NCJ Number
94319
Date Published
1981
Length
7 pages
Annotation
Following a summary description of King County's approach for dealing with child sexual abuse, this paper focuses on the program's philosophical assumptions, staffing, funding sources, eligibility requirements, program components and procedures, treatment services, the consequences of violating the terms of disposition, and program statistics.
Abstract
Seattle/King County (Washington) uses a comprehensive, coordinated approach for handling child sexual abuse cases. There are specialized units or trained staff within all agencies, including the police department, child protective services, prosecutor's office, and the probation and parole department. The core system members of the network are the sex crime units of the Department of Public Safety and Seattle Police Department, the Sexual Abuse Unit of the Seattle Child Protective Services, and the Special Assault Unit of the prosecutor's office. The Sexual Assault Center and the Rape Relief Program offer specialized victim services, including medical care, counseling, and advocacy. Private mental health professionals or agencies provide specialized evaluation and outpatient treatment services for both adult and juvenile sexual offenders. An inpatient treatment facility exists within the State Department of Corrections, to which an offender can be sentenced. A loose-knit network of community mental health professionals provides other sexual abuse treatment services, including individual and family treatment, groups, and specialized play and art therapy for abused children. Since the inception of the coordinated approach, the number of cases handled by all systems has substantially increased, but there is no existing system for reliably determining the posttreatment rate of recidivism, largely because recidivism rates only consist of reported reoffenses.