How assessment of child sexual abuse impacts prevalence rates and related effects

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This article demonstrates the importance of detailed factual assessment of child sexual abuse. Asking only for unwanted sexual experience or experiences of sexual abuse might fail to identity half to 2/3 of CSA survivors. We also observed that survivors, even those not perceiving their CSA as abusive, tend to report negative effects which might go unnoticed without good assessment. This study underlines that all forms of sexual abuse might lead to deleterious long term effects. Given the high prevalence of CSA, health professionals and community workers would benefit from workshops to increase their expertise in assessment and treatment of the many forms of sexual traumas.

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