Child Sex Abuse within the Family in Sub-Saharan Africa: Challenges and Change in Current Legal and Mental Health Responses

Abstract

Child sex abuse within the family is extremely prevalent yet vastly underreported in sub-Saharan Africa.Until recently, state responses were deeply inadequate, characterized by outdated laws and legal procedures and scarce mental health services.In the past decade, however, many African countries have undertaken significant efforts, often informed by international law, to change their legal and mental health systems in order to respond more effectively to incest and other forms of child sex abuse.After discussing the risk factors for incest and the ways in which state responses have fallen short, this Article describes and evaluates a variety of legal and mental health reforms that African countries have adopted in recent years.While recognizing the importance of these reforms, the Article argues that these efforts must be strengthened and broadened.Efforts to bring offenders to justice and provide treatment for child victims must form part of a multidimensional approach that involves state and non-state actors, different professions, and the community at large, as well as include a focus on prevention.The Article concludes by setting forth some guidelines to inform the development of preventive measures and a more comprehensive and effective response to intra-familial child sex abuse.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 19 citations exist upstream.