57 SEXUAL VIOLENCE AND PLACEMENT OF CHILDREN

Abstract

Family Center is a comprehensive program which provides obstetrical and psychosocial services and methadone maintenance for pregnant drug-dependent women and their infants. Between 1979 and 1983, 171 women on enrollment to the program completed our Violence Questionnaire. Objectives of the questionnaire were: 1) to ascertain episodes and degrees of violence experienced by the women, including acts of physical and sexual abuse occurring in childhood or as an adult. 2) to learn if women reporting a history of violence/abuse were more likely to have had children in foster care. Individual item responses on the questionnaire, reported in percentages, were:

Of the 171 women studied, 40% had children in voluntary or involuntary foster placement. Women with a reported history of sexual trauma, particularly if occuring in childhood or repeatedly, were significantly more likely to have children in foster care (p= <.01). Women who were physically abused (without sexual trauma) as children and/or adults were less likely to have their children in placement. This study suggests that failure to resolve childhood sexual trauma or coping with the trauma by use of illicit drugs, disrupts the ability of women to parent their own children. The effects of violence toward women, particularly when they themselves were children, may have untoward effects upon their own children.

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