Child sexual abuse Totally Explained

Everything about Child Molestation totally explained

Child sexual abuse refers to sexual abuse of a child by an adult or some other person significantly older or in a position of power or control over the child, where the child is used for sexual stimulation of another person. In addition to overt sexual interactions, child sexual abuse also includes invitations or requests by an adult regarding sexual forms of kissing, hugging and any other sexual activities.
   Child sexual abuse has been associated with depression, Sexual abuse perpetrated by a family member is a form of incest, and is associated with more serious and long-term psychological trauma, especially in the case of parental incest.
   Prevalence research for the USA shows that approximately 20% to 25% of women and 5% to 15% of men experienced some form of sexual abuse when they were children. Most sexual abuse offenders are acquainted with their victims; approximately 30% of abusers are relatives of the child, most often fathers, uncles or cousins; around 60% of child sexual abusers are other acquaintances such as friends of the family, babysitters, or neighbors; strangers are the offenders in approximately 10% of child sexual abuse cases. Whether the victim is a boy or a girl, men perpetrate the majority of child sexual abuse; women perpetrate approximately 14% of offenses reported against boys and 6% of offenses reported against girls. The American Psychiatric Association states that "children can't consent to sexual activity with adults", and condemns any such action: "An adult who engages in sexual activity with a child is performing a criminal and immoral act which never can be considered normal or socially acceptable behavior." though a specific characteristic pattern of symptoms hasn't been identified.Long term negative effects on development, leading to re-victimization in adulthood are also associated with child sexual abuse. Brown states that the data from prospective studies establishes a causal relationship between childhood sexual abuse and certain specific areas of adult psychopathology, including suicidality, antisocial behavior, PTSD, anxiety and alcoholism.
   Various studies have found a wide range of psychological, emotional, physical, and social effects are associated with child sexual abuse, including depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, poor self-esteem, dissociative and anxiety disorders; general psychological distress and disorders such as somatization, neurosis, sexualized behavior, school/learning problems; and behavior problems including substance abuse, A review of studies by Kendell-Tackett et al. found that two-thirds of the children who were sexually abused showed symptoms, and that "sexually abused children have more symptoms than non-abused children". A study by Baker and Duncan stated that “subjective reports of the effects of sexual abuse indicated that the majority (51%) felt harmed by the experience, while only 4% reported that it had improved the quality of their life.” CSA doesn't appear to be connected to a higher risk of major depressive disorder, though adults with a history of CSA report considerably more depressive symptoms than non-abused peers.
   Child sexual abuse has also been associated in adulthood with depression and chronic pain.People with a history of child abuse, especially sexual abuse, are more likely than people with no history of abuse to become frequent users of emergency and medical care services.
   Caffaro-Rouget et al. (1989) found that 51% of their sample was symptomatic; in Mannarino and Cohen (1986), 69% of forty-five assessed children were symptomatic; 64% of Tong, Oates, and McDowell's (1987) forty-nine child sample were not within the normal range on the child behavior checklist; and in Conte and Schuerman (1987), whose assessment included both very specific and broad items such as 'fearful of abuse stimuli' and 'emotional upset,' 79% of the sample was symptomatic. A minority of abused children have been found to be healthy and asymptomatic, and the level of harm associated with the abuse may correlate with other factors. Other studies have found that the risk of adverse outcomes is reduced for abused children who have supportive family environments.. In addition, Whiffen and MacIntosh (2005) found that negative psychological outcomes (emotional distress) may be mediated by shame or self-blame, interpersonal difficulties and avoidant coping strategies for survivors of childhood sexual abuse.
   Because child sexual abuse often occurs alongside other possibly confounding variables, such as poor family environment and physical abuse, some scholars argue it's important to control for those variables in studies which measure the effects of sexual abuse. and some have hypothesized "that abuse effects are at least in part the results of dysfunctional family dynamics that support sexual abuse and produce psychological disturbance (Fromuth, 1986) and that concomitant physical or psychological abuse may account for some of the difficulties otherwise attributed to sexual abuse (Briere & Runtz, 1990)." Other studies have found an independent association of child sexual abuse with adverse psychological outcomes. The level of dissociation has been found to be related to reported overwhelming sexual and physical abuse. When severe sexual abuse (penetration, several perpetrators, lasting more than one year) had occurred, dissociative symptoms were even more prominent. Turner and Maryanski in Incest: Origins of the Taboo (2005), suggest that mother-son incest causes the most serious damage to children in comparison to mother-daughter, father-daughter and father-son child incest. Crawford asserts that our socially repressed view of female and maternal sexuality conceals both the reality of female sexual pathologies and the damage done by female sexual abuse to children.
   The social stigma of child sexual abuse is hypothesized to be able to compound the psychological harm to children.

