Professional Response to Child Sexual Abuse

Abstract

The article criticizes both practice and research in the professional response to child sexual abuse. Few images are more painful today than those of the sexual molestation of innocent children. So painful, in fact, that such injury has in modern times evoked a most primitive defense mechanism--denial. Over the last two decades this coping strategy has become less viable with increasing awareness of child abuse. For example, child abuse reporting laws were passed in every state between 1963 and 1967, U.S. Congress passed the landmark Child Abuse and Treatment Act in 1973 establishing, among other things, the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect and the current child protective system. Although the end of our denial of child sexual abuse is overdue, it would be premature to celebrate the results of the fledgling efforts to "do something" about child sexual abuse. Unfortunately, the same discomfort that led to denial of the problem in previous years may lead to premature acceptance of current responses and remedies.