Sexual abuse

Sexual abuse is a form of abuse by means of sexual behavior between offender and victim. Most forms of sexual abuse are crimes in most countries.

Child sexual abuse

Child sexual abuse (CSA) has a special status among forms of abuse, because it includes not only a) what is considered sexual abuse between adults, but also b) all forms of sexual activity involving children and adults as partners, even if a child gives consent to such an activity (see Definition based on Informed Consent). The term has both moral and legal connotations. As with the definition of sexual abuse in general, the definition of this term in legal, moral, and scientific literature varies in both criteria and specificity. The term includes also the commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC), defined by the International Labour Organization in the text of the Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention.

Related Topics:
Abuse - Sexual abuse - Sexual activity - Definition based on Informed Consent - Commercial sexual exploitation of children - International Labour Organization - Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention

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List of activities considered CSA

Child sexual abuse is a criminal offense everywhere, although the list (range) of activities that are prosecuted varies between countries.

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Activities which are often defined as abuse only when children are involved include the following:

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• penetrative intercourse (oral, anal or vaginal) between a child below a predefined age of consent (generally between 12 and 18 years) and an adult (or a much older child),
• asking a child to give consent to any kind of penetrative intercourse,
• fondling a child's genitals,
• asking, forcing, or inducing a child to fondle genitals (either his or her own, an adult's, or another child's),
• acting as a pimp for child prostitution (including a parent acting as a pimp),
• inducing a child to behave sexually in a performance, or to appear in child pornography,
• asking, forcing, or inducing a child to watch any kind of sexual behavior (including masturbation),
• asking, forcing, or inducing a child to look at adult genitals (in many countries if a child is not intentionally directed to look at adult genitals in public baths or nudistic settings, the mere presence of them is not considered CSA),
• lewd action towards children, including disseminating pornography to a minor,
• asking, forcing, or inducing a child to undress for any reason other then to help a child who is too young or otherwise unable to wash, dress exclusively to keep hygiene for himself or herself,
• observing a child's genitals for any reason other than for examining existing health problems,

According to United States law, for instance, children can only give simple but not informed consent to sexual activity. State laws generally differentiate between an adult engaging in sexual activities with a teenager under the age of consent and sexual activities young child under a specified age (i.e. 12). The former know as statutory rape and the later known as sex without consent. According to some state laws in the U.S., a minor, similarly, cannot give informed consent to another minor; two minors engaging in sexual activity may both be, somewhat paradoxically, classified as victims of sexual abuse. Cases in which both participants are minors have historically not been prosecuted, although a shift in the direction of prosecuting minors for consensual sex with other minors seems to have occurred in the last several decades. (See Ethical Treatment for All Youth for examples.)

Related Topics:
United States - Informed consent - Statutory rape - Sex without consent

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Effects of sexual abuse on children

A wide range of psychological, emotional, physical, and social effects has been attributed to child sexual abuse, including anxiety, depression, obsession, compulsion, grief, post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms such as flashbacks, emotional numbing, pseudo-maturity symptoms, and other more general dysfunctions such as sexual dysfunction, social dysfunction, dysfunction of relationships, poor education and employment records, eating disorders, self-mutilation, and a range of physical symptoms common to some other forms of PTSD, such as sensual numbness, loss of appetite (see Smith et al., 1995). Additionally, young girls who are victims of abuse may encounter additional trauma by pregnancy after childhood sexual abuse and birth complications.

Related Topics:
Anxiety - Depression - Obsession - Compulsion - Grief - Post-traumatic stress disorder - Flashbacks - PTSD - 1995 - Pregnancy after childhood sexual abuse

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There is debate about how best to determine the causal dependency for some of these effects. A controversial meta-analytic study of other various studies of CSA, Rind et al. (1998), found the confounding variable of poor family environment as a plausible cause for the majority of negative effects.

