NCJ Number
192601
Journal
Trauma, Violence, & Abuse Volume: 3 Issue: 1 Dated: January 2002 Pages: 40-67
Date Published
January 2002
Length
28 pages
Annotation
This literature review considered three questions regarding guardian support of sexually abused children: How is guardian support defined and operationalized? What percentage of guardians are supportive? What are the intervening variables for guardian support?
Abstract
To answer these questions, a search was conducted on PsychLit and PsychINFO for published papers on maternal support, guardian support, and parental support, and bibliographies from other reviews of the empirical literature on nonoffending mothers were scrutinized. This review found that 75 percent of nonoffending guardians across studies were partially or fully supportive of their sexually abused child after disclosure. Four groups of intervening variables for guardian support across studies emerged, including those related to the child's previous abuse history, believability of the disclosure, the guardian's relationship with the offender, and buffers/recent stressors. Guardian support, as assessed by the clinician, is currently defined by the needs of the child protection system rather than being grounded within a psychological theory. The review advises that problems with having a system-defined construct of guardian support are a narrow definition of guardian support that is based on meeting the needs of the child protection system; the inadvertent reification of guardian support as a psychological construct, with an inherent, but illogical, assumption that guardians whose children are removed from the home are therefore unsupportive; and measures and indicators of guardian support that lack construct validity. 2 tables, 53 references, and appended listing and findings of studies that have assessed guardian support and its intervening variables