The Scale, Nature and Trends of Irish Child Sexual Abuse: Major Shortcomings and Suggestions for a Comprehensive New Measurement Strategy

Objectives: To assess available measurements of the scale, nature and trends of Irish child sexual abuse (ICSA) and to recommend ways to address the major shortcoming that are found. Method: Determine a... [ view full abstract ]

Objectives: To assess available measurements of the scale, nature and trends of Irish child sexual abuse (ICSA) and to recommend ways to address the major shortcoming that are found.

Method: Determine a functional definition and comprehensive typology of ICSA, which is child-centric, embraces ICT and international travel-facilitated CSA, is compatible with Irish law and reflects types of CSA that Irish people are responsible for. With this definition and typology, all relevant incidence, prevalence and proxy measures of ICSA were reviewed/analysed. 

Key Results: 

• There are serious definitional and typology difficulties with existing data
• No single type of ICSA has reliable data
• There is no data at all for most ICT and international travel-facilitated ICSA
• Several types of children are not represented or significantly under-represented in available data
• Almost all proxy incidence data, such as police and social work records, are unhelpful and contribute to misconceptions
• SAVI is out of date. Continued dependence on its findings can be misleading

Conclusions: There is a need for a new comprehensive strategy to measure the scale, nature and trends of ICSA. The core research should be a prevalence study, to be repeated regularly. A well-resourced core study should:

• use self-reporting by adults with a cautious emphasis on young adults and avoid direct questioning of children or their parents/guardians
• include reliability and validity testing
• be aligned with and supportive of separate research into:
  • causality (abuser motivations, vulnerability of children, situational/modality dynamics etc)
  • impacts (harm done, healing, and dealing with identified abusers etc.)
  • monitoring and evaluation of preventive and healing measures

Suggestions are made regarding measures that could be developed as reliable and valid incidence indicators of the scale, nature or trends of certain types and aspects of ICSA.