Talk:False allegation of child sexual abuse

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Contents

[edit] Initial article

Created so I can link from Child Sexual Abuse. This needs more data, more citations, and a global outlook. Editing by law-enforcment experts, family-law experts, and experts outside the United States is especially welcome. Please link from other Wiki articles where appropriate. Dfpc 20:41, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Why have a separate article from [[[Child sexual abuse]]? This would make more sense as a section of that article. Especially since there are no sources. -Will Beback · † · 22:46, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
It seems like a big enough topic for its own article. If it must be merged with something, it should probably be merged with a well-written general article on false police reports and false prosecutions. I don't know of any such article. Dfpc 23:20, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
If it's such a big topic there should be plenty of sources available. Right now it's just an essay. -Will Beback · † · 23:26, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
There is plenty of sources for he who knows how to find them (which I do). It goes against my policy to add useful information to wikipedia so I will try not to do so. But in the book Jeopardy in the Courtroom, by Stephen Ceci, there is lots of information on this subject, so if anyone bothers to read it, then the article has potential. Voice of Britain 09:25, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Voice of Britain's Fresh Start

Copied from User_talk:Voice of Britain: I just did a "fresh start" less than 2 weeks ago. I trust within a week or two you will fill in the article so it is at least as informative as the old one. BTW, before doing wholesale changes, it's a good idea to discuss it on the talk page first. It avoids reverts like the one Fuzzygenius made. Dfpc 18:54, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, even at this point it has more accurate information that the last version. If possible I hope it remains short and accurate rather than ending up as bloated, oversized, unsourced articles as seems common here. Voice of Britain 18:59, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
This article is now sourced primarly from just one book. I've requested verbatim quotes of the material being cited since it appears to contradict what another source says. ·:·Will Beback ·:· 07:31, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
I agree, specific quotes with pages numbers are necessary here. A book, while certainly a verifiable source, may only represent opinions and not empirical facts or statements. DPetersontalk 12:13, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

i don't believe a quote must be given. after all, you didn't even see fit to give me a single primary citation for the information on cortisol you added. (for the record, i don't have access to thr book voice of britain cited, but i believe it's accurate because i'm fairly sure i've encountered both the low and high given by it in other studies) ~[[kinda]] 23:28, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

I think we are best off assuming nothing VoB said is reliable, SqueakBox 23:30, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
why?~[[kinda]] 23:34, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
Quotes and page numbers are necessary, otherwise the lines may be considered OR (Wikipedia:OR) DPetersontalk 23:42, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
Since he was banned, that is reason enough. DPetersontalk 23:43, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] further

Here is an offsite website which quotes the study for verification:

We recommend a recent research paper on the rate of false accusations by Mikkelsen, Gutheil and Emons. [Footnote: Mikkelsen, M.D., Gutheil, M.D. & Emens, B.A, "False sexual-abuse allegations by children and adolescents: Contextual factors and clinical subtypes" American Journal of Psychotherapy, October, 1992.] That paper noted the following: "False allegations of sexual abuse by children and adolescents are statistically uncommon, occurring at the rate of 2 to 10 percent of all cases with rates up to 50% in special situations such as heated custody disputes. Nevertheless, when they do occur, they can be extremely detrimental to all involved including the accuser. Thus it is important to those who evaluate these allegations be open to the possibility of a false allegation and have a knowledge of the principal clinical subtypes of false allegation. Our research indicates that it is a narrow focus on the reporter and ignorance or dismissal of the broader contextual factors that often leads to the perpetuation of a false allegation. "The literature and our own clinical research has revealed four clinical subtypes of false allegations: (1) Allegations arising in the context of custody disputes: (2) Allegations stemming from psychological disturbances on the part of the accuser; (3) Allegations resulting from conscious manipulation by the child or adolescent; (4) Allegations based on iatrogenic elements. "This material is presented in the interests of heightening the awareness of this serious miscarriage of clinical and legal processes and its severe and potentially irreversible social consequences."

the link you removed was indeed relevant, if you'd bother to look at it. ~[[kinda]] 00:06, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] This article should be deleted

Why does this article exist? It is factually correct in asserting that false allegations of child sexual abuse are uncommon. It then includes under "specific cases" two instances of CSA in which there were confessions, prosecutions and children removed from their parents ... indicating that these are not cases of "false allegations" at all.

