Estimated time to complete activity: 60 minutes
Target Audience
This activity has been designed to meet the educational needs of nurses, physicians, and other health and legal professionals involved in the treatment and care of victims of sexual assault and domestic violence.
Statement of Need/Program Overview
Medical forensic care of the pediatric patient who has experienced sexual abuse is significantly different than care of the adult. Compliant victimization, multiple methods of effective grooming by the offender, internet and pornographic offenses all complicate the medical providers approach, and even make disclosure more difficult for the child.
Educational Objectives
After completing this activity, the participant should be better able to:
- Summarize the three overall components of child and adolescent sexual abuse/assault (CSA).
- Discuss the differences between obtaining a history in CSA versus adult sexual assault and the motives for non-disclosure.
- Identify the role of the forensic interview and methodology
- List the behaviors commonly seen in CSA.
- Explain sexualized behaviors that are not necessarily associated with CSA.
- Outline the physical examination process and evidence collection.
- Discuss positive and negative physical findings seen in CSA.
- Perform surveillance for STIs in CSA patients
Faculty
Sharon W. Cooper MD, FAAP
CEO of Developmental and Forensic Pediatrics, P A, Fayetteville, NC
Faculty Bio
Sharon Cooper is the CEO of Developmental and Forensic Pediatrics, P A a consulting firm which provides medical care, research, training and expert witness experience in child maltreatment cases as well as medical care for children with disabilities. She works regularly with numerous national and international investigative agencies on Internet Crimes against Children cases.
Dr. Cooper spent 21 years in the Armed Forces retiring as a colonel, and has for the past several years, worked in both the civilian and military arenas in child abuse and developmental pediatrics. She holds a faculty position at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill School of Medicine and the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland. She is an instructor at the Army Medical Education Department Center and School at Ft. Sam Houston, Texas where she provides multidisciplinary training in all forms of child maltreatment to health care providers, law enforcement, attorneys, judges, therapists, chaplains, and social workers.
For the past several years, Dr. Cooper has served as a consultant to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children where she teaches about the victim aspects of Internet crimes against children and sexual exploitation through prostitution of children and youths. Recently, she has joined the training team for the International Center for Missing and Exploited Children to provide similar information in international venues. Dr. Cooper has lectured both nationally and internationally in well over 300 conferences for the US Department of Justice, the FBI, the North Carolina District Attorney's Association, several Attorney General's conferences in various states in the US, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Interpol among others. She has published chapters in texts, and is the lead author of the first comprehensive textbook on the medical, legal, and social science aspects of child sexual exploitation and Internet crimes against children.
Dr. Cooper has provided congressional testimonies regarding compliant victimization of youths who are exploited through Internet technology. She is also a member of an International Expert Working Group on Children and Young Persons with Abusive and Violent Experiences Connected to Cyberspace hosted by the Council of the Baltic Sea States and the Swedish Children's Welfare Foundation.
She is a board member of several organizations and is a member of several professional groups including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children, the International Association of Forensic Nurses, and the International Society for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect.