KWDI Korean Women’s Development Institute

This research surveys the current situation of various support services related to victims of sexual violence who are children, youth, and people with disabilities. It examines problems and intends to present measures to improve support services and policy. To collect data, we surveyed support agencies for victims of sexual violence and interviewed child, youth, and disabled victims of sexual violence, as well as their guardians.

Emotional support and the course of psychological counseling given by support organizations for child, youth, and disabled victims of sexual violence and their guardians are the most positive points, according to our evaluation. Points of improvement demanded are, first, that awareness about sexual violence is improved among the police handling the investigation in the criminal justice system and doing the detective work. The problems that were pointed out are that court-appointed attorneys are lacking in expertise, the people who take testimony are lacking in expertise, the investigators who record the affidavit are lacking in their understanding of the characteristics of victims, and there is also a lack of specialized centers for people with disabilities.

This research proposes the following tasks: active promotion of support agencies for victims of sexual violence; strengthening of ties and building a cooperative system among support agencies for victims of sexual violence; expansion of education for the prevention of sexual violence against children, youth, and people with disabilities; establishment of a specialized support center and expansion of protection facilities for child victims of incest and disabled victims of sexual violence; improvement of the way that male child and youth victims are supported; strengthening of monitoring and education about attorneys appointed by the court for victims; expansion of the use of court-appointed public attorneys who are exclusively for victims; actualization of pre-interviews of victims before they give testimonies; and expansion of support for people with Level 3 mental disabilities when giving testimony.