Information on Retractors of Child Sexual Abuse

 
Information on Retractors of Child Sexual Abuse – Some researchers believe “while some of the retractions are likely to be accurate, they are small in number compared with the vast number of actual case of child sexual abuse, and it is likely that some of the retractors were actually sexually abused and that many were abused in other ways and have re-activated their traumatic forgetting.” Whitfield M.D., Charles L. “Memory and Abuse – Remembering and Healing the Effects of Trauma.”


Some have suggested that a child may retract their story of abuse due to guilt and a feeling of obligation to protect their family. Some people believe that those who retract previous allegations of incest made against family members may be reacting to the familial stress brought on by their allegations. “Whatever a child says about sexual abuse, she is likely to reverse it. Beneath the anger of impulsive disclosure remains the ambivalence of guilt and the martyred obligation to preserve the family.” Summit, R. The child sexual abuse accommodation syndrome. Child Abuse & Neglect (1983) 7 p177-193


The child sexual abuse accommodation syndrome
R C Summit
PMID: 6605796 DOI: 10.1016/0145-2134(83)90070-4
Abstract
Child victims of sexual abuse face secondary trauma in the crisis of discovery. Their attempts to reconcile their private experiences with the realities of the outer world are assaulted by the disbelief, blame and rejection they experience from adults. The normal coping behavior of the child contradicts the entrenched beliefs and expectations typically held by adults, stigmatizing the child with charges of lying, manipulating or imagining from parents, courts and clinicians. Such abandonment by the very adults most crucial to the child's protection and recovery drives the child deeper into self-blame, self-hate, alienation and revictimization.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/6605796/