Historically, very little research has been conducted relating to children’s recantations of child sexual abuse allegations. The research that has been conducted in this area focused on the rates of recantations not on the reasons for recantations. Now, in an article published in The Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, vol. 46, issue 2 (Feb. 2007), researchers Malloy, Lyon, and Quas examine factors which are potential predictors of children’s recantations of sexual abuse.

In this study, researchers reviewed 257 substantiated cases of child sexual abuse that resulted in dependency court filings between 1999 and 2000. The cases were considered substantiated if there was medical evidence which was probative of abuse, if the perpetrator admitted to committing the abuse, or if multiple victims reported abuse by the same perpetrator. The cases reviewed were drawn from a large urban area. The children represented multiple ethnic and racial backgrounds but the majority of the children in the study were considered to be Hispanic or Latino children. The children in the study ranged from age two (2) years to age seventeen (17) years.

The researchers also considered the relationship between the child and the perpetrator, the presence or absence of familial support, the severity of the abuse, and the length of the abuse. In considering these categories, the researchers found that the majority of cases studied involved perpetrators who lived in the same home as the child. The majority of these in-home perpetrators were perceived by the child as a parental figure. In classifying the severity of the abuse, researchers looked at cases ranging from exhibitionism without contact to vaginal or anal penetration. The majority of the cases fell in the middle of the researcher’s severity scale which corresponded with digital penetration. In addition, the majority of cases studied involved both multiple incidences of sexual abuse and multiple forms of child abuse or maltreatment. Finally, over fifty percent (50%) of the non-offending caregivers in the study were classified as non-supportive.

The researchers looked at both formal and informal reports of abuse by the child and found that most children were questioned about the abuse more then once. Researchers defined an interview as any person the child had spoken with regarding the abuse. For the purposes of this research, interviews included formal statements to officials involved directly in the investigation and informal statements to friends and family. The overall recantation rate for the study was 23.1%. Researchers noted that on average children first recanted their allegations of sexual abuse on the fourth interview. Statistically significant predictors that a child would recant were: the relationship between the child and the perpetrator, the level of familial support, and the age of the child. Researchers found that children abused by a parental figure, those with non-supportive non-offending caregivers, and younger children were most likely to recant. Interestingly, children who were placed in foster care immediately following the disclosure of sexual abuse were slightly less likely to recant then those children who remained with family members. Finally, when looking at reaffirmation rates, the researchers noted that 48.3% of the children who recanted their statements of sexual abuse eventually reaffirmed at least some part of those statements.