Current information on the scope and nature of child sexual abuse
Abstract
Description
Summarizes data from 19 surveys of adults regarding their experiences of sexual abuse as children. Considerable evidence exists to show that at least 20% of American women and 5% to 10% of American men experienced some form of sexual abuse as children. The rates are somewhat lower among people born before World War II, but there is little evidence of a dramatic increase for recent generations. The studies provide little evidence that race or socioeconomic circumstances are major risk factors. They do show elevated risk for children who experienced parental inadequacy, unavailability, conflict, harsh punishment, and emotional deprivation. Most sexual abuse was committed by men (90%) and by persons known to the child (70% to 90%), with family members constituting one-third to one-half of the perpetrators against girls and 10% to 20% of the perpetrators against boys. Studies of the criminal justice processing of sexual abusers suggest that, compared with other violent criminals, slightly fewer are prosecuted, but of those prosecuted, slightly more are convicted.Overall, there is little evidence to suggest that either the child welfare system or the criminal justice system abandons its usual standards of operation and acts hysterically when confronted with sexual abuse.
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Keywords
Abuse-sexual, Child welfare -- statistics, Emotional abuse, Offender, prosecution