Institutional child sexual abuse: Impacts and responses

Abstract

Many countries are now dealing with cases of large-scale institutional child sexual abuse. The institutional aspects of child sexual abuse include: inadequate procedures to protect children; values that place the reputations of organisations above bringing child sex offenders to justice; marginalization of victims and whistleblowers; failure to involve police authorities to investigate criminality; and people in authority misusing their power to target vulnerable children through paedophile networks and organized crime syndicates. The hidden and insidious nature of institutional child sexual abuse makes it impossible to estimate its true extent.