ABSTRACT
Assessing children suspected of being sexually maltreated is not easy, and over the years the issue of how sexual abuse should be assessed and diagnosed has evoked much debate. On one hand, professionals have been accused of “overdiagnosing” sexual abuse (Quinn, 1989), due to over reliance on vague data and lack of appropriate assessment techniques (Edvardson, 1996; Horner, Guyer, & Kalter, 1993). On the other hand, it has been claimed that the majority of instances of sexual abuse of children go undetected (Berliner, 1989). Several chapters in the current volume attest to the large number of children who remain silent about their abuse, at least during childhood (London et al., chapter 2, this volume). In part, the controversy about whether abuse is overor underdiagnosed emanates from the different procedures and purposes of clinical and forensic assessment procedures, respectively. Numerous authors have emphasized the importance of recognizing a distinction between clinical and forensic assessment procedures (Borum & Grisso, 1996; Campbell, 1997; Heilbrun, Rosenfeld, Warren, & Collings, 1994; Skeem, Golding, Cohn, & Berge, 1998; Wiklund, 1999), and the importance of acknowledging the different responsibilities of a legal as opposed to a clinical decision-making process (Campbell, 1997; Horner, Guyer, & Kalter, 1993).
