Service and Support Needs of Non-Offending Parents in Cases of Intrafamilial Sexual Abuse

This article describes the helpfulness and availability of formal and informal services and supports available to 104 non-offending parents in cases of intrafamilial sexual abuse. Though findings include high overall satisfaction with the services that were provided, parents report a gap between their needs and the availability of services. Two measures were used to collect the data: the Maternal Sense of Social Support (MSSI) (Pascoe, Loda, Jeffries, & Earp, 1981), and the Helpfulness Index, adapted from a questionnaire used by Runyan et al. (1992). These data are from the first wave of data collection in a four-year study of non-offending parents and their sexually abused children.