Many experts believe that sexual abuse is the most underreported type of child maltreatment. A victim, especially a very young child, may not know what he or she is experiencing. In many cases the child is sworn to secrecy. Adults who may be aware of the abuse sometimes get involved in a conspiracy of silence. Child sexual abuse is the ultimate misuse of an adult's trust and power over a ch…
The first person to present childhood sexual abuse as a source of psychological problems was Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud (1856–1939). Early in his career Freud proposed that the hysteria he saw in some of his patients was the result of childhood sexual abuse. He thought his patients' symptoms represented symbolic manifestations of their repressed sexual memories. Freud later…
The Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act of 1974 (CAPTA; Public Law 93-247) specifically identified parents and caretakers as the perpetrators of sexual abuse. Sexual molestation by other individuals was considered sexual assault. The 1996 amendments to this law, however, included a more comprehensive definition, one that also included sexually abusive behavior by individuals other than parent…
Each year the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) collects child maltreatment data from child protective services (CPS) agencies in the fifty states and the District of Columbia, releasing the compiled information as Child Maltreatment. The federally mandated National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect (NIS) is an…
A review of studies of child sexual abuse shows that more females than males seem to disclose childhood sexual abuse. This is because females are more likely to participate in research studies. Researchers at the Medical University of South Carolina and of the College of Charleston, South Carolina, sought to discover the factors that contribute to the likelihood that an adolescent will disclose se…
According to CPS agencies across the United States, reported and substantiated cases of child sexual abuse have declined since 1992. Lisa Jones and David Finkelhor examined the possible factors responsible for the decline (The Decline in Child Sexual Abuse Cases, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Washington, DC, January 2…
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 thei…
M. Sue Crowley and Brenda L. Seery sought to address what they believed to be a gap in studies on childhood sexual abuse—the study of multiple abuse and polyincest. In "Exploring the Multiplicity of Childhood Sexual Abuse with a Focus on Polyincestuous Contexts of Abuse" (Journal of Child Sexual Abuse, vol. 10, no. 4, 2001), the authors found that, in a sample of eighty-eight …
Virtually all studies indicate that girls are far more likely than boys to suffer sexual abuse. Under the Harm and Endangerment Standards of NIS-3 (See Chapter 4), girls were sexually abused about three times more often than boys (Andrea J. Sedlak and Diane D. Broadhurst, Third National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect [NIS-3], U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Cente…
Howard N. Snyder (in Sexual Assault of Young Children as Reported to Law Enforcement) found that the TABLE 6.3 abusers of young victims were more likely than the abusers of older victims to be family members. Sexual abusers whose victims were children five years old and younger were family members nearly half the time (48.6%), a number that decreased for those ages six to eleven (42.4%), and …
According to the American Psychological Association (APA), children who have been sexually abused exhibit a range of symptoms (Understanding Child Sexual Abuse: Education, Prevention, and Recovery, Washington, DC, October 1999). The immediate effects may include thumb sucking and/or bed wetting; sleep disturbances; eating problems; and school problems, including misconduct, problems with performin…
Please include a link to this page if you have found this material useful for research or writing a related article. Content on this website is from high-quality, licensed material originally published in print form. You can always be sure you're reading unbiased, factual, and accurate information.
Highlight the text below, right-click, and select “copy”. Paste the link into your website, email, or any other HTML document.
User Comments Add a comment…