Research articleCharacteristics of victims and perpetrators of intrafamilial sexual abuse
Introduction
Intrafamilial sexual abuse (SA) during childhood can cause lifelong trauma and consequences for victims. Because not all victims report their cases of intrafamilial SA, this situation is seen as taboo. As a result, there are intercultural descriptive and methodological differences in research concerning intrafamilial SA; therefore, the prevalence of incidents worldwide is unknown (Finkelhor, 1994). Although no study about the overall prevalence in Turkey has yet been published, the prevalence in forensic cases is between 4% (Demirci, Doğan, Erkol, & Deniz, 2008) and 33.4% (Çengel-Kültür, Çuhadaroğlu-Çetin, & Gökler, 2007) and in the community cases, between 1.1% (Tunç et al., 2008) and 13.9% (Ögel & Yücel, 2005). Due to the major differences in the findings about the prevalence of intrafamilial SA in Turkey, researchers estimate the actual rate to be much higher (e.g., Bağ & Alşen, 2017).
Children exposed to intrafamilial SA have more psychological problems than children who have a history of extrafamilial SA (Gencer, Özbek, Özyurt, & Kavurma, 2016; Taner, Çetin, Işık, & İşeri, 2015) or no SA (Ögel & Yücel, 2005), and sometimes, intrafamilial SA may even result in the death of the victim (Oral et al., 2001). Compared to extrafamilial SA, physical violence is more severe in intrafamilial SA cases, and the duration of abuse is longer (Gölge, Yavuz, & Yüksel, 2006; Unlu & Cakaloz, 2016). Because intrafamilial SA tends to be kept as a secret for many years (Gündüz, Karbeyaz, & Ayrancı, 2011), findings related to physical trauma cannot always be determined (Muratoğlu, Çelikel, & Karbeyaz, 2018).
Exposure to intrafamilial SA is more common among girls (Fis, Arman, Kalaca, & Berkem, 2010; Kesen, Karakuş, & Deniz, 2012; Muratoğlu et al., 2018). The reason is not due to a lower prevalence but rather the lower report rates among males. Even if male victims are exposed to more severe and contacting types of SA than women, the rates of reporting, due to psychocultural reasons such as weakness, feeling of humiliation, and homosexual stigmatization, are lower (Ertur & Yaycı, 2011). Çengel-Kültür et al. (2007) found that reporting intrafamilial SA to the judicial authorities may be low due to intrafamily dynamics and financial concerns. In forensic cases, the victims can change their statements for various reasons, such as feeling guilty for causing the imprisonment of the perpetrator or feeling frightened of leaving home and going to a state boarding house (Akbaş, Aydın, Dündar, & Turla, 2016; Gencer et al., 2016; Koçtürk & Bilginer, 2019).
In intrafamilial SA cases, the perpetrators are usually the biological father (Bağ & Alşen, 2017; Gölge et al., 2006; Muratoğlu et al., 2018), and the structural differences of families with intrafamilial SA are emphasized. For example, the presence of mental disorders in the family is a predictive variable for intrafamilial SA according to a study conducted in Turkey (Gencer et al., 2016). In Kim and Kim’s (2005) study in Korea, high levels of familial and psychosocial problems (e.g., psychotic disorders, depression, criminal behavior, alcoholism, negative parent–child communication, and negative communication among family members) were found in the families of intrafamilial SA patients. However, a meta-analysis study determined that intrafamilial SA perpetrators had lower levels of antisocial tendencies and sexual deviance than other convicts and did not differ from other convicts in terms of psychopathology, but they experienced problems such as neglect and abuse in childhood (Seto, Babchishin, Pullman, & McPhail, 2015). This suggests that antisocial tendencies and sexual deviance alone are not adequate for explaining the causes of intrafamilial SA. In another meta-analysis, however, intrafamilial SA perpetrators were divided into two groups as biological (e.g., father, sibling, grandfather, uncle) and sociolegal (e.g., step-parent, parent’s partner, half-brother), and it found that sociolegal SA perpetrators had more antisocial tendencies and biological SA perpetrators had more psychopathology problems (Pullman, Sawatsky, Babchishin, McPhail, & Seto, 2017). These findings suggest that intrafamilial SA perpetrators may exhibit different characteristics within themselves and that grouping and evaluating cases can present accurate results when assessing intrafamilial SA.
