Manifestations of Sexual Abuse in Preschool-Aged Children

Abstract

All adults who interact with preschool children need to be aware of possible indicators of sexual abuse. This information is especially important to advanced practice psychiatric/mental health nurses who interact with preschool-aged children in clinical, therapeutic, educational, research, legal, and community settings and to other nurses working in pediatric settings. Because there are few, if any, absolute physical indicators of child sexual abuse, the identification of empirically based emotional and behavioral indicators is important. This article reviews six studies that sought to identify such indicators for the preschool population. Studies reviewed confirm that not all sexually abused children are equally traumatized. When sexually abused children were compared to groups of non-sexually abused children receiving psychiatric services only one discriminating variable consistently arose. When overt sexual behavior, inappropriate for age, is manifested by a preschool-aged child, sexual abuse should be suspected. The identification of manifestations of sexual abuse in preschool-aged children is an appropriate topic for nursing research.

Understanding the relationship of violence against women to unwanted pregnancy and its resolution.

“…Although being sexually precocious is not necessarily evidence of abuse, inappropriately sexualized behavior has been found to be a reliable indicator of abuse in children as young as 4 to 5 years old (Slusser, 1995). This is consonant with other research that suggests that timing of victimization is important: Sexualization may more frequently occur with preschool victims compared with school-age girls (Friedrich et al, 1992).…”

Prevalence of Child Sexual Abuse in Pediatric Patients With Chronic Abdominal Pain

“…Doctors may be afraid of unnecessarily worrying parents or of falsely accusing them because this could cause a negative atmosphere in a diagnostic interview. Moreover, CSA is difficult to detect because of several factors such as a low specificity of symptoms (40) and feelings of guilt, nonunderstanding, and distrust in abused children resulting in unwillingness to talk about their experiences (41). Factors influencing the willingness of children to tell others about CSA could be whether the perpetrator is someone close to them (eg, a parent vs a vague friend of the family), whether the abuse has stopped, the age of the child, whether violence or threat are used, and how well they know and trust the interviewer (41,42).…”