Helpline highlight:: The under-reporting of sexual abuse
• NSPCC research (Radford et al, 2011) estimates that nearly a quarter (24.1 per cent) of young adults experienced sexual abuse perpetrated by an adult or by a peer
during childhood.
• Over a third of children aged 11-17 (34 per cent) who experienced sexual abuse by an adult did not tell anybody else about it. This indicates that sexual abuse is under reported.
• Between 1 April 2011 and 31 March 2012, of the 42,755 contacts to the NSPCC, 13 per cent (5,360) were about child sexual abuse.
• 34 per cent (1,800) of the contacts1 we received about sexual abuse came from parents or carers. This is a higher proportion than for any other type of abuse. 18 per cent of contacts about emotional abuse are from parents or carers, 14 per cent for physical abuse and 12 per cent for neglect.
• 39 per cent (2,071) of contacts about sexual abuse were so serious they had to be referred to social services or the police. This may appear low when compared to other types of abuse (59 per cent for emotional abuse, 67 per cent for physical abuse and 71 per cent for neglect) but can be explained by the relatively high number of contacts made by parents and carers. The closer people are to the child they are contacting the helpline about, the more reluctant they may be to provide the kind of identifying information that would make a referral possible. They may be ashamed, or fearful of the repercussions of reporting someone they know well.
• The data on contacts to the NSPCC about sexual abuse do seem to support the findings of previous studies that children may be more likely to disclose abuse – whether directly or indirectly – to close family members and friends than to others, such as professionals.2
• While adults tend to report sexual abuse more readily than other forms of abuse, there are still too many people waiting (33 per cent of callers to the helpline waited over a month). This can have potentially devastating effects on the children and young people in question.
The NSPCC’s helpline enables adults to report concerns about a child and talk them through with a trained counsellor.3 The helpline supports statutory services by ‘triaging’ contacts from the public and some professionals, passing on only those which constitute actionable concerns.4 This report draws on the NSPCC’s qualitative and quantitative research, as well as that conducted by other people and organisations, to examine the dynamics affecting the under-reporting of sexual abuse.
Published : 20th December 2012
Publisher : NSPCC [ More From This Publisher ]
Rights : NSPCC
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