Practitioners’ Understanding Of Cross-Cultural Prevalence Data On Child Sexual Abuse (CSA): Results From A Program Evaluation Study In Australia

Prevalence data is generally seen as objective and true; providing justified evidence to address crimes such as CSA. However, the many barriers to disclosure including cultural and racial factors for ethnic minorities mean that prevalence data needs to be regarded with caution. A program addressing this need was delivered across Australia in 2019 and evaluated over six months using mixed-methods (T1 n=112; T2 n=44). It found that practitioners (social workers, counsellors, psychologists) already have a ‘healthy distrust’ of the numbers, and the program seemed to increase this. Overall, caution in the clinical setting is important for mitigating racism, but the positivist research and policy landscape may need to question its trust of ‘objective’ numeric data, else it could further perpetuate risk of systemic harm. The child’s right to safety regardless of cultural background is seen to provide the impetus to address CSA, not the apparent size of the problem.