VioLit summary: OBJECTIVE: The focus of this paper by Gutierres and Reich was to explore the link between child abuse and later delinquency with a particular emphasis on runaway behavior. METHODOLOGY: A non-experimental exploratory design was employed. The research tested a theoretical approach to family violence, hypothesizing that violence in a family setting might engender further violence by behavioral modeling. Both studies evaluated later juvenile arrest data for a large sample of teens who were reported as having been physically or sexually abused by their parents. Data on the abused children's siblings and on a nonabused control sample of juvenile delinquents were obtained as well. A sample of 5392 children referred for child abuse to the Arizona Department of Economic Security, Child Protective Services, were chosen as the experimental group. Of these, 774 were juvenile offenders. The siblings of the experimental sample, children who had not reportedly been abused, comprised the sibling sample. 900 reported juvenile offenders, selected at random from the files of the Maricopa County Juvenile Court Center who were not in the child abuse sample, comprised the control group. The data of the study were reported delinquent acts, and the frequency of each delinquency by each subject was tallied. FINDINGS/DISCUSSION: Both studies found that physically abused children were less likely than their siblings and nonabused controls to engage in later aggressive crimes such as assault. However,they were 2-3 times more likely to be arrested for escape acts such as running away than controls. For one sample of physically abused juveniles, 40% of their arrests (across a list of 57 possible offenses) were for escape acts while for the control juveniles only 17% of their arrests were for runaway infractions. 55% of arrests were runaway infractions in the sample of sexually abused children. There were also a high number of runaways among the siblings of the physically abused experimental sample (29% escapes) compared with the control sample (17% escapes). AUTHORS' RECOMMENDATIONS: The authors argued that further research is necessary to find out what childhood events increase sensitivity for negative social encounters, thus increasing the tendency toward runaway behavior. This could be done using analysis of early child rearing conditions. The authors suggested that additional research is also needed to explore sexual differences in relation to avoidance and aggressive responses to abuse. A developmental-motivational perspective should be used to guide the search for other experiences, outside of abuse, that lead to social tension and anxiety, resulting in runaway behavior. Authors believed that it would be unwise to group runaways into the category of "juvenile delinquent" and treat them accordingly. The runaway may be a victim rather than a perpetrator, according to authors, which would require selectively different intervention strategies. EVALUATION: The interesting finding in this study was the fact that abused juveniles were different in many respects from other youths in trouble. The finding that escape (like running away) and less violent activity than their nonabused counterparts were characteristics of abused children offers some critique to some current thinking about abuse and violence. The fact that the data comes from social work files and is taken from one geographic area provides some weakness to these findings, despite a healthy sample size. Further research needs to more fully explore the victim-perpetrator distinctions through a variety of data sources (such as in-depth interviews) as well as in a larger selection of places to better understand what should be done to best serve these youths. (CSPV Abstract - Copyright © 1992-2007 by the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence, Institute of Behavioral Science, Regents of the University of Colorado) KW - Arizona KW - Child Abuse Effects KW - Child Abuse-Delinquency Link KW - Child Abuse Victim KW - Child Physical Abuse Effects KW - Child Physical Abuse Victim KW - Child Sexual Abuse Effects KW - Child Sexual Abuse Victim KW - Child Victim KW - Childhood Victimization KW - Childhood Experience KW - Domestic Violence Effects KW - Domestic Violence Victim KW - Juvenile Runaway KW - Juvenile Offender KW - Juvenile Victim KW - Juvenile Delinquency KW - Delinquency Causes KW - Psychological Victimization Effects KW - Sexual Assault Victim KW - Sexual Assault Effects KW - Incest Effects KW - Incest Victim KW - Runaway Causes
Language: en
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