Re: Decline in Quebec incidence rate of CSA - Search for

[Lauralea <laurab@xxxxxxx>]

At 09:07 AM 7/2/97 -0500, you wrote:
>
>
>David Finkelhor wrote:
>
>> Andrea Sedlak's findings from the NIS comparison are very important, but
>> they concern the period from 1986 to 1993, when reports and
>> substantiations of sexual abuse were still both rising in the US and
>> probably in Quebec as well.  The decline that we are all trying to account
>> for is a phenomenon that appears to have begun in around 1992-93 and has
>> accelerated since. It appears to involve large declines in both reports
>> and substantiations.
>
>If I may be allowed a guess, I would consider that the economic context
>might be important here.  We have seen studies showing that physical abuse
>rates (in Colorado) are *very* closely tied to unemployment rates.  My own
>research, and the NIS work, shows that even sexual abuse is strongly tied
>to poverty (although I understand that some excellent researchers still
>doubt this to be the case).  Perhaps the good economy which has obtained
>in the past several years is causing a decrease in the high maltreatment
>rates which were found in the late 1980's.  This hypothesis becomes more
>attractive when we recall that the period covered by the NIS-3 was a bad
>period economically, with the economic upturn only really getting underway
>right at the end of the period covered by the NIS-3.
>
>Brett Drake Ph.D.
>Associate Professor
>George Warren Brown School of Social Work
>Washington University
>
>
As a lowly LSW I hesitate to question your hypoothesis but; have you
considered that Child Abuse and Child Sexual Abuse are reported more on
persons living in poverty than in the upper or middle class and that even if
abuse is reported on the upper and middle class it is rare that it is
investigated.  Even if abuse is substantiated, very few DA or judges are
willing to carry through with any distastful actions against those that may
be their friends or neighbors.  Poverty is not the creator of child abuse,
people are.


Lauralea Cox LSW
Northeast Texas, USA