Non-supportive responses to adolescents who have experienced sexual abuse: Relations with self-blame and trauma symptoms

Background: Youth who have experienced sexual abuse sometimes also experience non-supportive responses, such as accusations of lying, from people in their family and social environment. Little is known about how such responses from different sources (caregivers, friends, other adults) correlate with one another and operate together in the prediction of youth problematic thinking, such as self-blame, and trauma symptoms. Objective: To better understand how non-supportive responses from different sources relate to one another and contribute to youth problems following sexual abuse. Participants and setting: Participants were 475 youths (M-age = 13.57, SD = 1.77) brought to a children's advocacy center in the southern United States. Methods: Participants completed measures of non-supportive responses from caregivers, friends, and other adults. They also completed measures of abuse-specific self-blame and trauma symptoms. Results: Non-supportive responses from caregivers, friends, and other adults correlated with each other and with abuse-specific self-blame and trauma symptoms (correlations ranged from 0.12 to 0.18; all p values <.001). Results of regression analyses indicated that only non-supportive responses from caregivers contributed independently to abuse-specific self-blame, whereas non -supportive responses from caregivers and friends contributed to trauma symptoms. Conclusions: In the aftermath of sexual abuse, non-supportive responses from caregivers and friends relate to youth trauma symptoms. Assessing non-supportive responses broadly across the social network can be useful in understanding youth adjustment following sexual abuse.