CSA Accommodation Syndrome: Difference between revisions

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*[[Wikipedia:Satanic panic|SRA]]
*[[Wikipedia:Satanic panic|SRA]]
*[[Covert incest]]
*[[Covert incest]]
*[[Inner child]]
*[[Repressed memory]]
*[[Repressed memory]]
*[[Wikipedia:Dissociative identity disorder|Dissociative identity disorder]]
*[[Anal wink]]
*[[Anal wink]]
*[[Cognitive distortion (pseudoscience)]]
*[[Cognitive distortion (pseudoscience)]]

Latest revision as of 12:48, 18 August 2023

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Child Sexual Abuse Accommodation Syndrome (CSAAS) is a fabricated and widely discredited "disorder" used by victimologists to reinterpret a variety of child testimony (disclosure, non-disclosure, sustained denial, retraction) as evidence of CSA.[1] It was a critical propaganda tool in the Day-care hysteria of the 1980s and 90s, and was first proposed by Roland Summit - a pioneer in victimological literature, in 1983.

Proposed mechanism

Summit believed children "learn to accept the situation and to survive", fostering the shamed secrecy thought to typify CSA at the time. "There is no way out, no place to run", he adds; "the healthy, normal emotionally resilient child will learn to accommodate to the reality of continuing sexual abuse."[2]

He posited five stages through which the child attempts to cope with this:

  1. Secrecy
  2. Helplessness
  3. Entrapment and accommodation
  4. Delayed disclosure
  5. Retraction

Discredit

CSAAS belongs to a long list of false diagnostic tools related to the CSA panics of the 1980s and 90s - often resulting in absurd statements by professionals. Similar fallacious circulars have been used in setting up professional discourses on "cognitive distortion", for example. Practitioners and theorists continue to blame "lack of awareness", or "flawed cultural beliefs" for the prevalence of sexual behaviors they deem to be aberrant, or interpreted by participants in ways that confound their set narrative.[3]

Several states have prohibited testimony regarding CSAAS, based on evidence that it is not accepted generally by scientists, except for delayed reporting.[4] Summit himself has subsequently identified that the concept has been abused for scientific and legal reasons,[5] and neither the American Psychiatric Association nor the American Psychological Association has recognized CSAAS.

See also

Other fanciful ideas formerly or presently promoted to aid in categorizing "ideal" victims and perpetrators.

References