School-based Abuse Prevention: Effect on Disclosures.

"Giving Meaning to Disclosures An increase in disclosures could mean either that the program had been effective in encouraging children to tell or that the abuse rates had actually risen. Alternatively, a reduced disclosure rate could mean abuse had gone down or that the program had failed to create a climate that enabled children to tell. Pelcovitz et al. (1992) raised the issue of insufficient knowledge about the context of disclosures and suggested more detailed recording. Systematic reporting would have included the percentage of children in intervention and control groups and what, when, how, and to whom they disclosed. In addition it was important that appropriate child protection services were aware of the beginning of such programs in order to ensure a planned response (Pohl and Hazzard 1990). In contrast to studies which explored disclosure rates, Pelcovitz et al. (1992) examined why 22 six to ten year olds did not disclose sexual abuse by a school auxiliary despite having experienced a prevention program. One child reported that the program did not help him because the abuser was not in the movie shown. Another child reported that she was surprised that adults thought that the advice given in the film ‘to tell somebody about the abuse’ bore any relevance to their situation in which they felt overpowered by an adult in authority making threats. As one child said “I was just too afraid to make decisions.” Such qualitative information highlighted the issues of power, the impact of emotions on decision-making, the difficulty of generalization and learning abstract concepts and group victimization. This raised questions about the extent to which these issues were addressed in prevention programs. Measure—Recording of Disclosures Disclosures were recorded during delivery of the lessons and to a survivor helpline (i) three weeks prior to the beginning of the lessons (ii) during the lessons and (iii) two weeks after the lessons were completed. Disclosure rates were compared with disclosures covering the same time period in the previous year (no abuse prevention lessons). Guidelines were provided for presenters on how to use the disclosure forms during the lessons (see Appendix: Content of the disclosure form). Purposeful disclosures were defined as the student being seen to be making an explicit choice to tell compared to an accidental disclosure where the student was overheard saying to a peer or disclosed to a worker privately and then retracted. Where disclosures occurred either during or after the lessons, child protection procedures were followed. Data was collated and tabulated in order to glean a clearer picture of the patterns of disclosures. The factors analysed were: gender and ethnicity of the victim, who disclosed the abuse, who was the abuse disclosed to, how was the abuse disclosed, whether there was subsequent confirmation of the abuse or not, the type of abuse, the number of disclosures, who the alleged abuser was, as well as the number of abusers. These were broken down by the three groups of survivor, grade six students and grades seven/eight students. Measure—Disclosure Sequential Analysis As an exploratory study one lesson in grade seven was video recorded and analyzed in order to gain an insight into the communicative interactions around disclosures. It was anticipated that there may be a pattern to the inception and reception of disclosures and that this pattern of interactions may possibly be described through the sequence of communicative turns around the disclosure itself. It was anticipated that the disclosure made by a student would be connected to the provocative statement being discussed. A Disclosure Sequential Analysis (DSA) sheet was developed as a result of step by step interaction analysis of the communicative behaviors immediately before, during, and after disclosures. The DSA recorded: the time within the lesson; the provocative statement being discussed (e.g., children often tell lies); the prior turn to the disclosure taken by either the disclosing student or another student (e.g., “it’s more sensible to tell but scared to do it, you’ll get battered”); the disclosure (e.g., “he said a friend threatened him”) and the adult response to/reception of the disclosure (e.g., nodding and saying “right”). Coding of Disclosures The researcher, as an experienced psychologist (20 years) with a specialism in child protection and in particular working with survivors of child sexual abuse, coded all the disclosures. Students’ disclosure statements were compared and matched with abuse definitions used within government guidelines (Scottish Executive 1998). There were 13 different types of abuse identified, that is—physical abuse (ongoing physical assault); physical assault (sngle event physical attack); grooming (sexual touching and language); abduction (self or others being forcibly taken into car); attempted abduction (failed attempts to take a child into a house by force); child sexual abuse (ongoing rape of a child by adult/s); rape (specific incident of sexual assault on an adult); sexual assault (non penetrative sexual assault of an adult), erotica (taking pictures of children without permission—perceived sexual intent); domestic violence (a father hitting a mother or visa versa); bullying (ongoing assaults, threats, or name calling by peers); emotional abuse (ongoing shouting and putting down comments); and attempted stealing (attempted theft of a dog from a child). Helpline Analysis of Disclosures Eighteen and Under (18U) were approached through an email request by the researcher for data regarding the use of their Helpline throughout the duration of the evaluation. An email was received in return explaining that only limited data was available because of the minimal nature of recording of the telephone calls, i.e., adult or child (school grade), gender, georaphical location, purpose of call and the nature of abuse disclosed. Confidentiality was the reason given for the minimalist nature of recording. Disclosure Sequential Analysis All disclosures occurred between the 20th and 40th minute of the lesson. Two disclosures occurred within a minute of each other. Three disclosures occurred during one particular statement about the Police. Disclosure content was partly connected to the question content, i.e., bullying, domestic violence, police violence, and abduction. Prior turn statements by students were mostly of a ‘general opinion’ in nature. This was then followed by a specific disclosure. The 18U presenter then responded to students disclosures with a minimal communicative reception of the disclosure, i.e., nodding, saying right, ok, asking a question to confirm action, and repeating words. The teacher responded to one disclosure by nodding and saying “right” and to another disclosure (a student’s personal experience of domestic violence) suggesting that this may not be the right place or time to tell. Disclosures to the 18U Helpline Two weeks after the delivery of the Tweenees lessons the total number of calls received from students throughout the duration of the evaluation were as follows: Seventy-seven calls were recorded as received in total. Nineteen calls were made from one intervention schools area, 25 calls in the other intervention schools area and 28 calls from other school areas across the city not involved in the evaluation. Five calls were received from high school aged students. All were recorded as grade seven. No calls were recorded by the Helpline three weeks prior to the beginning of the evaluation in either of the these two school areas or from other areas. In comparison in the previous year zero calls had been recorded as received from students from across the city covering the duration period of the evaluation. Calls that had been received had been made by professionals seeking advice and support. Data was available for the content analysis of 72 calls. Thirty-six calls had occurred to check the number out, e.g., whether the line provided confidentiality (no gender was noted); sixteen calls reported instances of bullying (14 from females and two from males); seven calls included domestic violence (all by females); five calls were of physical abuse from parents (three from males and two from females); four females reported that a female friend had been raped; two calls from females reported sexual assault; one female reported her own rape and one male spoke of his fear of a stranger “who hurts children.” There was no way of verifying the calls. Disclosures—Within Lessons Within lessons substantial numbers of disclosures were made; some known previously, most for the first time about their own abuse. Similar to MacIntyre and Carr (1999b) nearly all disclosures were purposeful. All disclosures occurred to the presenter at the front of the class as most students chose to tell publicly. Hypotheses may be that students were modeling disclosure for each other then seeing fellow students being listened to and believed; students were only sharing a small part of their stories of harm and/or children want to tell their stories of harm but adults rarely ask. There may also be an issue with teachers having insufficient knowledge and skill to respond appropriately and thus inhibiting disclosure (Barron and Topping 2009). Only a small proportion of the disclosures (16%) were confirmed with no evidence of false allegations (Oldfield et al. 1996). Disclosures Within Lessons—Nature and Extent of Abuse There was a wide diversity of abuse disclosed; however, the frequency of disclosure by individual students was not recorded. In the survivor and grade six groups there were high levels of bullying reported. In grade six the number of attempted abductions reported was surprisingly high. When the figures for disclosures of physical assault and physical abuse against children are taken together along with domestic violence (Margolin and Gordis 2004) the picture is one of physical"