Psychiatric Times publish an article advising that children lie about sexual abuse
My response to the article
Several professionals sent this article to me whilst I was on leave, and asked me to respond. My responses became bigger and bigger, and so I have included my response here for the ‘What Would Jess Say?’ series on Substack.
On the 24th August 2022, The Psychiatric Times published an article entitled, ‘Why some children lie about sexual abuse’, by Psychologist, Dr Alan Blotcky.
The subtitle bravely states:
‘Here’s how to distinguish false allegations of sexual abuse.’
At first, I thought it was a satirical article, or a criticism of the ‘false memory syndrome’ that has been used against abused children for decades, but it soon became clear that the article was not only serious, but claimed to give fellow psychiatrists and psychologists ‘red flags’ that the child is ‘fabricating’ sexual abuse, which you can read here:
https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/why-some-children-lie-about-sexual-abuse
(I took copies of the article in case it was changed or deleted by the publication, as some of the claims are demonstrably inaccurate.)
Broadly, it is my opinion that this article in its entirety, and it’s placement in a prestigious outlet for professionals, is dangerous for thousands of children who will disclose sexual abuse in the months and years to come.
The article is positioned as a list of helpful tips and signs to help professionals to determine whether a child is lying about being sexually abused.
Children rarely lie about being sexually abused. Children gain absolutely nothing from saying they were sexually abused. They are not favoured. They are rarely believed. They are often blamed. They are often outcast from their families or isolated. They have limited access to inadequate support. They are often pathologised and medicated. They are stigmatised and assessed.
Sexual abuse is however, extremely common. The NSPCC (2017) states that 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 20 boys will be sexually abused before the age of 12 in the UK alone. In the CSEW (2017), 1 in 5 UK adults report being abused in childhood.
The numbers of children who report sexual abuse during childhood pale in comparison to the sheer numbers of children who are currently being sexually abuse and will never tell anyone. Research from 2004 onwards found that most children never disclose sexual abuse in childhood, and only 30-50% of adults disclose the sexual abuse they were subjected to in their own childhoods. This leaves a large chunk of people who take their experiences to the grave, never telling anyone of the rape and abuse they were subjected to for years of their lives.
If there needs to be an article about children lying about sexual abuse in The Psychiatric Times, arguably, it needs to be one which explains how rare false allegations of sexual abuse are, how common sexual abuse really is, and why it will appear over and over again on the caseloads and casenotes of these professionals throughout their entire careers.
I would like to respond to some of the most outrageous claims in the article.
‘In a forensic interview, a sexually abused child is typically anxious, scared, worried, conflicted, ambivalent, and prone to recantations. In contrast, a child who is calm, cool, collected, and smooth may be fabricating the allegation of abuse.’
This is categorically incorrect, and demonstrates a lack of awareness of trauma responses and coping mechanisms. Children will behave in many different ways when they recall sexual abuse. I’ve worked with many children who describe horrific sexual abuse in total calm, with humour, with a casual approach and without much outward distress.
This can happen for many reasons. One reason could be that the child is so disassociated from what was done to them, they don’t emotionally recall it or react to it as they discuss it. It’s just a narrative, a factual recount of what happened to them.
Another reason may be that sexual abuse was a normal, daily part of their lives. They might not even realise how abusive or alarming what they are saying is, and therefore discuss it like they were discussing what they had for dinner. Matter-of-fact, cool and calm.
A third reason may be that their way of recalling the abuse is related to, and mixed up with, their own coping mechanisms. They may joke about their abuse, become sarcastic, pessimistic, ironic, cynical, playful, distracted, or laugh whilst disclosing. They may feel embarrassed or humiliated, or they might find that they feel a burden on them not to harm the professional with their disclosure. Many children and adults try to make light of their own abuse when they see the facial responses of the professional taking the report.