It seems to me to be a clear case of overcategorisation. If deleted, the rest of the article could be easily accomodated under the general article of child sexual abuse. What do other editors think? --Biaothanatoi 03:45, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] addressing tags in "False Allegations of Sexual Abuse in Childhood" section

I will address these in the order they are in the article

To address accuracy dispute issue : The source is fine. See : http://www.amazon.com/Treating-Survivors-Satanist-Valerie-Sinason/dp/0415105439/ref=sr_1_1/105-6619882-4310047?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1194492452&sr=8-1 A citation is provided to the book in question. As far as the NPOV critique goes, the data stated in the article is factual. There is no opinion given of the data one way or the other. Suggestions on how to make the section more NPOV are welcome.
As far as the "Prevalence figures range between ten to sixty-two percent for females and sixteen percent for males.[citation needed]" tag. The ten percent comes from Baker, A. and Duncan, S. (1985) 'Child Sexual Abuse: a study of prevalence in Great Britian', Italic text Child Abuse and NeglectItalic text 9, 457-67. The 62 percent figure comes from Finklehor D. (1983) "Epidemiological factors in the clinical identification of child sexual abuse', Italic text Child Abuse and Neglect Italic text 17, 67 - 70.

The url for amazon above should also answer the verification tag. I hope that all of the data in this article is given the same treatment. Abuse truth 03:59, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Since I haven't heard about any disagreement with the above clarification of tags added to the section, I will be deleting the tags in the section. Please feel free to add them if you disagree on the talk page. Abuse truth 17:10, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
The primary question, even if you had paraphrased the information correctly, is relevance. The prevelance of child sexual abuse has only limited relelvance to false allegations, even if the child is abused, they can (and, according to all the literature I've seen, often do) accuse someone other than the acctual perpetrator. If you had paraphrased the information correctly, the book is incorrectly titled, which leans against your assertions. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 20:05, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
The information was paraphrased correctly. The prevalence of child sexual abuse is crucial to this discussion. The book is correctly titled. And most of the data shows that children rarely accuse the wrong person. Abuse truth 20:21, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
You'll need a cite for that last statement. I haven't seen one yet in all the articles you've presented. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 20:27, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Here's one, but there are more: “Studies on the truthfulness of sexual abuse reports among children and adolescents as judged by evaluators”show that out of 2169 children and adolescents evaluated 98% of generally younger children and 93% of usually older children’s reports were determined to be true. Whitfield M.D., Charles L., Memory and Abuse - Remembering and Healing the Effects of Trauma, Deerfield Beach, FL: Health Communications, Inc, ISBN 1-55874-320-0  Abuse truth 20:45, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't have access to my reference material at the moment, but I do recall reading that children are generally unable to identify which person did something to them, even if it's not traumatic. They recall the event (possibly reliably), but not the person. I see no reason why a traumatic memory should be more accurate than a non-traumatic memory. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 20:55, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
I don't recall any statement being made that says "a traumatic memory should be more accurate than a non-traumatic memory." I have not heard of any data that backs up the statement you make above. Please provide source. Abuse truth 20:40, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
The "lost in the mall" study shows that false non-traumatic memories can be easily implanted. This clearly contradicts the assertions made in your references than false traumatic memories cannot be "easily" implanted, unless you wish to assert that statement. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 21:18, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

The "lost in the mall" study does not address the question of traumatic memory. This study cannot be applied to traumatic memory.Abuse truth 03:33, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

