Child and adolescent sexual abuse: A systematic review

Abstract

Mothers have an important role in the prognosis of child and adolescent sexual abuse. The objective of this study was to present a systematic review of literature on child and adolescent sexual abuse from the perspective of the mothers of such victims. The bibliographic research was realized through the databases LILACS, PePSIC, SciELO, Index Psi, RedAlyc, and Scopus, comprising of empirical papers published in Brazil from 2005 to 2015. The keywords used were “abuso sexual” (sexual abuse), “violência sexual” (sexual assault), “mães” (mothers), and “família” (family). Out of 227 matching papers, 18 were selected for analysis in the corpus of this article. The results point towards a prevalence of qualitative papers using semistructured interviews. The subjects featured sexual abuse as a transgenerational phenomena, maternal reaction facing the sexual abuse of their children, consequences of sexual abuse disclosure to mothers and their parent-child relationship, and maternal support and coping strategies. The findings reveal the need for longitudinal research that corroborate the repercussions of the abuse disclosure in the context the mother’s familial and relational bonds making use of complementary tools, such as inventories, Genogram and the Social Networks Map.

Keywords: child sexual abuse, sexual assault, mothers, childhood, adolescence.