Child Sexual Abuse - A Survey Considered A Landmark Study Of Child Sexual Abuse

One of the early landmark studies of child sexual abuse was conducted by sociologist Diana E. H. Russell in 1978. Russell surveyed 930 adult women in San Francisco about their early sexual experiences (The Secret Trauma: Incest in the Lives of Girls and Women, New York, NY: Basic Books, 1986). Russell reported that 38% of the women had suffered incestuous and extrafamilial sexual abuse before their eighteenth birthday. About 16% had been abused by a family member.

Russell's study is still frequently cited by experts who believe that much more abuse occurs than is officially reported by government studies. They suggest the high results recorded in her study reflect the thoroughness of her preparation. While other studies have asked one question concerning childhood sexual abuse, she asked fourteen different questions, any one of which might have set off a memory of sexual abuse.

In 2000 Diana E. H. Russell and Rebecca M. Bolen revisited the prevalence rates reported in Russell's 1978 survey (The Epidemic of Rape and Child Sexual Abuse in the United States, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.). The authors believed those rates to be underestimates. The 1978 survey subjects did not include two groups regarded to be highly probable victims of child sexual abuse: females in institutions and those not living at home. The authors also found that some women were reluctant to reveal experiences of abuse to survey interviewers, while others did not recall these experiences.

An Expert Disagrees

Richard Wexler, executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform and an expert on the child welfare system, disagreed with Russell's finding that 38% of the women in her study had experienced childhood sexual abuse (Wounded Innocents: The Real Victims of the War against Child Abuse, Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1990). Wexler contended that if this were correct then sexual abuse would be an enormous problem. He pointed out that the 38% included other nonfamily offenders, which did not fall under CPS jurisdiction. When only parents, stepparents, and siblings were counted, the number came out to be seven of one hundred women, instead of the one in three women Russell reported.