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Case 1:20-cr-00330-PAE Document 397 Filed 10/29/21 Page 29 of 84

with current trends showing that CSA disclosures are too often delayed until adulthood”); McElvaney, “Disclosure of Child Sexual Abuse: Delays, Non-disclosure, and Partial Disclosure,” 24 Child Abuse Rev. 159, 160 (2015) (There is consensus in the research literature that most people who experience sexual abuse in childhood do not disclose this abuse until adulthood, and when disclosure does occur in childhood, significant delays are common.”); Bicanic et al., “Predictors of delayed disclosure of rape in female adolescents and young adults,” 6 Euro. J. of Psychotraumatology 25883 (2015) (listing among the predictors of delayed disclosure “age category 12-17 years”). Children who do disclose may choose to share information with a peer, but are less likely to go to an adult. Especially where a child has been groomed, the perpetrator has become a trusted adult for a child, reducing the likelihood of the child’s disclosure. Incremental disclosure depends on a variety of factors, including how safe the victim feels with the recipient of the disclosure, how voluntary the disclosure is, and psychological factors that may prevent the victim from accessing their full memories. Victims may also experience significant shame or self-blame that prevents them from sharing certain information, and they may still be attached to the perpetrators, such that they try to protect the perpetrators.

Sexual abuse also impacts the way memory is encoded. In traumatic circumstances, often only the most salient details are encoded, and over time, specific details may be lost. With traumatic memory in particular, adrenaline and cortisol responses in the context of fear and trauma cause people to narrow their focus to the most salient and relevant details. If someone is abused multiple times or by multiple people, it is very common for memories of similar occurrences to

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