Studies about intrafamilial SA in Turkey are mainly conducted on patients in psychiatric (e.g., Çöpür et al., 2012; Urazel, Fidan, Gündüz, Şenlikli & Asfuroğlu, 2017) or forensic units (e.g., Muratoğlu et al., 2018). These studies had a limited number of samples and did not elaborate on information about the characteristics of victims and perpetrators (Urazel, Fidan, Gündüz, Şenlikli, & Asfuroğlu, 2017). Moreover, the number of studies in which intrafamilial SA cases were compared with extrafamilial SA cases is low (Gencer et al., 2016; Unlu & Cakaloz, 2016). According to the literature, the perpetrators of intrafamilial SA have different characteristics and so produce various, inconsistent results in studies in this field (Pullman et al., 2017). Because of the rising numbers of children coming to orphanages due to intrafamilial SA in Turkey (Kesen et al., 2012), it is crucial to address this problem in more detail. In addition, evaluating intrafamilial SA cases in detail is necessary for international literature because although the familial problems of intrafamilial SA cases have been theoretically emphasized (e.g., Maddock & Larson, 1995), there are not enough primary studies (Bergh, 2017; Laaksonen et al., 2011; Pullman et al., 2017; Seto et al., 2015). For instance, studies have shown that there are cultural differences in the formation of intrafamilial SA and risk factors, but there are common characteristics, including cultural similarities, as well. For example, when the offenders are the father or step-father of the victim, they are likely to take on an authoritarian or patriarchal role (Seto, 2008). On the other hand, most modern societies, across varying degrees, also embrace patriarchy, a system in which men hold institutional power and control and women and children are devalued (Salazar, Camp, DiClemente, & Wingood, 2005). Thus, dealing with this problem in a country like Turkey, which is a predominantly patriarchal society, can play a reflective role for other countries. For all these reasons, this study aims to determine the characteristics of intrafamilial SA cases. For this purpose, we sought answers to the following questions in this study:
- 1
In intrafamilial SA incidents, what are the characteristics of the perpetrator (e.g., age, education status), the victim (e.g., forensic and mental health findings, physical abuse), and their families (e.g., familial risk factors)?
- 2
Do the characteristics of biological (e.g., father, sibling) and sociolegal (e.g., step-parents, parent’s partner, and half-brother) intrafamilial SA differ according to the type of SA, the developmental stage of the victim, and the type of report?
Section snippets
Method
The study received approval from Yıldırım Beyazıt University Yenimahalle Education and Research Hospital Clinical Research Ethics Committee (number 1/2015). After receiving ethical approval, we [or I] retrospectively scanned the records of 3429 cases, who were referred by the Ankara Child Advocacy Center (CAC) between 2010 and 2015 for forensic interviews, by reading the victims’ statements. From these, we determined 263 (7.7%) intrafamilial cases. Some victims came to the center more than once
Results
The findings are presented in bold according to the characteristics of the abuse, the characteristics of the victim and the family, and the comparison of groups.
Discussion
The large sample size of this study helped reveal several findings about intrafamilial SA, specifically the characteristics of victims and their families. According to the study’s findings, the biological father, biological brother, stepfather, and parent’s partner were the most common individuals involved in the SA of children. Of the perpetrators, 6.5% were women, and most of the perpetrators were not well educated and were married. These findings were partially similar to the literature. In
Ethical approval
All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.
Informed consent
Informed consent was not obtained by researchers because of the study method.
Sources of funding
This manuscript involved no financial support.
Agreement
All authors have contributed to, seen, and approved of the manuscript and agree to the order of authors as listed on the title page.
Declaration of Competing Interest
All authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.
Acknowledgment
Special acknowledgment is due Özlem Ulaş Kılıç for statistical consulting.
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