Physical

Depending on the age and size of the child, and the degree of force used, child sexual abuse may cause infections, sexually transmitted diseases, or internal lacerations. In severe cases, damage to internal organs may occur, which, in some cases, may cause death. Herman-Giddens et.al. found six certain and six probable cases of death due to child sexual abuse in North Carolina between 1985-1994. The victims ranged in age from 2 months to 10 years. Causes of death included trauma to the genitalia or rectum and sexual mutilation. Vaginitis has also been reported. Various studies have suggested that severe child sexual abuse may have a deleterious effect on brain development. Ito et al. (1998) found "reversed hemispheric asymmetry and greater left hemisphere coherence in abused subjects;" Teicher et al. (1993) found that an increased likelihood of "ictal temporal lobe epilepsy-like symptoms" in abused subjects; Anderson et al. (2002) recorded abnormal transverse relaxation time in the cerebellar vermis of adults sexually abused in childhood; Teicher et al. (1993) found that child sexual abuse was associated with a reduced corpus callosum area; various studies have found an association of reduced volume of the left hippocampus with child sexual abuse; and Ito et al. (1993) found increased electrophysiological abnormalities in sexually abused children.
   Some studies indicate that sexual or physical abuse in children can lead to the overexcitation of an undeveloped limbic system.
   King et al. (2001), studying 5 to 7 year old girls who had been abused within the last two months, found victims of early sexual abuse had significantly lower cortisol levels than control subjects. Victims of severe childhood abuse who suffer from PTSD have been found to have increased cortisol levels.
   Navalta et al. (2006) found that the self-reported math Scholastic Aptitude Test scores of their sample of women with a history of repeated child sexual abuse were significantly lower than the self-reported math SAT scores of their non-abused sample. Because the abused subjects verbal SAT scores were high, they hypothesized that the low math SAT scores could "stem from a defect in hemispheric integration." They also found a strong association between short term memory impairments for all categories tested (verbal, visual, and global) and the duration of the abuse.

