A review of the literature and proposal for best practices for the assessment of sexual abuse of children

Abstract

Sexual abuse of children is an area that was largely overlooked by both researchers and clinicians until the late 1970's. Currently, the bulk of available literature focuses on retrospective accounts by adults who were sexually victimized as children, research studies which are flawed due to small sample sizes and inconsistent definitions. While psychologists and teachers are among those who are mandated to report abuse, many fail to do so because of their uncertainty that abuse occurred. More attention needs to paid to victims while they are still children, to better serve this population. The current project addressed the problem of definition of sexual abuse, reviews the literature on assessment techniques, and proposes a working sexual abuse evaluation model for use by clinicians.