• Journal of the Korean Society of Child Welfare
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• no.36
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• pp.197-230
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• 2011

This study is aimed to examine the emotional experiences of parents with children who have been sexually abused by others. Five mothers whose child was sexually abused participated in this study. They were first recruited through recommendations made by social welfare agencies that provided services to these children. We conducted two or more in-depth interviews for each mother to collect the data. The mothers' emotional experiences were analyzed using phenomenology. Mothers expressed that they felt like the whole world came crashing down around them, felt "totally lost", and felt deep pain together with their children, such that "my family and I were so devastated". Nevertheless, they gradually came to believe that they could overcome this tragedy by continuously making efforts to protect their children from the dangers outside. Despite their efforts, however, they kept the feeling of "hopelessness, neglect, and their children's wounds", deep inside them. The results indicate that it is necessary to have an intervention for mothers whose child has been sexually abused from a companions' perspective within 10 days after the sexual abuse incident.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare Studies
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• v.48 no.3
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• pp.171-208
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• 2017

The purpose of this study is to classify the underlying and parsimonious types of child maltreatment and examine whether the effects of risk factors on child maltreatment recurrence differ by type of maltreatment. We utilized the multiyear national administrative data from the National Child Maltreatment Information System collected by Child Protection Agency in Korea. Of 26,921 child maltreatment victims reported and substantiated on or after January 1, 2012, 1,447 children who had recurrence of child maltreatment until December 31, 2015 were selected as maltreatment recurrence group and 4,580 children who had not experienced maltreatment since first substantiation were assigned as maltreatment non-recurrence group. Latent class analysis(LCA) and latent transition analysis(LTA) were used to group children with similar maltreatment subtypes into discrete classes of child maltreatment recurrence. Logistic regression is employed to examine the association between the child maltreatment predominant types and risk factors for recurrence. Results of LCA and LTA showed four latent classes representing predominant type of child maltreatment: 'physical abuse predominant type', 'emotional abuse predominant type', 'sexual abuse predominant type', and 'neglect type'. Significant differences in the effect of risk factors among latent classes were found in child's age and gender, perpetrator's gender, family poverty, biological parent as the perpetrator, domestic violence toward partner, perpetrator's alcoholic problem, insufficient parenting skills, and out-of-home care service, Based on these findings, results suggested how the typology can be used to guide decision about who to target in prevention and intervention programs, and which features of risk factors to target. Practice and policy implications as well as further research tasks were discussed in the lights of searching for useful and important strategies to prevent recurrence of child maltreatment.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.58 no.4
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• pp.237-263
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• 2006

The recent domestic violence research has emphasized an integrated approach to wife battering and child abuse to overcome separated understanding and problem-solving alternatives of the two phenomena in the past. This phenomenological study is designed to understand struggles and dilemmas of battered women and their children related to their surviving and coping with domestic violence in a mother-child relationship. In-depth interviews were conducted with ten battered women who have children and reside in shelters in Seoul and Anyang, and were analyzed by Atlas.ti(a qualitative software program) to maximize the efficiency of data analysis. Domestic violence can be transformed into and integrated with child abuse anytime, so battered women and their children share their crises and challenges related to motherliness and filial love. However, the mutual, existential meaning embedded in the mother-child relationship can be the most important sources to mobilize their life energy and resilience in their copping efforts. The social work interventions for battered women and their children should be integrated with a premise of deep understanding of the complex realities of domestic violence victims.