No study can ethically be directly applied to traumatic memory, so the question becomes: is there a testable theory which would suggest a difference between recall of traumatic and non-traumatic memories. If not, the study cannot fail to be applied to traumatic memories. (Actually, it's more than that. Although I haven't looked at the precise studies, it seems likely that traumatic memories are more likely to be continuously recalled or suppressed than non-traumatic memories, which can merely be forgotten. Whether a false memory is more likely to be implanted over a suppressed memory than over no memory is a difficult question, again not testable.)
In other words—if the "lost in the mall" study does not apply to traumatic memory, it logically follows that traumatic memories are more accurate than non-traumatic memories. The would be WP:OR, if one of the papers discussing the "lost in the mall" study didn't say it. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 03:41, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
I agree that no study can be directly applied to traumatic memory. IMO, there can't be a testable theory, because the neurological mechanisms that are used for the two types of memory appear to be different. This article http://www.trauma-pages.com/a/vanderk4.php touches upon this some. Abuse truth 03:10, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Kern county section tag

This section has no sources at all. IMO, it either needs to be sourced or deleted. Abuse truth 21:43, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Sexual abuse prevalence figures

I found a source which quotes prevalence figures of 0.21% in 1993, and 0.11% in 2004. You want that added to the (irrelevant) paragraph, or shall we just drop the whole thing as irrelevant to this article. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 03:49, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

I think it would be probably be good to add that to the section with the source. Adds NPOV. Abuse truth 03:12, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] FAoCSA

I'm not sure why there's a paragraph that's title is the same as the articles, but anyway. The figures and claims should be backed by the most reliable sources available - if not a peer-reviewed journal, then a peer-reviewed book or book published by a university press or other publisher with oversight on the contents of books. Where did Whitfield & Charles get their figures from? Independent research? In which case, publication in a lay-book bypasses the peer review process, but publication in a valid publisher with oversight and review over the contents would be valid. If they're quoting a journal publication, that should be the source, not the book, and include the pubmed ID or other abstract-available weblink. WLU (talk) 01:00, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

I am opened to a slightly different title. Charles Whitfield compiled the data on P. 302 Table A-1 from Everson MD, Boat BW: False Allegations of sexual abuse by children and adolescents. Journal of Anerican Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry 28: 230 - 235, 1989
The first source is published by Routledge, IMO a well-known publisher of texts, see http://www.routledge.com/ .Abuse truth (talk) 23:34, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] False Allegations statistics section

new quote in article :

Some studies break down the level of false allegations by the age of the child. One study of CSA allegations in child protection offices in the USA as determined by social workers found that among pre-school children, the range of false allegations was between 1.7 to 2.7 percent. Among adolescents, the range was found to be between 8 to 12 percent. The average range was found to be 5 to 8 percent. Higher rates of false allegations are found in custody disputes.

quote from book :

"False Allegations made by children Fifteen years ago, Goodwin (Goodwin et al., 1978) described false accusation prevalence by reviewing eighty-eight papers on incest published between 1972 and 1977. Only one paper documented the frequency of the allegations, and found that 6 per cent were concluded to be false "by emergency room staff" (emphasis added). This emphasis is important in the review of the literature....Goodwin concludes that false allegations are rare. Other workers such as Jones and McGraw (1987) studied incest allegations and found a false allegation prevalence of about 2 per cent. Everson and Boat (1989) studied CSA allegations in child protection offices in the USA and found that the level of false allegations (as determined by social workers) varied with the age of the child. Among pre-school children , the range was 1.7 - 2.7 percent, whereas for adolescents the range was 8 - 12 percent, with an overall average for all ages of 5 - 8 percent. Everson and Boat also noted that some case workers seemed to discover more false allegations than others, and conclude that bias is possible. Specifically, high rates of false allegations are said to be found in the context of custody disputes (Benedek and Schetky, 1985;Green, 1986, 1991)." P.62 Adshead, Gwen (1994), “Looking for clues - A review of the literature on false allegations of sexual abuse in childhood”, pp. 57 –65  in Sinason, Valerie (1994). Treating Survivors of Satanist Abuse. New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-10542-0.  Abuse truth (talk) 17:07, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

