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Is more child participation always better for child rights advocacy? That is the question I examine, in this chapter, as I analyse advocacy for child rights in India that led to the adoption of the landmark Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012 (the ‘POCSO Act’). Through ethnographic fieldwork with non-government organisations (NGOs) and a narrative analysis of interviews and awareness material, I tell the story of how a combination of adult-led but child-participatory advocacy brought about a new, de-tabooised way of talking about child sexual abuse. By applying the theoretical lens of ‘critical child rights studies’, I suggest how we can conceptualise a critical perspective on child participation in child rights advocacy. First, adults’ multiple and, at times, conflicting roles in children’s lives – as advocates, protectors, and abusers – needs to be recognised. Second, children should participate in advocacy activities where they can have meaningful influence and be part of the conversation. This may not necessarily occur in adult spaces, where their participation remains token. Finally, I argue that child participation should never turn into a responsibilisation of children.

Research on women who sexually abuse children is relatively scarce and tends to rely on small or unrepresentative convenience samples. The purpose of the current descriptive study is to examine characteristics female perpetrators of child sexual abuse using a large and contemporary dataset.

This study analyzes data collected by the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System, which is a census of all child protective services investigations or assessments conducted in all 50 states, as well as in the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico from October 1, 2018, to September 30, 2019.

Only substantiated cases of sexual abuse were analyzed (n = 51,442 cases). Overall, 7.6% of the perpetrators were female, though the percentage of female perpetrators varied dramatically across states from less than 1% to over 36%. Female perpetrators tended to have younger victims than did male perpetrators. For children aged 2 or less, female perpetrators constituted approximately 20% of the abusers. Female perpetrators were more likely to victimize male and female children, whereas male perpetrators predominantly had female victims. More female perpetrators had a prior finding of maltreatment than did male perpetrators (32.3% vs 23.5%).

These findings add to the limited research base on female perpetrators of child sexual abuse and highlight avenues for further research into the differences between male and female sexual abusers.

This study is a replication of previous research but also provides additional novel findings.

Few studies assess how child abuse and neglect (CAN) affects adolescents’ mental health. Further, the majority of studies conducted to date discount the individual CAN items and report overall prevalence rates for different types of abuse and neglect. The purpose of this study was to examine the levels of and gender differences in CAN subtypes, lifetime prevalence of individual CAN items and the contribution of different CAN subtypes for explaining depression, anxiety and irritability.

The sample included Jamaican (n = 7,182, 60.8% female) and Ugandan (n = 11,518, 52.4% female) youths. The authors used a population-based cross-sectional study design. Youths completed an anonymous survey in school settings.

The authors found gender differences in the levels of CAN subtypes. Maltreatment behaviors of lesser severity were more commonly endorsed by the youths than those of greater severity. Neglect and emotional abuse were the strongest correlates of depression (e.g. neglect: ß = 0.23, among Jamaican youths; emotional abuse outside-the-home: ß = 0.23, among Ugandan girls), anxiety (e.g. neglect: ß = 0.17, among Ugandan girls; emotional abuse outside-the-home: ß = 0.27, among Ugandan girls) and irritability (e.g. emotional abuse in-the-home: ß = 0.17, among Jamaican boys; emotional abuse outside-the-home: ß = 0.17, among Ugandan girls) in most samples.

These findings will inform policymakers and professionals working with youths in Jamaica and Uganda, providing comprehensive contemporary insights beyond existing research in these regions.

Since 1980s, institutional child sexual abuse has been ‘discovered’ as an internationally recognisable social problem. Public inquiries have become the most dominant mode of response to this, having been enacted throughout much of the western world. Driven by demands from victims/survivors for collective recognition, these have drawn on features of transitional justice as an important means of truth telling. While the role of survivors in precipitating the enactment of public inquiries has been well documented, less well understood is how social activism has been influenced in the aftermath of such inquiries. In this chapter, the authors explore a local phenomenon known as Loud Fence that arose in the Australian town of Ballarat as a case study to consider the relationship between activism and social change that can occur in the wake of official truth telling.

This chapter focuses on ways of giving voice to the survivors of institutional abuse and how their contribution can be capitalised in raising community awareness of this phenomenon. The collection of testimonies demonstrates that institutional abuse is a common and widespread phenomenon that in most cases remains unrevealed throughout the life course. The participatory research process we describe is part of an important social and clinical intervention developed in the framework of two projects. The chapter illustrates outputs and outcomes related to disclosure of institutional abuse and its long-term consequences, as well as the meaning and implications of collective trauma. Results confirm the need to promote the voice of survivors to build a new professional and community culture and sensitisation towards children's right to be heard as an essential instrument to prevent and detect institutional ill treatment. Participatory processes can overcome the resistance of individuals, professional communities and politicians to recognising the phenomenon, emphasising institutional responsibilities and the specific effects of a serious form of maltreatment that requires extraordinary and specific interventions in terms of intensity and flexibility. This chapter describes a fieldwork and research experience made possible thanks to a strong alliance with survivors who engaged in a process of reflection and theoretical elaboration that generated both social and clinical impacts.