Prevalence

Dr. Gwen Adshead states that child sexual abuse occurs frequently in Western society. In research cited by Baker and Duncan, prevalence figures range between 10% in the UK or by other studies up to 62% for females and 16% for males in the United States. According to data from the Administration on Children and Families, of the US Department of Health and Human Services, in 2005 there were an estimated 3.6 million investigations by Child Protective Services in the USA; and of those, 899,000 were substantiated. Of the substantiated abuse reports, 9.3% of the cases showed 83,600 children were determined to have been sexually abused.
   Surveys have shown that one fifth to one third of all women reported some sort of childhood sexual experience with a male adult. Based on a literature review of 23 studies, Goldman & Padayachi found that the prevalence of child sexual abuse varied between 7-62% for girls and 4-30% for boys. A 1992 survey studying father-daughter incest in Finland reported that of the 9,000 15-year old high school girls who filled out the questionnaires, of the girls living with their biological fathers, 0.2% reported father-daughter incest experiences; of the girls living with a stepfather, 3.7% reported sexual experiences with him. The reported counts included only father-daughter incest and didn't include prevalence of other forms of child sexual abuse. The survey summary stated, "the feelings of the girls about their incestual experiences are overwhelmingly negative." Others argue that prevalence rates are much higher, and that many cases of child abuse are never reported. One study found that professionals failed to report approximately 40% of the child sexual abuse cases they encountered A study by Lawson & Chaffin indicated that many children who were sexually abused were "identified solely by a physical complaint that was later diagnosed as a venereal disease...Only 43% of the children who were diagnosed with venereal disease made a verbal disclosure of sexual abuse during the initial interview." It has been found in the epidemiological literature on CSA that there's no identifiable demographic or family characteristic of a child that can be used to bar the prospect that a child has been sexually abused., "nearly 9.6% of students are targets of educator sexual misconduct sometime during their school career." In studies of student sex abuse by male and female educators, male students were reported as targets in ranges from 23% to 44%.
   Significant underreporting of sexual abuse of boys by both women and men is believed to occur due to sex steoreotyping, social denial, the minimization of male victimization, and the relative lack of research on sexual abuse of boys. Sexual victimization of boys by their mothers or other female relatives is especially rarely researched or reported. Sexual abuse of girls by their mothers, and other related and/or unrelated adult females is beginning to be researched and reported despite the highly taboo nature of female-female child sex abuse. In studies where students are asked about sex offenses, they report higher levels of female sex offenders than found in adult reports. This under-reporting has been attributed to cultural denial of female-perpetrated child sex abuse, because "males have been socialized to believe they should be flattered or appreciative of sexual interest from a female"
   The prevalence of child sexual abuse in Africa is compounded by a belief that sexual intercourse with a virgin will cure a man of HIV or AIDS. This belief is especially common in South Africa, which has the highest number of HIV-positive citizens in the world. According to official figures, one in eight South Africans are infected with the virus. Eastern Cape social worker Edith Kriel notes that "child abusers are often relatives of their victims - even their fathers and providers." More than 67,000 cases of sexual assaults against children were reported in 2000 in South Africa. Child welfare groups believe that the number of unreported incidents could be up to 10 times that number.
   In one survey, 2.5% of Taiwenese adolescents report having experienced childhood sexual abuse.

Incest

Incest between a child or adolescent and a related adult has been identified as the most widespread form of child sexual abuse with a huge capacity for damage to a child. 70% of all perpetrators of sexual abuse are related to their victim. Child sexual abuse offenses where the perpetrator is related to the child, either by blood or marriage, is a form of incest described as intrafamilial child sexual abuse.
The most-often reported form of incest is father-daughter and stepfather-daughter incest, with most of the remaining reports consisting of mother/stepmother-daughter/son incest. Father-son incest is reported less often, however it isn't known if the prevalence is less, because it's under-reported by a greater margin. Prevalence of parental child sexual abuse is difficult to assess due to secrecy and privacy; some estimates show 20 million Americans have been victimized by parental incest as children. Most U.S. states include, in their definitions of sexual assault, any penetrative contact of a minor’s body, however slight, if the contact is performed for the purpose of sexual gratification.

sexual molestation – a term defining offenses in which an adult engages in non-penetrative activity with a minor for the purpose of sexual gratification; for example, exposing a minor to pornography or to the sexual acts of others.

sexual exploitation – a term defining offenses in which an adult victimizes a minor for advancement, sexual gratification, or profit; for example, prostituting a child, and creating or trafficking in child pornography.

sexual grooming - defines the social conduct of a potential child sex offender who seeks to make a minor more accepting of their advances, for example in an online chat room The legal term child sexual offender refers to a person who has been convicted for one or more child sexual abuse offenses. The term, therefore, describes a person who has committed child sexual abuse, without regard to the perpetrator's motivation.

Disclosure

Disclosure refers to when a victim of abuse tells someone that he or she's been abused. How one responds to disclosure is critical to the victim’s short-term and long-term outcomes. Previous research has found that children who received supportive responses following disclosure had less traumatic symptoms and were abused for a shorter period of time than children who didn't receive support In general, studies have found that children need support and stress-reducing resources after disclosure of sexual abuse Negative social reactions to disclosure have actually been found to be harmful to the survivor’s wellbeing One study reported that children who received a bad reaction from the first person they told, especially if the person was a close family member, had worse scores as adults on general trauma symptoms, posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms, and dissociation Another study found that in most cases when children did disclose abuse, the person they talked to didn't respond effectively, blamed or rejected the child, and took little or no action to stop the abuse

