The effect of the covid-19 pandemic on applications to the children’s advocacy center

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to determine and compare the characteristics of child sexual abuse (CSA) cases who applied to the children’s advocacy center (CAC) before and during the pandemic. The population and sample of this descriptive, retrospective study consists of the files of children who came to Burdur CAC for CSA between April 1, 2019-March 31, 2020 and April 1, 2020-March 31, 2021. A total of 171 files were examined in study. Data were collected using the Data Collection Form developed by the researchers. Descriptive statistics, Chi-square test, Man Whitney U and Bonferroni tests were used for the analysis of the data. Prior to the study, permission was obtained from the Ministry of Health, Provincial Health Directorate, and Ethics Committee. The results showed that that 113 out of 171 children came to CAC before pandemic, and the number of children who came to CAC decreased during the pandemic (n=58). It was found that 60.8% of children were exposed to non-penetrative sexual abuse, and the number of sexual abuse decreased during pandemic process compared to pre-pandemic period. Regarding the characteristics of perpetrators; mean age was 32.6±16.1 years and 98.8% of them were males. It was also found that both before and during pandemic, children were mostly abused by their friends/lovers, and most of the abuse took place in home of the perpetrator. Those who reported abuse before and during pandemic were found to demonstrate statistically significant differences (p<0.001). Most of the notifications were found to be made by teachers (n=69) before pandemic, while number of teachers’ notifications decreased (n=9) during pandemic process, and the most notifications were made by mothers and fathers (n=23). In the future, it is recommended to carry out studies to determine types of CSA faced by children in digital environments before, during and after pandemic.