Abstract:
The purpose of the current study was to investigate factors that influence the believing of child sexual abuse (CSA) disclosures. CSA is a major public health issue (WHO, 2002). Approximately one third of females and one sixth of boys will be sexually abused before the age of 18 (Kendall-Tackett, Williams, & Finkelhor, 1993), yet most victims do not disclose the abuse until long after it occurred, if ever (London, Bruck, Ceci, & Shuman, 2005). Not disclosing has many deleterious effects for victims including not stopping chronic abuse and not receiving therapeutic interventions (Ullman, 2003). Fear of not being believed is a major deterrent against disclosure (Goodman-Brown, Edelstein, Goodman, Jones, & Gordon, 2003) and not being believed when one discloses has negative psychological and physiological health effects (Ullman, 2003). Therefore, the question about factors that influence believing disclosures is related to public health.