A child does not have to behave in a stereotypical ‘perfect victim’ manner in order to be telling the truth. Sexual abuse happens in hundreds of different ways, and their understanding of the abuse will change the way they describe it to a third party. Further than that, being asked to disclose it in a forensic interview will definitely change the way a child behaves, speaks, feels and thinks. This should be expected, and not necessarily taken as evidence of lying.
‘A timeline of events and actions will often reveal a fabricated allegation. An allegation of sexual abuse that occurs within days or a few weeks of a major event can reflect a fabricated story.’
This advice is also inaccurate. Many children who have been sexually abused will struggle significantly with timeline recall, and will often disclose around a trigger point.
If we look at this issue from a trauma-informed perspective, it makes sense that a child would be triggered to disclose during or around a big life event, an incident, a big change or development in their lives. Transition periods of children are notable when considering when they attempt to disclose (if they ever do).
Research into disclosure of child sexual abuse (Alaggia, 2004) found that there are several different types of disclosure. Most children do not suddenly and freely decide to purposefully disclose of their own accord. The majority of children will ‘tell’ by a behavioural disclosure (their behaviour and demeanour changes so much that adults begin to wonder if something happened to them); an elicited disclosure (where a professional pushes or encourages a disclosure from a child who they think might be harmed or in danger); or a triggered disclosure (where a child’s trauma becomes triggered by an event or experience and they disclose to someone).
Dr Blotcky writes that when disclosures happen around a big event, such as their parent’s divorce, the death of a family member, or moving area; this should be seen as a red flag for fabrication.
I would argue that this is inaccurate, and that it is in fact common for both adults and children to disclose around major life events. Major life events cause us to pause, reflect, question, and generally feel uncertain or unsafe. It is therefore easy to see how this uncertainty can trigger a child to remember or want to tell someone about being sexually abused.
This is especially important if the major life event includes the perpetrator.
‘If the first allegation of sexual abuse occurs during a divorce and/or child custody proceeding, a fabricated story should be considered. If multiple allegations are made during the proceeding, that is a huge red flag for fabrication.’
I consider this piece of advice to be one of the most harmful in the article. Children who are subject to contact, custody, residency, care, or divorce proceedings are often asked about their relationships with their parents for the very first time in their lives. It makes sense that this then becomes the arena in which children choose to tell the truth about what their parent has been doing to them, and why they don’t want to live with them.
Often, when children disclose sexual abuse, it is perpetrated by their father or a male relative. Whilst this may seem suspect to those professionals like Dr Blotcky, whose job it is to defend ‘innocent parents’, when we consider that 97% of all sex offenders worldwide are male (FBI data), the majority of all abused children report a male sexual abuser (regardless the sex of the child), and that most of these children have been living with a male for much of their lives, it is hardly surprising that they report male perpetrators during interviews.
This probably isn’t because children are likely to lie about being sexually abused by fathers and male relatives, but because it is a common crime, and they suddenly find themselves in a formal process where their (majority hetero) parents have split, and they are being directly interviewed about their childhood experiences, preferences, wishes and feelings about each parent.
It seems odd to me that a professional would ask these direct questions of a child and then when they disclose abuse, suggest that it is suspicious that they have only brought the abuse up at that point.
You asked the questions, they answered.
Maybe the child has never been asked about their parents before? Maybe they have never spoken to a professional before? Maybe they had never had to consider what it would be like to live with one abusive parent for half of the week? Maybe they had always had some form of safety net from their older siblings or from the other parent, which is now being removed by circumstance, and they are too scared to be left alone with the abusive parent?
Simply put, if you ask a child about their wishes and feelings about their parents and custody, don’t be surprised when they then use that opportunity to disclose, especially when you have deliberately built rapport with them in order to talk to them. If you build rapport and confidence with the child to interview them, they are more likely to disclose to you. This isn’t suspect, this is exactly what you built the rapport for.
‘If the parent in question does not have a prior history of inappropriate sexual activity, criminal behavior, or serious substance abuse, it is more likely that the current allegation of sexual abuse is false.’