Pedophilia

The term "pedophilia" refers to persistent feelings of attraction in an adult or older adolescent toward prepubescent children, whether the attraction is acted upon or not. A person with this attraction is called a "pedophile".
The term "pedophile" is used colloquially to refer to child sexual offenders, however, not all child sexual offenders are pedophiles and not all pedophiles engage in sexual abuse of children. According to the Mayo Clinic, approximately 95% of child sexual abuse incidents are committed by the 88% of child molestation offenders who meet the diagnostic criteria for pedophilia; On the other hand, papers by Okami and Goldberg (1992), and Kevin Howells (1981), state that most data they'd reviewed suggest that pedophiles make up a minority of incarcerated child sex offenders.
Law enforcement and legal professionals have begun to use the term predatory pedophile, a phrase coined by children's attorney Andrew Vachss, to refer specifically to pedophiles who engage in sexual activity with minors. The term emphasizes that child sexual abuse consists of conduct chosen by the perpetrator.

Offenders

Adult offenders

Offenders are more likely to be relatives or acquaintances of their victim than strangers. A 2006-2007 Idaho study of 430 cases found that 82% of juvenile sex offenders were known to the victims (acquaintances 46% or relatives 36%). More offenders are male than female, though the percentage varies between studies. The percentage of incidents of sexual abuse by female perpetrators that come to the attention of the legal system is usually reported to be between 1% and 4%. Studies of sexual misconduct in US schools with female offenders have shown mixed results with rates between 4% to 43% of female offenders. Maletzky (1993) found that, of his sample of 4,402 convicted pedophilic offenders, 0.4% were female. Another study of a non-clinical population found that, among those in the their sample that had been molested, as much as a third were molested by women.
In U.S. schools, educators who offend range in age from "21 to 75 years old, with an average age of 28" with teachers, coaches, substitute teachers, bus drivers and teacher's aides (in that order) totaling 69% of the offenders.
Offenses may be facilitated by cognitive distortions of the offender, such as minimization of the abuse, victim blaming, and excuses.

Child and young adolescent offenders

prepubescent child is sexually abused by one or more other children or adolescent youths, and no adult is directly involved, it's defined as child-on-child sexual abuse. The definition includes any sexual activity between children that occurs without consent, without equality, or as a result of coercion, whether the offender uses physical force, threats, trickery or emotional manipulation to compel cooperation. When sexual abuse is perpetrated by one sibling upon another, it's known as "intersibling abuse", a form of incest.

International law

Child sexual abuse is outlawed in every developed country, generally with severe criminal penalties, including in some jurisdictions, life imprisonment or capital punishment. An adult's sexual intercourse with a child below the legal age of consent is defined as statutory rape, based on the principle that a child isn't capable of consent and that any apparent consent by a child isn't considered to be legal consent.
One hundred forty nations are signatories to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. This international treaty defines a set of protections which signatories agree to provide for the children of their respective countries. Articles 34 and 35 require that signatories protect their nations’ children from all forms of sexual exploitation and sexual abuse. This includes outlawing the coercion of a child to perform sexual activity, the prostitution of children, and the exploitation of children in creating pornography. Signatories also agree to prevent abduction, sale, or trafficking of children.

Rind

In 1998, Bruce Rind and two colleagues published a meta-analysis of 15 studies on child sexual abuse in Psychological Bulletin. He found that sexually abused boys reacted positively to their experience in 37% of the cases, while girls reacted positively in 11% of the cases. and praise; see Rind et al. controversy. Congress passed a unanimous resolution stating that "sexual relations between children and adults are abusive, exploitive, and reprehensible, and should never be considered or labeled as harmless or acceptable." It condemned the Rind study specifically on the grounds that "pedophiles and organizations, such as the North American Man-Boy Love Association, that advocate laws to permit sex between adults and children are exploiting the study to promote and justify child sexual abuse."
Russell (1986) speculated that the perception of a sexually abusive event as 'positive' could stem from a mechanism for coping with traumatic experiences.
As can be seen in the more detailed Rind et al. controversy, criticisms of this study have been addressed and dismissed by the original research team.

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