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Multiple Victimization of Children: Conceptual, Developmental, Research, and Treatment Issues

NCJ Number
178002
Editor(s)
B. B. Robbie Rossman Ph.D, Mindy S. Rosenberg Ph.D
Date Published
1998
Length
359 pages
Annotation
These 17 papers focus on children who are victimized through multiple forms of abuse and other types of family disturbance, with emphasis on multiple victimization as common in child maltreatment cases, on the impacts of multiple victimization on child development, and on treatment approaches and issues.
Abstract
The papers present the perspectives of researchers, clinicians, and a prosecuting attorney. The first section applies three conceptual models to multiple victimization; these models include cumulative risk and protection models, a stress and coping approach, and trauma models. The next chapters focus on multiple victimization at three developmental stages: preschool, school age, and adolescence. Additional chapters examine the effect of multiple victimization on children's cognition, the self-system, the development of self and emotional regulation, and interpersonal relationships. Further chapters discuss interventions with young children who have been multiply abused, the process and outcome or child psychotherapy in multiply victimized children, and the treatment of multiply traumatized adolescents. Other papers analyze the correlates of multiple forms of victimization in religion-related cases of child abuse and legal and ethical issues in the treatment of multiply victimized children. The final chapter describes three areas of empirical and clinical scholarship that need further attention: (1) assessment and consideration of multiple victimization; (2) assessment and consideration of additional sources of adversity in the child's environment; and (3) creation and use of improved measures of shorter-term outcome and longer-term adaptation for multiply victimized children. Tables, index, and chapter reference lists