child’s risk of CSA victimization (Salloum et al., 2020). Knowledge of CSA can aid parents in identifying signs of abuse, producing a positive supportive environment to disclose abuse and implement CSA prevention strategies. However, research has found that parents often lack awareness and believe myths surrounding CSA. This in turn can increase the risk of victim blaming which poses further negative consequences to victims and inhibits disclosure (Quintero-Hernández, 2017). Additionally, adverse parenting styles (hereafter maladaptive parenting) can include increased psychological control, lack of empathy, neglect or abuse and punitive discipline. Maladaptive parenting has been found to impact children’s socioemotional development, emotion regulation and mental health throughout the child’s lifetime which highlights the long-term impact of maladaptive parenting.
Despite this plethora of research examining CSA, parents’ awareness, maladaptive parenting, CSA myths and victim blaming, no studies had explored the overlap of these areas.
In turn, I sought to discover if there was a relationship between believing in CSA myths and victim blaming. I also aimed to discover if believing in CSA myths or maladaptive parenting scores could predict victim blaming attitudes. Finally, I aimed to discover if maladaptive parenting impacted the relationship between believing CSA myths and victim blaming. 97 participants who identified as parents took part, 14 identified as males and 82 identified as females and one participant preferred not to say. Their ages ranged from 18 to 76 with a mean of 39.47. All participants completed the CSA myth questionnaire before reading a hypothetical scenario of CSA where a 13 year old (participants were randomly selected to view either the male or female victim scenario) was sexually abused by a babysitter who was a family friend. After this, participants were asked to complete the final two questionnaires measuring victim blaming and maladaptive parenting.
One of the key findings was that CSA myth believing was positively associated with victim blaming attitudes. The second key finding was that maladaptive parenting was also able to predict victim blaming attitudes. These results imply that reducing the prevalence of CSA myths and maladaptive parenting attitudes could in turn reduce the blame placed on victims of CSA. The research has found that increasing parents’ awareness and education surrounding CSA is potentially an appropriate and beneficial method to reduce the risk of CSA but also to reduce victim blaming attitudes. It is therefore of the utmost importance that educational programmes be utilized for parents and prospective parents to increase their awareness of CSA (Batham et al., 2019). By reducing the blame and negative responses towards victims this could also reduce the aforementioned detrimental impacts to victims’ mental and physical wellbeing. Furthermore, reducing negative responses and victim blaming could encourage more victims to disclose abuse which will result in more victims accessing the support services they require.
Key references
Attrash-Najjar, A., Cohen, N., Glucklich, T., & Katz, C. (2023). “I was the only one talking about the abuse”: Experiences and perceptions of survivors who underwent child sexual abuse as boys. Child Abuse & Neglect, 140. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2023.106144
Batham, Y., Koreti, S., & Gaur, A. (2019). Are parents and children aware of child sexual prevention education? International Journal of Contemporary Pediatrics, 6(6). https://doi.org/10.18203/2349-3291.ijcp20194183
Berkmen, B., & Seçim, G. (2019). Scale for Measuring Child Sexual Abuse Awareness for Parents: A Scale Development Study. Current Psychology, 42, 15978–15990. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-019-00512-6
Quintero-Hernández, Y. A. (2017). Social, Cultural and Family Practices as Determinants of Narratives and the Self-Image of 11 Women with Histories of Child Sexual Abuse. Open Journal of Social Sciences, 5(5), 121–133. https://doi.org/10.4236/jss.2017.55009
Salloum, A., Johnco, C., Zepeda-Burgos, R. M., Cepeda, S. L., Guttfreund, D., Novoa, J. C., Schneider, S. C., Lastra, A., Hurtado, A., Katz, C. L., & Storch, E. A. (2020). Parents’ Knowledge, Attitudes, and Experiences in Child Sexual Abuse Prevention in El Salvador. Child Psychiatry & Human Development, 51(3), 343–354. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10578-019-00946-w