I find that last section to have very questionable methodology, as they noted they don't have any basis for their conclusions just before stating them. I suppose it might be listed, under some circumstances. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 22:58, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
I don't see anywhere where it is stated "they noted they don't have any basis for their conclusions just before stating them." Goodwin states that false allegations are rare. Everson and Boat state the actual percentages, mentioned in the article. Abuse truth (talk) 07:51, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
" Only one paper documented the frequency of the allegations...." Seems to say the meta-analysis was, in fact, only quoting one paper, so we need to cite that paper instead of citing Goodwin.
Furthermore, the proper quote for the 6% is "6% of allegations of sexual abuse were found to be false by emergency room personnel." (The actual percentage of false allegations is probably significantly higher, as ER personnel are supposed to be treating the patient, which includes considering the patient's allegations.) Both AT's version and mine completely misinterpret that statement.
As for WP:SYN, if source A says there's a rate of 5% for one thing, and source B says there's a rate of 1.7% for something different, we can't conflate the results to say they're about the same thing. That's what you've done. I found a source which states that the prevalence of sexual abuse is less than 0.1%. Combining that with the prevalence of reports of sexual abuse, you could derive a very high rate of false reports. That would be WP:SYN if we did it, but not if the source which reports 0.1% did it. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 08:15, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
I will remove the line about combining the rates. Hopefully this will work.Abuse truth (talk) 03:14, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
We still need someone impartial to evaluate the data and the section. I will look for someone and AR can too.Abuse truth (talk) 03:49, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Full protection

I've fully protected this article because of edit warring. Please work on a compromise here or take this to dispute resolution. thankyou--Hu12 (talk) 03:24, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] expand or rename

Is this article supposed to be centered on cases from the United States? Or should it be expanded to cover cases from around the world? If it's not supposed to be expanded then I think it should be renamed to False allegations of child sexual abuse in the United States. Ospinad (talk) 19:36, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

The title should not be changed because it's not just a legal concept it's also a psychological one. You are welcome to seek out reports from other countries and add them. The article is not limited to events in the United States. --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 20:50, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] adding "A review of the data of false allegations" section

I have added this section. All of this data came from one article Adshead, Gwen (1994), “Looking for clues - A review of the literature on false allegations of sexual abuse in childhood”, pp. 57 –65  in Sinason, Valerie (1994). Treating Survivors of Satanist Abuse. New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-10542-0. .

This weekend, I hope to track down additional online sources to back up and verify this data. The article also cites sources to back up this data, which I hope to try to track down and add as references. Abuse truth (talk) 01:50, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] off-topic court cases moved to different article

This article has been improved and focused a lot, with plenty of solid references added. The court cases section though only had information about Satanic ritual abuse and did not fit with the topic of this article.

Maybe there should be a separate article on "False accusations of satanic ritual abuse", or maybe those court cases can be merged into the article about Satanic ritual abuse.

I don't know much about that topic, so instead of making that decision myself, I moved the text of the court cases section in full, to Talk:Satanic ritual abuse -- at this link.

That way, editors who are familiar with that topic can decide if they want to merge it into that article or make a separate article.

For this page though, the court cases were a total non-sequitur to the text of the article which is why they were moved. --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 07:39, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Prevalence

I removed the following sentence from that (new) section as being SYN. As I noted in a comment, I have a source which estimates true prevalence at less than .01%. That is still too common, but the sources are carefully selected. (I think Child Abuse and Neglect might be considered to have an interest in creating reports (I mean, creating interest in reports) of child abuse.)

