CHILDHOOD SEXUAL ABUSES: WHY ARE REMEMBERED OR REVEALED YEARS LATER?

Child sexual abuse happens frequently and has consequences for child emotional development, but victims often delay disclosure or fail altogether to reveal abuse. In these cases, victims may manifest psychological consequences that negatively interfere with adult life. Dissociative amnesia (i.e., the absence of memory for traumatic experience) and hypermnesia are correlated with age at onset of sexual abuse and more frequent sexual abuse. Victims may also keep the memories but unveil them only years later. Some external and internal factors may favor this late disclosure, when these crimes may have prescribed. Restorative justice may be an appropriate alternative approach to justice which brings victims and offenders together to find their own ways to restore the harm victims suffered.