Currently I am investigating the magnitude of sexual violence incidents in children (adolescents) aged 18 and below at an urban setting. My data source was a hospital's rape clinic register. The preliminary data came up with an alarming rate of completed rape incidents and the majority of victims were below the age of 10. Among these 30% of the children were boys. Since the data was a hospital's register it could not be representative of those who did never report to the hospital or any where else. To make a meaningful use of the data I decided to follow it further and find out what the legal system did with the cases reported to it. I wanted proportions of prosecuted incidents among those reported to the police. There were no researches in my country that tried to answer this question. The problem is however, sexual violence is considered a private matter and little attention is given to preventing it by authorities due to which I could not get an assistance from the local government to peruse the study. I am trying to access some sort of solution to this challenge if some one happens to read this and had similar problem before and know how to solve it. I can attach my research protocol if requested even for review by members.
Thank you
Hello
You have choosen an important issue but a difficult one.
First, most of sex violence against youth does not reported to the police
In addition, there are difficulties in sentencing those men: either there are strangers who vanished after the incident.
Or if they are relatives, it may become his word against her, while there are no witneses or that witneses does not want to be involved.
Good luck
Hello. In Italy almost all cases of CSA visited in a public hospital must be reported to the justice administration. We have no official data concerning the sentencing rate, but we are beginning a complex study on the matter, with the cooperation of the Milano Tribunal, starting from the files of the Milano Rape Center. We hope to have some preliminary results in 2015. Anyway, in our experience children statements are the main evidence in the trial, and clinical evidences are only a supporting item, if present.
My best regards
In a study that my colleagues and I recently submitted we found that approximately 50% of abuse cases are reported to the authorities and that approximately 50% of the abuse case reported to the authorites are unwarranted, false alarms. I think these numbers vary a lot according to legislation, but we might have data on the number of reported cases that are substantiated and lead to some prosecution.
If you attach your protocol I could take a quick look and see if I could be of any help.
Thank you very much Jan one quick question what is a false alarm and what objective means exist to verify that . Thank you for the offer I am attaching the protocol.
Dear Arnon thank you and you are right the topic is difficult but the reason was there was no similar study conducted where I decided to study the prosecution proportion. Another reason was despite many awareness and advocacy activities there seemed to be no progress in reducing the prevalence so I thought there could be some answer along the legal system stream.
Regarding false positives (i.e., false alarms) the ground thuth is hardly ever accessible, but we can be pretty sure that sometimes a suspected child abuse is unwarranted and no abuse has actually taken place. In Finland all suspected CSA cases must be reported and while this likely improves the rate of true CSA cases being reported this has also led to increased rates of false alarms as well.
Are you aware of any victimization studies in this population or in populations highly similar to this one? If so, then one could adjust the estimates for prosecutions/reported cases by the likelihood that a an event is reported if it has taken place.
Yes there are some publications on victimization and I will have to look at then in the perspective you just mentioned. The major challenge though is the lack of motivation of survivors of violence to report to authorities due to shame, stigmatization and secondary victimization. I was thinking if one aspires to bring any improvement in the situation investigating the existing legal protection for victims.
What country are you studying? I don't believe you said. The only thing i can add to what my esteemed colleagues have said is the need to draw on a variety of sources. You are drawing on hospital records, which are most likely to be tilted toward sexual assaults involving penetration and physical injury. In the U.S. we have found that the vast majority of assaults do not involve penetration or lasting physical injury. Therefore, if you want a more realistic portrayal of all sexual abuse (you use the term sexual "violence" so I'm not sure exactly what you are seeking) then you'll need to find a way to access information about those sexual assaults that are not likely to make it to the hospital. These would include assaults involving the hands and mouth (fondling, oral sex), as well as the taking of sexual photos and videos. Perhaps a woman's crisis center might have some information on situations that do not make it to the hospital but which women report in this context? Do you have child welfare agencies that might also keep records?
I am doubting you are going to get accurate numbers. Maybe you could consider a qualitative approach in which you look at the STORIES of those assaults that make it to the hospital/police and those that don't.
Also, depending on your country, the stigma involved for boy victims and girl victims of sexual assault may be different. The assault of girls may be under-reported because of the need to protect their reputation as sexually pure, or the assault of boys may be under-reported because of the need to keep them clean of any rumor of homosexuality (I am assuming most assailants are men, because they are).
