Sexual Assault Trials Handbook — The dynamics of child sexual abuse

R Shackel, “How child victims respond to perpetrators of sexual abuse” — some of the material contained in this paper was presented at the 8th Annual International Association of Forensic Mental Health Services Conference, July 2008, Vienna, Austria in a paper entitled “Responses of child victims to the perpetrators of sexual abuse”.

This paper reviews the findings of psychological research on how sexually victimised children “typically” respond to the offender and compares the findings of this research to generally held adult expectations of child victim’s behaviour. This analysis reveals that adult expectations of child victims’ responses are often inconsistent with the findings of relevant empirical research. This suggests that many adults, despite a greater societal awareness and understanding of child sexual abuse generally, may still continue to be poorly informed about the behaviour of sexually abused children and the underlying dynamics of such abuse. Consequently, in a forensic context, decision-makers in child sexual assault cases may unfairly rely on misconceived beliefs about how child victims respond to sexual abuse in evaluating such cases.