The Child Sexual Abuse Accommodation Syndrome—Thirty Years On: An Introduction to the Republication of Professor Roland Summit's Article from 1983

In early 2013 there were so many revelations of the extent of child sexual abuse being investigated in the UK that we decided to collect together a number of articles with an editorial to address this situation.

Sue Richardson was invited to write the editorial because of her knowledge of the professional, personal, and political issues surrounding awareness of child sexual abuse. It was Sue's reference to the importance and relevance of Roland Summit's work, in particular the concept of the child sexual abuse accommodation syndrome, that prompted the decision to republish his groundbreaking paper of thirty years ago (Summit, 1983). We wanted to make his paper immediately available to our readers.

There followed some detective work, as although his paper is widely available on the internet I wanted to contact Professor Summit in person to discuss our plan and to seek his personal permission. This involved phone calls to the clinic address in California where Professor Summit had held the position of Head Physician. The administrative staff were very helpful saying they would print off and post a letter to him at his private home address, adding a note of caution that he had left his position at the clinic sixteen years previously! I sent my letter off by email wondering if I would ever hear anything back.

Imagine my delight when three days later I received this response from Professor Summit in person via email.