Prevalence figures range between 10% in the UK [1] or up to 62% for females and 16% for males in the United States. [2] [3]

I have added the section back with the other sections that have new references. Please feel free to add data with reliable sources to back your claims, but please do not delete well sourced data from the article.Abuse truth (talk) 03:21, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] References

  1. ^ Baker, AW; Duncan, SP (1985). "Child sexual abuse: a study of prevalence in Great Britain.". Child Abuse and Neglect 9 (4): 457-67. “Of 2019 men and women (aged 15 years and over) interviewed as part of a MORI Survey of a nationally representative sample of Great Britain, 10% reported that they had been sexually abused before the age of 16 (12% of females; 8% of males)....Subjective reports of the effects of sexual abuse indicated that the majority (51%) felt harmed by the experience, while only 4% reported that it had improved the quality of their life.” 
  2. ^ Finkelhor, D. (Jan - Feb 1993). "Epidemiological factors in the clinical identification of child sexual abuse.". Child abuse and neglect 17 (1): 67 - 70. “The main finding from epidemiological literature on child sexual abuse is that no identifiable demographic or family characteristics of a child may be used to exclude the possibility that a child has been sexually abused.” 
  3. ^ Kendall-Tacket, K.; Meyer Williams, L. and Finklehor, D. (1993). "Impact of child sexual abuse: a review". Psychological Bulletin 113: 164 - 180. 

[edit] relevance tag in "prevalence" section

Arthur Rubin, would you please elaborate on this edit?

You added a tag that states:

  • This section contains information of unclear or questionable importance or relevance to the article's subject matter. Please help improve this article by clarifying or removing superfluous information.

What part of that section do you feel is in need of that tag? I've reviewed the section and don't see the problem. But if something is off-topic or not stated clearly, we should fix it, so please point out the part you find of concern. Thanks. --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 22:33, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

My thinking was that the prevalence of child sexual abuse is not entirely related to the prevalence here, and each paragraph (and sometimes each sentence or phrase) has a different definition of "false allegation", making comparisons WP:SYN. However, I think replacing the first paragraph of the section with a corrected analysis taken from child sexual abuse#Epidemiology should handle the issue. I'll take care of it, but I expect AT to revert. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 00:07, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
At first reading, your changes seem appropriate. A few references were removed though. It looks like they might not be needed, but just in case we want them later, I'll post that paragraph here for reference. I'm not saying we do need to include this, I just don't want to lose track of it in the page history. --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 01:36, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
OK, for now. Some of the other references contribute more to incidence than to prevalence, though. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 01:41, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
As per my most recent edit, I have restored the section above. If the other paragraph is already in the Child Sexual Abuse article, why should it replace data here. I have no problem with it being here, as long as the other data is included.Abuse truth (talk) 04:07, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
If accurately sourced, it should be in the child sexual abuse article, as it's most relevant there. In any case, the section should only be summarized in one paragrpah here. All the other paragraphs relate to prevalence (or incidence) of claims of child sexual abuse, and are most relevant here. You might consider rewriting the summary, noting it shouldn't get much longer. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 14:38, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
It makes no sense to bring in data from the child sexual abuse article and replace the data in this article. And there is no guideline stating that there can't be two paragraphs of data on this topic.Abuse truth (talk) 02:22, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
I boldly removed two paras which were not relevant to the topic in hand. I believe that anyone coming to the article fresh would have seen that they did not fit. The article reads quite well now, without any sense that any POV is being pushed. I'm not sure about the quality of all the sources and may examine them all in detail when I have a chance. Itsmejudith (talk) 10:05, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
I'm afraid there is some relevance, much as it reads better without the paragraphs. The number of allegations of child sexual abuse can be estimated (depending on the degree of allegation or of sexual abuse required for inclusion, whether allegations within therepy are counted if not reported to another person, etc.), but the number of false allegations is related to the number of true occurences. The {{seealso}} may be adequate to indicate that, perhaps a modified {{for}} should be used. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 14:14, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] cats added

I have added four cats to the article that fit the topic. ResearchEditor (talk) 01:09, 21 March 2008 (UTC) (formerly AT)