Talk:Child sexual abuse

Article Checklist for "Child sexual abuse"

Workgroup category or categories	No categories listed [Editors asked to check categories]
Article status	Developed article: complete or nearly so
Underlinked article?	No
Basic cleanup done?	Yes
Checklist last edited by	Mike Mayors (Talk) 21:51, 8 June 2007 (CDT)

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	NOTICE, please do not remove from top of page.
	I have released a portion of this content on Wikipedia, specifically the section on Child grooming. Therefore, identical text that appears there is my authorship, and no credit for Wikipedia content on Citizendium applies.
	Mike Mayors 10:58, 8 June 2007 (CDT)

Note: "Effects of child sexual abuse" IS from Wikipedia

I feel it is important to note that the effects of sexual abuse is from Wikipedia. Although I tried to rewrite it entirely, there are some sentences or phrases left unchanged. The citations also remained intact. However, because a lot of the research cited is either controversial or experimental, maybe it can be replaced with more generally-accepted claims? Up to you guys, I just thought the section should be there regardless, so I imported it in. Mike Mayors (Talk) 11:23, 8 June 2007 (CDT)

Is it original

Is any of this from wikipedia? Do we need to check the button? Matt Innis (Talk) 08:09, 8 June 2007 (CDT)

toned down

I toned down the language in the first paragraph to be more inline with the family friendly policies. I am totally aware of all the implications here for accuracy and facing the realities of this atrocity, but I think we can present it without undo explicitness. Matt Innis (Talk) 07:47, 8 June 2007 (CDT)

This article is not from Wikipedia

Everything with the exception of "Effects of child sexual abuse" is not from wikipedia - it's from research done on Google, or information found on other sites. I went out of my way to completely write from scratch. I apologize for the lack of citations in other areas of the article, I'll try to add them soon. I also apologize for the explicit nature of the introduction paragraph...thx for fixing that. If you have any other problems, PLEASE let me know as I am still new here and don't all the rules/policies...though I think I've read them all. :) Mike Mayors 10:11, 8 June 2007 (CDT)

PS ... how do you sign your name with the "(Talk)" link? The four squiggilies (tildes) only links to my user page...

I think you are doing fine, you just started off with a bang and I have to get you pointed in the right direction quicker than most :) . If the one section is from wikipedia, we might still have to check the box, read the section on new practices from wikipedia. I have to run, but will be back in a minute to give you the (Talk) hint ;-) Matt Innis (Talk) 10:28, 8 June 2007 (CDT)

A couple of points-I think you should include a section on incest because this is recognized as a recurrent form of sexual abuse of children. Also, the demographics need to be expanded outside of the USA. When it comes to reporting of child abuse, the class and social standing of the child have a lot to do with the numbers that are reported, in other words, there are many papers that show that teachers, nurses, doctors, are reluctant to view wealthy children as having been abused, and this feeds into distorting the statitistics for race and class, be aware of this and avoid naive reporting. Nancy Sculerati 15:32, 8 June 2007 (CDT)

Thanks Nancy, I'll keep that in mind. I'll try to gather statistics in other countries such as the UK or Canada. and I'll try to do a little research on Incest, or intrafamilial child sexual abuse. Mike Mayors (Talk) 17:23, 8 June 2007 (CDT)

Some references

Holmes WC, Slap GB: Sexual abuse of boys. JAMA 1998; 280:1855.

We need a psychologist and sociologist on board

Mike, so far so good. Now you need to get a psychologist or a sociologist or both. If we decide to go Healing Arts, I can act as an editor as well, so with Nancy on board and another with the specific knowledge we are looking for, you might end up with a really good article with three editors to get it Approved. I would suggest that you go to both of those workgroups and look through the editor's bios and pick the ones that look the best. Contact them through their email or any way you can and ask them to come take a look at your article and comment and/or help further develop this article. Lets see what happens! I could do it for you, but then it would be my article and since you did all the work.. :-) --Matt Innis (Talk) 22:23, 8 June 2007 (CDT)

Clearly, anyway, it has some either Psychology or Health Sciences aspects, related to psychiatry. Really, we are going to have to start specifying primary and secondary managing workgroups, I'm afraid--with only the former actually being able to approve the workgroup. I think that the workgroup that approves the article should be named after the discipline in which most of the scholarship on the topic occurs--thus, I believe, psychology and sociology. I wouldn't be comfortable with Healing Arts taking on the article simply because the topic is related tangentially to Healing Arts. Philosophy, and no doubt other fields, would have as nearly as good a claim, I think.

