The Culture of Silencing Child Victims of Sexual Abuse: Implications for Child Witnesses in Court

This article describes the insidious impact of the cultural silencing of child victims of sexual abuse. Children exposed to sexual violence encounter a multitude of factors that force them to experience and respond to their victimization in silence. Those children able to break their silence in the form of disclosure are often thrust into a parallel process of silencing perpetuated in the United States by the current design of our criminal justice and court systems. Child witnesses within these systems are silenced in both subtle and overt ways throughout the judicial process and are expected to function under conditions of extremely high stress and anxiety. This intense and adversarial atmosphere overwhelms children's resources and shuts down their ability to effectively communicate on the stand, leading to repeated experiences of silencing that can ultimately have devastating long-term consequences. In addition, secondary wounding is often inflicted because of the insensitivity of our institutional practices to both developmentally and trauma-sensitive treatment of these vulnerable children. This article describes an application of humanistic psychology to the court system in the United States as well as an attempt at building a coordinated community response to address the problem of silencing. Recommendations for addressing inequities in the child justice process and mobilizing professionals and agencies are offered in the humanistic tradition.