ABSTRACT
Efforts to tackle child sexual exploitation (CSE) and other forms of child sexual abuse (CSA) are often frustrated by the secretive and hidden nature of the abuse and associated difficulties in disclosure and identification. ‘Disclosure’ has consequently emerged as a critical sub-field of interest within research on CSA and a significant body of literature has emerged around the prevalence and patterns of, and barriers to, children’s disclosure (for reviews, see London et al., 2005; 2008; Alaggia, Collin-Vézina and Lateef, 2017). In the simplest terms, ‘disclosure’ refers to the act of making something new or unknown, known: in this case, the act of a child or young person making their abuse known to others. However, decades of research in the field of CSA disclosure emphasises that disclosure is better understood as a process involving many different ways of making abuse known rather than a ‘one-off’ act that is verbal and direct in nature (Alaggia, 2004).
