Psychological Impact of Child Sexual Abuse: a Ex Post Facto Research Between Abused Minors and Legal Custody Cases

Abstract

Among all cases instructed, in the first specialized court for violence to infants and teenagers in Europe, in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (Spain), there has been an increase of the use of reports of child sexual abuse as a tool to achieve the custody of the children. The aim of this study was to analyze the psychological traces child sexual abuse leaves in minors and set the differences between sexually abused children and those that are subjected to custody lawsuits, but that were never abused. The “Child and Adolescent Assessment System” was used to detect a wide spectrum of emotional and behavioral problems such as internalized, externalized, contextual and specific problems, in 73 minors of Spanish nationality involved in legal proceedings. From these, 38 were assigned to the “Custody” group as they had required forensic psychological evaluation in custody lawsuits (13 boys and 25 girls). Thirty-five children were assigned to the “ASI” (Child Sexual Abuse) group as minors that required psychological evaluation as victims of sexual abuse (4 boys and 31 girls), all of them between 13 and 17 years old (M = 15). The comparative analysis revealed significant differences in the second order factors: global rate of psychological problems, rate of emotional problems and problems with executive functions. Greater problems were found in the group of victims of child sexual abuse. No differences were found in the rate of family conflicts of the minors. Binary logistic regression with taking the belonging to the “ASI” group as a dependent variable found a higher probability for abuse when minors presented emotional problems, post traumatic symptoms, depression, and eating disorders. The forensic psychological evaluation of children can help identify false accusations of sexual abuse in custody lawsuits.