THE NEWS ABOUT CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE: A SYSTEMATIC ANALYSIS OF REPORTS IN THE SOUTH AFRICAN ENGLISH-LANGUAGE PRESS

Abstract

The extent and representativeness of child sexual abuse reporting in the South African English-language press were examined. Baseline data for the study comprised a complete record of all cases of child sexual abuse reported to the police in the North Durban Policing area (KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa) from January 2001 to December 2004, with newspaper reports of child sexual abuse being obtained from the 2004 online archives of a South African English-language newspaper. Study findings indicate that press coverage of child sexual abuse is negligible (i.e., an index of crime-news coverage of less than 1%), with the nature of cases covered by the press being largely representative of the types of cases reported to the police.