Adolescent sexual assault is a pervasive social problem that can have long-term negative consequences for victims' emotional well-being and physical health. In an effort to prevent these problems, survivors are encouraged to seek formal help from the legal and medical systems. Previous research has provided a preliminary understanding of who adolescents disclose to and when; but how and why survivors disclose to informal support providers and eventually seek formal help remains to be investigated. To fill this gap, the current study used an ecological theoretical framework to study the dynamic process of adolescent sexual assault help-seeking. Utilizing qualitative data from 20 interviews with adolescent female sexual assault survivors who entered formal help systems, the findings revealed the significance of individual-level beliefs, assault characteristics, peer and family microsystems, mesosystem interactions, and chronosystem factors. Specifically, negative anticipatory beliefs about how others would react to risky behavior and being assaulted by an acquaintance hindered how soon after the assault survivors were likely to disclose and who survivors chose to disclose to. Given these beliefs, survivors were more likely to first disclose to peers followed by their mothers/guardians. As a result, the interactions within the peer and family microsystems were decisive in how survivors continued to disclose and how willing they were to enter formal systems. Furthermore, the process of disclosure and help-seeking became more complex when family, school, and peer microsystems interacted. When these interconnections occurred with survivors' consent and produced a helpful response, they were perceived as positive. Alternatively, mesosystems in which survivors had minimal control resulted in unwanted disclosures and greater reluctance to enter formal systems. Finally, the chronosystem played a salient role among adolescents with a prior history of sexual or physical abuse. Those who had been previously victimized disclosed more readily and were more determined to seek justice, even if their prior help-seeking experiences had gone poorly. Overall, the current study suggests that disclosure and help-seeking is a dynamic and complex process involving multiple intersecting systems. The findings highlight the utility of an ecological theoretical approach to study sexual assault disclosure and suggest that future studies become attune to higher-level interactions among ecological systems. Finally, the conclusions bring forth the need for community-based interventions that will improve the response from support providers in order to make the disclosure process easier and beneficial for survivors' recovery and well-being.
Read
