Child Sexual Abuse: Forensic Medical Assessment of the Traumatic Injuries Over the Victim’s Body
Date
2023
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Cureus
Abstract
Child sexual abuse is a public health problem that affects children worldwide in all ethnic, educational, and
socioeconomic groups. These assaults are extremely dangerous not only due to their direct physical traumas
received at the time of the abuse, but they also have long-term consequences that can worsen the future
quality of the victim’s life. A retrospective study of all cases related to child sexual abuse for five years was
performed by materials of the Clinic of Forensic Medicine and Deontology, Sofia, Bulgaria. Ninety-five cases
involve children from both genders. The traumatic injuries were carefully examined and classified according
to their localization over the victim’s bodies and based on the time that had passed after the reported
assaults. In cases of sexual violence, the most informative and pointing at the exact type of violence are the
injuries situated in the anogenital area. Too often, there is a lack of physical findings, depending on the type
of sexual violence or associated with the prolonged time that passes after the crime. Children are unaware of
what they have to do after suffering such traumas, or they are scared to share their experience with different
family members, which can lead to late forensic examination and lack of physical and biological findings,
which are the most critical traces in the criminal prosecution of the crimes and this can be a possibility for
the perpetrator not to be charged for his unlawful actions.
Description
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Article
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Keywords
physical abuse, trauma, sexual violence, injury patterns, International Resources, Bulgaria, child maltreatment
Citation
Mileva, B., Goshev, M., Georgieva, M., Braynova, I., & Alexandrov, A. (2023). Child Sexual Abuse: Forensic Medical Assessment of the Traumatic Injuries Over the Victim’s Body. Cureus, 15(12).