Attributions of blame among victims of child sexual abuse: Findings from a community sample

According to the attribution theory, negative outcomes of child sexual abuse (CSA) are thought to vary depending on whether CSA victims attribute the abuse to internal or external factors, respectively, self-blame and perpetrator-blame. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to identify abuse characteristics and attitudes that influence blame attributions among CSA victims from a community sample. Data from respondents with a history of CSA (N = 1,496) have been used in predicting blame attributions; perpetrator-blame, self-blame, or both. Results from a multinomial logistic regression analysis showed that attitudes toward gender roles had a significant effect on blame: victims were more likely to blame themselves when they endorsed more conservative gender attitudes than victims with more liberal attitudes. Implications for this finding are discussed

Factor Structure of the Dutch Version of the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire-SF among Female Sex Workers in the Netherlands

In this study, the factor structure of the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire short form (CTQ-SF) in a group of 123 female sex workers in the Netherlands was examined. Structural equation modeling was used to perform the confirmatory factor analysis. The fit between the five-factor model of Bernstein and Fink and the observed empirical model was good. We found a five-factor solution accounting for 66.65% of the variance. With the exception of one item ("I knew there was someone to take care of me and protect me"), factor analysis showed encouraging factor loadings.status: publishe

A Quantitative Study on Gender Differences in Disclosing Child Sexual Abuse and Reasons for Nondisclosure

Despite the available literature on disclosure of child sexual abuse (CSA), little is known about how gender affects disclosure. This article aims to quantitatively examine whether gender differences exist in formal (to legal or child protection authorities) and informal (to a family member or friend) disclosure of CSA and, if so, to assess whether this relation is associated with abuse characteristics and attitudes toward gender roles. The study also aimed to examine whether gender differences exist in reasons not to disclose CSA. Data of a sample of 586 participants, who reported to have experienced CSA committed by a single person, have been used for the analyses. There were no gender differences for formal disclosure, but the informal disclosure rate of CSA was 2.4 times higher for women than men, and this effect remained significant after controlling for abuse characteristics and attitudes, even though the gender difference decreased slightly. Furthermore, women and men reported different reasons for not disclosing CSA in their personal network. Women were more worried than men that family and friends would discover the abuse and reported more insecurity of what to do in this situation. Professionals in the field of CSA should consider a gender perspective when developing guidelines. Men have rarely been the subject of studies of disclosure after CSA. Professionals should focus more on general mental health outcomes of men that are not related with CSA directly, but where the effects of CSA may exert more indirectly through associations with other problems in life

Reducing the Knowledge-Practice Gap: A New Method Applied to Crime Prevention

This article reports on a synthetic methodology used to reduce the gap between evaluations and policy-making. The authors report on a review of the effectiveness of international violence prevention programmes and discuss how these findings were disseminated to policy-makers. The findings were immediately adopted by the Dutch government and this article explains how and why