The disclosure of children who exhibit problematic sexual behaviors

Practitioners mandated to protect child development are sometimes dealing with children's inappropriate sexual behaviors. This set of behaviors presents a potential hindering impact on the child's development and important consequences for all children involved. Denial during the questioning of the child complicates the investigation of these cases.

The objective of this study was to explore and to identify the different contexts of questioning in which children disclose or deny having committed a sexual behavior that appears to be problematic for his/her development as well as identifying the individual and contextual variables that influence the outcome of the questioning.

The sample comprised of 120 instances of inappropriate sexual behavior exhibited by 85 children aged between 5 and 17 years old and reported to the Youth Protection Department at the Integrated Health and Social Services University Network in the province of Quebec, Canada.

Bivariate statistical analyses were performed to investigate the association between the outcome of disclosure or non-disclosure, and contextual factors (questioning person's role, parents' reaction to the child's behavior, the child's expression of remorse, presence of a witness, use of coercion during the sexual behavior). Logistical regression (GLMM) was then used to determine the strength of the association between the covariates and the outcome of the questioning.

Results show that disclosure appears to be influenced by a combination of contextual variables, namely the role/status of the person questioning the child, expression of remorse reported by the child, and the presence of a witness to the behavior/s.

Our findings point to the importance of developing more comprehensive and specialized knowledge about the questioning context that favors the disclosure of children who are thought to have exhibited inappropriate sexual behaviors.