Citation

dams-Tucker C. Child Abuse Negl. 1981; 5(3): 361-367.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1981, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

A retrospective overview of 28 sexually-abused children evaluated at a university-based child guidance clinic is reported. These 28 cases are scrutinized and empirical data are culled on the following sociodemographic and clinical variables: age, gender, race, family composition, referral source, presenting complaints, type of referral, psychiatric history of the child and family, diagnosis, disposition, type and duration of treatment, and a severity rating (done by parents) of the child's behavioral maladjustment. Historical information about the sexual abuse is presented: molester, type of abuse, duration of abuse and recency of sex abuse. The sociodemographic findings reveal the sex-abused child prototype to be a white girl, 9 years old, from a working class family headed by both parents or by mother alone. She was abused by an adult male relative. If a boy, abuse was by a male age-mate. Genital abuse was the most frequent type with sexual intercourse of very high frequency for children of all ages. Many psychiatric difficulties were reported in the families of these children. Some children had more than one molester. The clinical findings show psychic suffering among all studied children--most of moderate levels, behavior reactions. All but 3 children had therapy recommended to them. Presenting difficulties were for sexual abuse per se and/or for a wide-ranging variety of symptom complaints. The socioclinical overview of sexually molested children compells researchers to look closer at broader, extra-familial, cultural and socio-economic issues in the lives of these children and not just at psychopathologies of individual molesters and family units.