ABSTRACT

Child sexual abuse is a serious social problem. In reports of sexually abused children, victims’ narratives often contain elements that suggest the abuse was recorded to create images for child pornography with sadistic, bizarre, or perverted details. The presence of unusual or bizarre elements in the accounts of abused children affects their credibility. The purpose of this paper is to assess the presence and prevalence of these elements in the reports of children with suspected sexual abuse and to examine their consistency with verified cases of child abuse. We conducted two studies. In Study 1, we developed a list of 16 categories of unusual and bizarre scripts reported by children in reports of sexual abuse. In Study 2, we validated the list by examining the presence of the identified scripts in the actual experiences of both individuals convicted of crimes related to child pornography and Italian police officers who were involved with child pornography as part of their official duties. Our findings suggest that children’s accounts of sexual abuse should be considered credible even if they contain unusual or bizarre elements that also occur in child pornography and therefore may reflect events actually experienced rather than merely the child’s fantasy or imagination.

摘要

儿童性虐待是一个严重的社会问题。在关于性虐待儿童的报道中，受害者的叙述通常包含暗示记录虐待的元素，以便为具有虐待狂、离奇或变态细节的儿童色情制品创建图像。受虐待儿童的叙述中存在不寻常或离奇的元素会影响其可信度。本文的目的是评估这些元素在疑似性虐待儿童报告中的存在和普遍性，并检查它们与已证实的虐待儿童案例的一致性。我们进行了两项研究。在研究 1 中，我们制定了一份由儿童在性虐待报告中报告的 16 类不寻常和怪异脚本的列表。在研究 2 中，我们通过检查被判定犯有与儿童色情相关的罪行的个人和意大利警察在其公务中涉及儿童色情的实际经历中确定的脚本的存在来验证该列表。我们的研究结果表明，儿童对性虐待的描述应该被认为是可信的，即使它们包含儿童色情中也出现的不寻常或奇怪的元素，因此可能反映实际经历的事件，而不仅仅是儿童的幻想或想象。