Locked away twice: The role of minimisation and denial of childhood trauma in prison rehabilitation.

BACKGROUND

Minimising childhood trauma in forensic settings can obscure assessment accuracy by producing false negatives. The Minimisation/Denial (MD) scale of the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ) is traditionally interpreted as an indicator of social desirability, however, response bias in correctional contexts is likely bidirectional. It remains unclear whether MD items distinguish social desirability from protective coping or culturally shaped disclosure practices, particularly in correctional settings.

OBJECTIVE

This research investigated the CTQ MD scale by analysing reporting behaviour in men in forensic settings, comparing MD validity across populations (Study 1), and exploring the MD scale construct validity (Study 2).

PARTICIPANTS AND

SETTING

Study 1 included 175 New Zealand (NZ) participants; university students, community adults, and forensic participants from a prison-based child sexual offending programme. Study 2 involved 10 forensic participants from two prison-based violent offending treatment programmes.

METHODS

Study 1 compared MD rates in NZ samples with published data and explored whether MD distinguished forensic from non-forensic groups. Study 2 used reflexive thematic analysis to explore motivations for underreporting childhood experiences.

RESULTS

MD correlated with lower trauma reports in all groups except the forensic sample, indicating contextual differences. Qualitative findings suggested that MD may reflect protective coping, relational safety, and culturally shaped norms of privacy and dignity, rather than social desirability alone. Overall, our findings suggest that standard validity frameworks may misinterpret culturally normative restraint as response distortion in this context and MD scores may signal the need to pause assessment and prioritise culturally safe, relational approaches, rather than assume invalid responding.