Related Topics:
Rind et al. - 1998

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The percentage of adults suffering from long-term effects is unknown. Smith quotes a British study that showed that 13% of adults sexually abused as children suffered from long-term consequences.

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Wakefield and Underwager (1991) note the difference between CSA experiences of boys and girls, where more boys than girls report the experience as neutral or positive, saying that "It may be that women perceive such experiences as sexual violation, while men perceive them as sexual initiation." Much of this has been challenged, the effects of sexual abuse on men being seen by some researchers as similar to the effects on women, "initiation" being considered part of the myth of male socialisation that men are the initiators of sex and cannot be abused (). However, even accepting that the notion that males cannot be abused is a myth does not prove that there is no difference between early sexual initiation and sexual abuse for males (or for females for that matter.)

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Forty to 71 percent of Borderline Personality Disorder patients report having been sexually abused.

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Child sex offenders

Most offenders are situational offenders (pseudo-pedophiles) rather than people sexually fixated on children (pedophiles). They are rarely strangers, but instead relatives or acquaintances like trainers or playmates. Most offenders are male; the number of female perpetrators is usually reported to be between 10% and 20%, although in some studies it was found to be as high as 70%.

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Typology

There are two main categories of offenders. These categories are known as the "regressed" offender and the "fixated" offender.

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The regressed offender has a primary sexual orientation toward adults, but can be aroused by children. In most cases he or she is heterosexual. The sexual interest in children typically manifests itself in adulthood in this sort of offender. Due to an inability to maintain adult relationships the offender substitutes a child for an adult sexual partner. The initial offense is often not planned and often alcohol related. The regressed pedophile is typically capable of a traditional life-style and often married. Social skills of the regressed offender are basically normal but with underdeveloped peer relationships. The regressed offender typically has no problem making acquaintances or socializing with others, but is not capable of handling the responsibility of long-term relationships. This behavior is a maladaptive attempt to cope with specific life stresses.

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The fixated offender has a primary sexual orientation toward children (one orientated towards prepubescent children is considered a pedophile). The sexual interest in children manifests itself in adolescence for this offender. The offenses are typically planned out ahead of time and are not alcohol or drug related. The fixated pedophile has behavior that is characterized as a lack of maturity and this offender has difficulty with adult sexual and social relationships. "This offender identifies with children, in other words considers him or herself to be like a child and thus seeks sexual relationships with what the offender perceives to be other children". The fixated offender is often interested in the same activities and interests as the young children who are the offender's victims. Such offenders often collect articles related to small children (clothing, children's books), even if they do not have children. This behavior has been interpreted as a maladaptive resolution to issues with adult maturity. Most fixated offenders prefer members of the same sex, although there are some who abuse both sexes, and others who abuse only members of the opposite sex.http://www.csom.org/train/supervision/medium/01_02_04.html

Related Topics:
Pedophile - Maladaptive

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The great majority of offenders are regressed. Only 2-10 percent of all offenders are fixated. The third and very rare type of offender is sadistic. They primarily use sexuality for suppression not for sexual satisfaction.

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Exhibitionists are commonly classified as a phenomenon of their own, and excluded from this typology of sex offenders.

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"Children who molest"

Some therapists noticed that many adult sex offenders showed what they considered deviant sexual behavior in their childhood already. So they promoted early treatment of deviant minors as a preventive measure. However there is still little known about normal as opposed to deviant child sexuality. It is also unknown whether so called deviant minors have a higher risk of becoming an adult sex offender than anybody else.

Related Topics:
Therapists - Adult - Child sexuality

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The US started to focus on "juvenile sex offenders" or even children for therapy or detention perhaps in the early 1990s. The label "juvenile sex offender" is controversial because it is not only used to describe acts of violence, but also consensual acts that violate statutory rape laws; critics of this trend view many such children as simply engaging in sexual experimentation. They also criticize the law for forcing arbitrary classification of such pairs of offenders into victim and perpetrator.

Related Topics:
1990s - