Merrick, M. T., A. J. Litrownik, et al. (2014). Sexualized behaviours partially mediate the link between maltreatment and delinquent behaviors. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 24, 2217-2228.
The association between child maltreatment and juvenile delinquency has been well established. However, the underlying mechanisms linking this relationship are not well understood. The authors contended that “certain outcomes of child maltreatment (e.g., sexualized behaviors) are risk factors for juvenile delinquency”. Therefore, sexualized behaviors may be an important but often neglected factor explaining the relationship between child maltreatment and juvenile delinquency. This study used mediation analysis to investigate the mediating effect of sexualized behaviours between child maltreatment and juvenile delinquency.
The sample for the study consisted of a subset of the participants (n = 804) from the Longitudinal Studies of Child Abuse and Neglect (LONGSCAN) Consortium. Children and their primary caregivers who completed the ages 8 and 12 face-to-face interviews and had completed CPS records through age 8 were selected to participate. Children’s sexualized behaviors and juvenile delinquency were measured during the interviews, whereas information regarding maltreatment characteristics was obtained through reports made to CPS.
Due to the complexity of maltreatment characteristics in CPS reports and an effort to encompass maltreatment experiences more broadly, the authors constructed a latent variable using early or late reports of physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse and neglect, with higher scores indicating more reports of child maltreatment. Early reports of emotional abuse and neglect were later excluded to improve the model fit for the latent variable.
Mediation analysis using structural equation modeling was used in this study. Results showed that more reports on maltreatment experiences were positively associated with more sexualized behaviours at age 8, which then predicted higher levels of juvenile delinquency at age 12. The direct effect of child maltreatment at age 8 was positively related to higher levels of children’s delinquent behaviours at age 12, after accounting for the mediating effect of sexualized behaviors. The findings of this study suggested that the relationship between child maltreatment and juvenile delinquency could be explained partially by children’s sexualized behaviors. In addition to child maltreatment, early sexualized behaviors (at age 8) could also be a significant indicator for early child delinquent behaviors among high-risk children.
With the longitudinal approach in this study, the results highlighted the potential causal relationship between child maltreatment and juvenile delinquency being explained by sexualized behaviors among a group of high-risk children. However, there are several limitations that need to be mentioned here: 1) this study was limited to the examination of CPS reports of child maltreatment, which could underestimate the actual incidence of maltreatment in the sample; 2) it is possible that some primary caregivers who reported on child sexualized behaviours could have been the perpetrators of the maltreatment, which may create biases in their responses of their own child’s behaviours; and 3) official records of juvenile delinquency (e.g., arrest records) were unavailable for these investigations. Future examinations of more contextual factors will prove fruitful in further unpacking the relationship between child maltreatment and juvenile delinquency.