As to the primary and secondary workgroups--I'll save that proposal for later. --Larry Sanger 00:25, 9 June 2007 (CDT)

Language

"is a term that refers to" is no good to my ear. Meanwhile, I'll work on references, if I had your e-mail address, I could e-mail you some fulltext stuff. Nancy Sculerati 10:57, 9 June 2007 (CDT)

Yeah I was just thinking that. If you can think of a better opening sentence, please change it. I just didn't wanna copy Wikipedia's definition that refers to it as a "legal term"...although that may be the way to go. By the way, I contacted some other psychology editors to help review and add to this article, this way we're not working alone. Hopefully they'll get back to me. I'll email you my email address so you can send me some references. Thanks again. Mike Mayors (Talk) 11:22, 9 June 2007 (CDT)

"is a term referring to when an adult"? I'm trying to think of how to reword it. Mike Mayors (Talk) 11:24, 9 June 2007 (CDT)

Fixated offenders

minor point, APA? Spell it out. The health science literature is full of these abbreviations, they help no one, please do not use them without at least spelling it out once, if then. We are too embryonic at the moment to make all these red links- I mean, it is up to you, but unless you yourself plan to write an article very shortly on this association, the thing to do is make it clear here what this organization is. Nancy Sculerati 01:55, 10 June 2007 (CDT)

Good point, I'll keep that in mind in the future. Also feel free to remove the red links. We probably won't have those articles anytime soon...or at least I won't be the one writing them. Mike Mayors (Talk) 07:45, 10 June 2007 (CDT)

Added new sections - please review for accuracy and neutrality.

I added 1.1.1 "Lack of reporting by medical professionals" and 6.3 "Parenting sexually abused children". If anyone could review these new additions and make changes where needed, I'd greatly appreciate it. :) Mike Mayors (Talk) 21:32, 10 June 2007 (CDT)

6.3 This is a very specific viewpoint that is being promoted here. In my opinion, the section should be more descriptive rather than advocating. David Kuhn 17:38, 21 June 2007 (CDT)

I removed the "parenting abused children" section as it was kind of irrelevant. And as for the underreporting, I'll try to be more vague with the examples I use. The point here is to make clear that it does not always get reported, not to scrutinize pediatricians and doctors for negligence. (The source that I used was scrutinizing medical professionals, hence the point of view created in that section - my apologies) Mike Mayors (Talk) 23:30, 26 June 2007 (CDT)

Symptom lists / Warning signs

I will raise the question about whether symptom lists should be included or not. They are problematic because all symptoms are non-specific for child sexual abuse. This means that any symptom may stem from other factors than CSA and considering how misused these kind of lists have been over the years, one may argue that they do more harm than good. David Kuhn 03:42, 21 June 2007 (CDT)

I concur, I actually noticed that when researching other forms of child abuse. Any behavioral changes can be a warning sign for anything. Only sexually-specific signs (i.e. acting out sexual positions with dolls) can be attributed specifically to CSA. Maybe we can eliminate all non-sexually specific warning signs? Mike Mayors (Talk) 23:24, 26 June 2007 (CDT)

Elimination all non-sexually specific signs sounds good. David Kuhn 02:33, 27 June 2007 (CDT)

Inclusion of sentence in Introduction refuting "assumed harm" terminology

The indiscriminate use of the term child sexual abuse to describe all adult/non-adult sexual behavior have been critized on the ground that "it is not scientifically sound to assume that violation of the social norms lead to harm for the child or adolescent".[2] The term abuse implies coercion or harm, and the assumption of harm in all cases of abuse have been shown to be inaccurate in the scientific literature.

Alright um...two things I think should be noted:

1) I think this should be debated in the effects section since it directly pertains to the effects of child sexual abuse - unless you want to make a terminology subsection. It's up to you.

2) While assuming harm between any adult/child sexual relations has been up for debate since there can be many confounding variables, and while it is not necessarily inappropriate the mention the possibility of no harm, I don't want the article to come off as though it is condoning adult/child sex or minimizing the effects of the abuse. Furthermore I think it should be noted that there are some studies (posted on wikipedia) that controlled for confounding variables and found little difference in the results. I'll try to dig those up so they can be mentioned too.

Also, I think the the assumed harm argument is debated under the positive negative effects section, though I don't believe the terminology is mentioned. So don't get me wrong, I think this argument should definitely be included - maybe under its own section, but try to keep it as neutral as possible...even though its hard to find unbiased sources. Let me know what you think. Mike Mayors (Talk) 23:15, 26 June 2007 (CDT)

1) A terminology subsection would be best in my opinion, it has enough literature on the topic to be important enough to have its own section.

2) I beleive in stating the facts and let the reader draw his own conclusions. As mentioned by many reasearchers over the years, lack of harm does not mean lack of wrongfullness. David Kuhn 02:31, 27 June 2007 (CDT)

About confounding variables. There are basically two viewpoints in current literature. One assumes that CSA and harm are casually connected, and one assumes there is no such connection. So the first line tend to focus on non-consensual cases since they provide such answers, and the second tend to focus on separating consensual from non-consensual cases since they then get the results they want. The problem is when comparing these two types of studies, wikipedia tries to compare them although they study quite different things and this is a mistake that should not be made here. If comparisons are to be made, they should atleast concern studies that study the same things.

A separation can be made. 1) Studies of confounding variables in non-consensual cases, and 2) studies of counfounding variables in consensual cases. For (political) reasons some argue that minors cannot consent to sex, but this is a moral/legal argument rather than a scientific one and we should be clear on which perspectives we are taking and clearly state them in the article when doing so. David Kuhn 03:14, 27 June 2007 (CDT)