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Abstract: 

In the early days of the child protection system, investigators tended to look at the nonoffending caregiver in child sexual abuse cases as a “secondary offender,” someone who must have known what was happening and chose to do nothing to stop the abuse. (In the majority of reported cases of child sexual abuse the offender is a male, most often a father or father figure to the child, and the nonoffending caregiver is the mother. Regardless of whether the nonoffending caregiver is mother or father, similar services and information should be offered during the investigation and court process.) (For a discussion on “The Myth of Mother as ‘Accomplice’ to Child Sexual Abuse” see Beverly Gomes- hwartz et al., Child Sexual Abuse: The Initial Effects (Sage Publications 1990).) As research began to emerge from the field some of these perspectives changed. Research claiming that secrecy is an integral part of child sexual abuse left open the possibility that in many cases, the secret is kept from the nonoffending caregiver so that the relationship can continue.

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Affiliations:  1: APRI’s National Center for Prosecution of Child Abuse.