I was recently in Chile where I was asked more than once if the sexual assault of boys was "more harmful because when girls are raped it is more natural." In multiple trips to Chile to work on sexual abuse, i had never been asked this before. Perhaps a recent case in the news has made this question a topic of discussion. But it strikes me that the relatively high percentage of male victims in your sample could be due to: 1) concerns that the assaults are "more damaging" and "less natural" than the assaults of girls; 2) desire to protect the reputation of girls by not bringing them into the hospital; 3) More concern with boys' welfare and well-being and perhaps greater attention to signs that something is amiss; 4) perhaps there actually is a higher percentage of boys abused in your country than in some other countries or 5) greater concerns about the physical sequalae of the assaults; 6) some other factor.
Why do you think the boy/girl ratio is the way it is?
Best wishes, sorry for the long post!
Wow Lisa that was so rich and it was so inspirational for me. Most of the points you mentioned are very relevant here. My assumption why there appeared to be increasing number of assaulted boys is that people are waking up to the possibility of boys being raped and this in turn resulted in detection of more boy victims as well as reporting. As for the girls the reason is that the community as well as people in the legal system tend to criminalize the girl for inviting the assault on herself by for example showing up at places she was "not supposed to be" or by dressing in a manner that "provokes" the perpetrator. By the way my study area is Dire Dawa, Ethiopia an urban setting. However if you could spare some of your precious time, would you please look at my research protocol ? May be you may get some satisfaction from helping me . I have attached the protocol. Thank you
Thank you for sharing your proposal with me. I am reading it. I think it's best that we correspond privately at this point. Pls contact me at: [email protected] Some of my articles that are included here at this website may be of interest to you--especially the one on ethical issues in violence against women research, and possibly the one on VIolence Against Women Across Cultures
I'm interested in knowing if you have begun your data collection, Interesting and important study. I look forward to hearing from you.
Lisa
sir Girman it is a very good study.being the Gyanecologist I have come across the many cases of the sexual violence in all ages,but sir you rightly pointed that most of the violence is with the children below 18 years of age.hospital data is a good resourse for collecting the data but it could be the tip of iceberg.awareness of the society is must.the government records gives the number of cases even more. am on the committee of sexual rehabilitation and relief scheme which is practicing in our country.any more help you will need for publishing the study reports, sir I will extend my possible help.i think sir you are doing good thing it will help in the policy making also.thank you.
Thank you very much Rajshree. I really am grateful for your offer. Currently I have finished collecting hospital based data and I am planning to investigate what proportion among them had their cases resolved through prosecution and redress, however I am still working on convincing the women's and children bureau to sponsor the research. I will keep you updated when it is ready for publishing which I really need. Thank you again
Hello. I am interested in this topic as part of my research is about victimization of children in Czech Republic. Can you sher with me your research protocol? If so, I can think about this issue and possible data gathering in the Czech Rep.
Respectfully
MV.
Michal: Do you have population registries (central registry of the adresses of all people living in your country) in the Czech Republic similar to those in Northern Europe? Another way to get good, representative samples, is to ask people in high-school to fill in these questionnaires. We have questionnaires that have been used in several large-scale population based studies in Finland. If you are interested in collaborating on this topic, send me a message.
Girma: I understand this problem with underreporting. Would it be possible to have a strategy to find a way to estimate the proportion of this underreporting? For example, structured interviews with a representative but fairly small sample of women from the community.
Jan: There is central register of population, but I think it is not possible to use it for such as reason. But data gathering in high-schools is feasible in Czech Rep. Is the questionnaire standardised?
Jan thank you I think that is a very good idea. The problem might be obtaining consent due to the sensitive nature of the incident and fear of secondary victimization. However if I can think of reducing bias I can have participants who are being kept in a safe house that collaborates with me with the previous study I mentioned. Could you suggest some practical means to reduce bias that could result from interviewing institutionalized participants?. Thank you
And Michal thank you and yes I can share the protocol with you with pleasure and thank you
Michal thank you and yes I can share the protocol with you with pleasure and thank you
Hi Girma, I happen to study the proportion of cases reported to police which were sent for prosecution. However, these cases are of only rape and not sexual violence, which is of course, a broader category.
The crime figures in India re compiled by National Crimes Record Bureau.
According NCRB, there were 24,923 cases of rape reported in 2012 in India. Out of these cases 1833 (7.4%) cases were due to mistake of law or fact, and in 991 (3.9%) cases a final report was submitted. The offenders were not charged in these 11.3% cases. This means about 88.7% cases were prosecuted.
However, the outcome of the prosecution has not been included in this study. I suspect that may be way less than the above numbers though.
I think one of the greatest hurdles in the legal system is the 'Statute of Limitations'. very young children can be unaware that sexual molestation is abusive, and even if they are or become aware of this fact there are a myriad of reasons that they won't tell anyone. As such if they choose to seek justice against the offender(s) as an adult it may be too late to gain a conviction under the law.
This has a major negative impact on child victims coming forward and, I suspect, any statistical evidence we have shows only the tip of a very large iceberg.
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