Women are being victimized sexually everywhere today, whether it is at home or office. Women are targeted for molestation, eve-teasing, and rape and sometimes they are murdered after rape. The objective of the present study is to understand the trend of sexual abuse in the socio-cultural context of India. The study aims to examine the relationship between the victim woman and the perpetrator and the impact of sexual abuse on the well-being of women.

The study applies the content analysis method for collecting data and conducting research. The data for this study were collected from June 2020 to November 2020. The sample cases for the current study were gathered manually by reading each and every news section that was published on sexual abuse in the various newspapers and magazines that were referenced in the introduction.

The study has found that women are mostly targeted for sexual abuse by known persons. The study has also found that girls between 6 and 15 years of age have suffered most from sexual abuse. Moreover, the study has pointed out that sexual abuse has a negative impact on women such as sometimes women commit suicide after sexual abuse, face psychological problems and sometimes they are, and their family members are threatened. Incidents of sexual abuse are affecting the mental happiness of women and an environment of fear is being created for women in society.

This is an original work of the author. The research work is based on content analysis that examines the nature and impact of sexual abuse among women in society by using socio-cultural perspective.

There are limited risk assessment tools validated for use with the internet child abuse material (I/CAM) offender cohort. Developed through a multi-stage process, the purpose of this paper is to present the “Estimated Risk for Internet Child Sexual Offending” (ERICSO), a new tool for I/CAM offender assessment, including demographic, collection, nature of engagement and social domains, plus a structured professional judgement section. Validation studies remain ongoing.

This paper presents a case series analysis of six Australian men, including two Aboriginal men, convicted of I/CAM offences to pilot proposed ERICSO domains and commence validation against the short self-esteem scale, University of California Los Angles loneliness scale, internet sex screening test and the sexual violence risk-20 V2.

Participants of all ages generally reported histories of mental health diagnosis and/or treatment and substance abuse. Two participants reported prior sexual offending, one for I/CAM offences. Participants expressed sexual preferences for female child victims and were convicted of possessing thousands of I/CAM files. Two participants reported accessing I/CAM for over six and 10 years, respectively, before detection by law enforcement.

Preliminary implications indicate ERICSO higher scores are consistent with I/CAM offenders having more online sexual behaviour diversity and more areas of risk/treatment need. For example, participants with problematic self-esteem and loneliness in our data set have higher ERICSO scores. Social connectedness may be a relevant factor though definitive conclusions cannot be drawn from the small sample size.

The ERICSO presents novel assessment of factors in considering treatment targets in addressing both illegal I/CAM and problematic legal sexual behaviours.

Culture significantly influences individuals' lives and shapes their behaviour in an ecological framework. In this chapter, we examine the issue of children's participation in research about child abuse and neglect (CAN) in the context of Turkey – a country that bridges the Asian and European continents. This study was based on a review examining studies on CAN in Turkey. Thus, the main goal was to find cultural explanations for the scarcity of participatory research with children in the field of child maltreatment. A review examining studies on CAN in Turkey found that no study included children victims of CAN or explored why children victims of CAN have not been participating in research. Therefore, we analysed ecological factors influencing the participation of children in CAN studies and interpreted the findings based on our observations as experts in this field. The analysis indicated that causes are not only due the characteristics of the caregivers and children but also result from the interaction of various environmental and systemic factors. Recommendations for politicians and researchers to increase children's participation in research are discussed.

Based on an extensive literature review, this chapter outlines key developments in global health and research during the last century with focus on the emergence of violence and child maltreatment as international public health priorities. Violence has been known to humans for millennia, but only in the late 1990s was it recognised as a global public health issue. Every year, an estimated 1 billion children are exposed to trauma, loss, abuse and neglect. Child maltreatment takes a social and economic toll on countries. Research initiated in 1985 found child maltreatment to be associated with increased disease, disability and premature death in adult survivors. The global availability of data on child maltreatment is, however, sporadic with low validity and reliability. Few global experts have consulted and involved the survivors of child maltreatment, as the experts by experience, in their attempts to provide a more comprehensive picture of reality. Youth and adult survivors of child maltreatment are often traumatised by the experience, and it is important to use trauma-informed approaches to prevent re-traumatisation. Participatory and inclusive research on child maltreatment is only in its infancy. There is a need for more inclusive research, designed by survivors for survivors, hereby strengthening local capacity building and informing policymakers from the bottom up. This chapter reviews lessons learnt and provides recommendations for how to enhance the participation and inclusion of the experts by experience in research on child maltreatment.