Aim
In society sexuality of people with intellectual disabilities (ID) has often been ignored, resulting in minimal or lack of adequate assessment and treatment of sexual abuse. The prevalence of sexual abuse of people with ID is higher than in people without ID, and sexually offensive behavior is also identified as a significant problem. Providing professional support in this area means paying attention to the clients’ care demands, arising from a professional loving care perspective. Professionals often have not sufficiently developed the acquired expertise for this. The present study’s purpose was therefore to develop evidence based training modules to train professionals in the assessment of sexual abuse and disclosure.
Methods
The training ‘Assessment of sexual abuse’ was conducted three times (n = 7; n = 16; n = 15) using a pretest-posttest-design, focusing on knowledge and process insight of professionals required to assess sexual abuse of people with intellectual disabilities. The training ‘ Disclosure’ was conducted two times (n = 10; n = 11) using a pretest-posttest-design, focusing on knowledge and process insight required to assess a vague spontaneous disclosure of presumable sexual abuse.
Results
Participants of the training ‘Assessment of sexual trauma and sexual offending’ and of the training ‘Disclosure’ showed significant progress in both knowledge and process insight.
Conclusions
Training professionals in assessing sexual abuse and disclosure is an important step in the clarification of these problems, and in turn helps to provide adequate guidelines for treatment.