Child Sexual Maltreatment

Most of the questions that surround the child sexual abuse item have less to do with answering it because it is such a straightforward item and more to do with construction and the development of the item. The likelihood of impact in child abuse, when it comes the Severity Scales, is either moderate or severe. Sometimes folks ask, “why isn’t there anything other than a severe rating when it comes to child sexual abuse?” The difference in the possible likelihood of impact, does not indicate that child sexual abuse is anything that is non-significant in terms of an event. We have the moderate and the severe differences because we didn’t want to equate something like a child getting raped to something like a child getting flashed. So that is why there’s a difference and why you can either have a severe or a moderate severity rating for child sexual abuse.