Intervention in Child Sexual Abuse: An Analysis of Professional Activities

• Main Authors: Bowen, Ann, Newlon, Betty J
• Format: Report
• Language: English
• Published: 1988
• Subjects: Adolescents; Child Welfare; Counselor Attitudes; Counselors; Criminals; Daughters; Employee Attitudes; Fathers; Human Services; Incest; Intervention; Labeling (of Persons); Mental Health; Parent Child Relationship; Police; Preadolescents

This study explored the similarities and differences in professional attitudes toward intervention in incest cases. The sample consisted of 35 men and women employed at one of the following: a counseling agency, child protective services, sheriff's department, and police department in a Southwest community. Demographic data were collected, including age, sex, marital status, parental status, education, and number of child sexual abuse cases encountered. Subjects responded to each of four case vignettes, three of which involved specific cases of father-daughter or stepfather-daughter incest and one that asked subjects to respond to incest in general. Subjects responded by answering 10 intervention statements on a Likert-type scale. The results showed significant differences in attitudes regarding mental health therapy as an intervention and in attitudes regarding the father as mentally disturbed versus a criminal. Sheriff detectives were found to be the most punitive of all groups; sheriff and police detectives were more apt to view the offender as a criminal rather than mentally disturbed. Counselors and child protective services workers agreed more strongly than did police and sheriff detectives on mental health therapy for the father, daughter, and family. (Author/NB)