Reporting Child Sexual Abuse : Ethical Dilemmas, and Guidelines for Decision Making / Grace C. Zambelli and Sandra S. Lee.

All states have laws mandating that certain individuals report suspected occurrences of child abuse. Mandatory reporting statutes, their administration, and their judicial interpretation have created many ethical, legal, and clinical dilemmas. The abrogation of the confidentiality in the therapeutic relationship is probably the foremost ethical dilemma created by the mandated reporting statutes. There may be specific problems involved when reporting instances of sexual molestation. Reports of physical or sexual abuse which lead to judicial proceedings are less frequent today than in the past, but the potential social injury to the family is still enormous. Few studies have compared the number of reports made with the number of cases of actual physical or sexual abuse in a given jurisdiction. There is no documented causal connection between mandatory reporting and a decrease in the amount of child abuse itself. In spite of the resulting ethical and clinical problems, mandatory reporting laws are valuable. What may be needed are revisions in the laws, a better and more uniform definition of what is reportable as suspected sexual abuse, uniform criteria to guide human services professionals in dealing with parents, and the establishment of minimal child welfare standards and decision-making guidelines. (A five-page bibliography is included. Tables list 20 reasons why human services professionals may avoid reporting sexual abuse and provide some guidelines for decision-making when reporting child sexual abuse.) (NB)

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