Sexual violence against a child in the social service workers’ views. A commentary to the studies

Abstract

For the full and harmonious development of their personality children should grow up in a family environment in an atmosphere of happiness, love and understanding. In many families, children are not provided with fundamental rights and fulfillment of their needs: safety, love, acceptance, and respect. Their sense of dignity collapses, they are prohibited from revealing emotions and thoughts. All this triggers a sense of shame, anger and fear, which are often passed on to the child’s functioning in different environments. The phenomenon of violence against children in the family – care deprivation, negligence of their emotionality as well as of bringing up, physical and mental harm, beatings, abuse, and sexual abuse are not uncommon. The issue of various types of child abuse, its recognition, intervention as well as prevention, and helping those children is a concern and a great challenge not only for teachers, educators, psychologists, therapists, but for the whole society, too. In the first part of the considerations theoretical framework for difficult issues posed by sexual violence against children has been presented. An attempt at defining the problem has been presented: a form of sexual abuse, signals that may indicate that the child was the object of sexual violence and direct and long-term consequences of sexual violence against a child. In the second part, in a form of commentary the results of the author’s own research regarding the various categories of respondents, who are employees of the social services on sexual violence against a child have been thoroughly analyzed.