I don’t think I need to spend much time on this one, as this should be obviously incorrect to anyone who reads it. Abusers are very rarely apprehended, exposed, or convicted. Looking for previous offending as evidence that the child is telling the truth is a losing game. Serious substance abuse is an odd one to include too, as being an alcoholic or addicted to drugs does not cause, or predispose someone, to sexually abuse children.
For the most part, and as we are taught time and time again, the sexual abuser is likely to be a completely normal person, unknown to professional services or police: the teacher, the wealthy businessman, the babysitter, the gymnastics coach, the popular, well-liked guy, the religious minister, the community leader, the charity volunteer, the friendly woman, the scout leader, the family friend, or the committed, loving parent.
It makes no sense to advise fellow psychologists and psychiatrists that children who report abuse by someone who has no criminal history and no substance misuse issues are ‘more likely’ to be falsely accusing them of sexual abuse. It is as if Dr Blotcky has a strict mental stereotype of a sex offender in his mind whilst writing the article (and practising with children), and anyone who falls outside of the cookie cutter is the victim of a false allegation.
‘If the child or a member of the family has a history of making previous similar allegations of abuse against others, it is more likely that the current allegation claim is false.’
The final point I would like to address is this one. It seems odd to me that if other members of the family have made reports of abuse, this must mean that the current report of abuse is false.
The behaviour of others, and their own choices to disclose abuse in the family are nothing to do with the child being interviewed, and arguably, if there are multiple reports of sexual abuse in the family from different family members of different generations, it should be taken very seriously.
I have worked on several cases in which one man had abused many family members. One case involved a man who had sexually abused all of his own daughters, his own nieces, then his granddaughters, and it was only when one granddaughter disclosed to another, and both went to their mother, who then disclosed her own abuse, and then spoke to her sister who disclosed the same abuse - that the case came to court.
And even then, it was framed by the defence as a malicious conspiracy against the head of the family, despite there being over 15 separate victims who had never disclosed before, spanning 50 years.
Secondly, if a child consistently reports sexual abuse in their family over a period of time, this must be taken seriously, and not immediately considered evidence for a false allegation. Some children attempt to disclose repeatedly during the lifespan, with one 2014 NSPCC study suggesting that when children do disclose, they will tell an average of 7 people before they are taken seriously or protected from child sexual abuse.
What would Jess say?
Overall, the article in The Psychiatric Times felt jarring. I have been working in this field for over 12 years, and it has been slow and difficult progress to educate and raise awareness of hundreds of thousands of professionals and general public adults so that they understand the true scale of child sexual abuse.
That work has been vital, and I thought it had started to show signs of slow success. However, there has not been nearly enough acceptance and acknowledgement by psychiatrists or psychologists of how common child sexual abuse is, to start writing articles claiming to be able to distinguish which children are lying about being sexually abused. We don’t even respond properly yet to the tiny proportion of children who do disclose to us.
Psychiatrists and psychologists are routinely supporting children and adults with a range of trauma responses, behaviours, coping mechanisms and diagnosed mental illnesses/disorders - and yet it is still difficult to get many of them to see the clear link to child abuse.
Instead, they are trained to believe that these ‘mental illnesses’ and ‘personality disorders’ are innate, biological, biochemical, or neuropsychological in nature.
Often, the circumstance, experience, and disclosures of the patient are overlooked or stigmatised. Sometimes, they are even used to further pathologise the patient and to suggest that the patient disclosing sexual abuse is actually part of their mental disorder, attention seeking tendencies, or compulsive lying.
This is why this article felt so abrupt. In a sector where I thought we were slowly making progress towards compassionate, trauma-informed psychology and psychiatry, here was an article talking about children lying about sexual abuse.
We seemed to have slipped right back to the days of ‘false memory syndrome’, and The Psychiatric Times has led the way in 2022, by publishing an article littered with misinformation and dodgy advice about how to spot a lying child.