Citation

Alaggia R, Collin-Vézina D. Child Abuse Negl. 2020; ePub(ePub): 104284.

Affiliation

School of Social Work, McGill University, 3506 University Street, Room 321A, Montreal, H3A 2A7, Quebec, Canada. Electronic address: Delphine.collin-vezina@mcgill.ca.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2020, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.chiabu.2019.104284

PMID

32088007

Abstract

This special issue comes after over two decades of studies showing that child sexual abuse (CSA) remains a significant problem across the globe (World Health Organization, 2017). Despite the proliferation of trauma-informed care (TIC) approaches (Garza et al., 2019; Harris & Fallot, 2001; Knight, 2015), bringing increased attention to the neurobehavioral and mental health impacts of adverse childhood events such as sexual abuse and assaults (Evans & Coccoma, 2014; World Health Organization, 2014), as well as the fact that many countries are duty-bound to prevent such violence and promote child and adolescent rights (Mathews, 2019; Wekerle, 2013), delays in CSA disclosures are still common (Alaggia, Collin-Vézina, & Lateef, 2019). While we have learned a great deal over the last two decades, the knowledge gained about barriers and facilitators to CSA disclosures has been mainly in the domain of individual and interpersonal factors (Alaggia, Collin-Vézina, & Lateef, 2019). Our focus for this issue turned to spotlighting exploration of environmental factors, to widen the field’s lens for understanding the many influences that impact CSA disclosures, and to put an emphasis on disclosure as a process.

Understood within a social ecological framework, environmental factors are those domains outside of individual characteristics and interpersonal dynamics (Bronfenbrenner, 1979; Ungar et al., 2013). These include communities, socio-political climates, culture, and the digital domain that has become so prominent in the crime of CSA. These environmental influences create conditions for disclosure, including decisions by survivors to not disclose...

Language: en