Being a Child Is a “Serious Game”: Innovations in Psychological Preventive Programs Against Child Sexual Abuse

Background

Child sexual abuse (CSA) is a form of violence with an alarming prevalence all over the world (Muller, Röder and Fingerle,2014); unfortunately, more than a half-million children are abused sexually each year (Renk, Liljequist, Steinberg, Bosco & Phares, 2002; Finkelhor, & Dziuba- Leatherman, 1995). Reliable estimates of CSA prevalence are difficult to obtain because not all abuses are usually denounced (Fallon et al., 2010; Mathews, 2011): 38% of child victims are estimated to disclose they have been sexually abused, but 40% of them report the abuse to a friend instead of adult figures or services (Ullman, 2007; Broman-Fulks et al., 2007). As a result, whereas two-thirds of children never report the abuse (London, Bruck, Ceci & Shuman, 2005), most disclosed cases are not reported to authorities (Wyatt, Loeb, Solis & Carmona, 1999), which investigate only the 55% of the CSA told by children and the 20% by school personnel (Sedlak et al., 2010).