Professionals’ Confidence, Training, and Victim Blaming: Views on Physical and Technology-Assisted Child Sexual Abuse

Abstract

Background
Despite the rise in technology-assisted child sexual abuse (TA-CSA), limited research has considered professionals’ understanding of TA-CSA compared to physical child sexual abuse (CSA). Understanding professionals’ confidence, knowledge and individual factors affecting responses to TA-CSA could offer insights for training and preventative initiatives.

Objective
This study explored professionals’ training and confidence in responding to CSA compared to TA-CSA.

Methods
The study analyzed responses of 177 professionals working with children (PWC) in an online survey consisting of vignettes describing a physical and a TA-CSA incident. Participants provided their perspectives on victim blame, perceived incident harmfulness, and completed questionnaires on individual factors such as empathy and belief in a just world.

Results
PWC indicated more experience of CSA incidents through their workplaces, more training and more confidence compared to TA-CSA. Mental health and health care professionals reported more training and confidence compared to educators. Professionals tended to attribute more blame to the victims in TA-CSA scenarios and more blame to the perpetrators in physical CSA. No significant differences were observed between the two vignettes on perceived harmfulness. Among individual factors, only empathy influenced professionals’ perceived harmfulness in TA-CSA scenarios.

Conclusions
This study provides insight into PWC’s understanding of TA-CSA and highlights the importance of developing evidence-based preventative and educational interventions, especially for educators.