Sexually Abused Children: Identifying Masked Presentations in a Medical Setting

To identify clinical signals of latent sexual abuse, the authors studied 50 children whose initial presentations masked the presence of sexual abuse & compared them with 31 overt cases. A broad variety of symptoms masked the abuse (e.g. unusual physical symptoms). The masked group differed significantly from the overt group in that, for example, school problems & psychosomatic disorders were 3x as frequent & the abuser was more often an immediate member of the family, usually the father. (GW)