Understanding Nonoffending Caregiver Protection in Child Sexual Abuse
Abstract
Child sexual abuse is a global issue that has affected children, families, and communities
for centuries regardless of socioeconomic, religious, ethnic, race, or multicultural factors
and distinctions. Sexually abused children may be reluctant to disclose sexual abuse due
to perceptions or realities that their nonoffending caregiver (NOC) will not believe their
reports and may fail to provide adequate protection. The purpose of this quantitative
study was to assess if child demographics (i.e., age, sex, and race/ethnicity); type of
sexual offense (i.e., contact or noncontact); and perpetrator relationship to the child (i.e.,
familial or extrafamilial) predict a NOC’s response (i.e., protection or failure to protect)
to child sex abuse disclosures, using cognitive dissonance theory and neutralization
theory as theoretical foundations. Archived and extracted data (2015–2017) were utilized
from the Utah Department of Human Services. A binary logistic regression was used to
determine the predictive quality of the independent variables for the outcome variable.
The results indicated that the odds of protection were greater for non-White females
experiencing noncontact abuse by a familial offender. Age was not a statistically
significant predictor of NOC protection in the full model. The findings from this study
support positive social change by providing research-based conclusions that can promote
prevention, intervention, and education programs by child protection teams for victims of
child sexual abuse and their families.
Description
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Article
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Keywords
child abuse, non offending caregiver, services, prevention, intervention
Citation
Sally, C. L. (2019). Understanding Nonoffending Caregiver Protection in Child Sexual Abuse. Dissertation. Walden University.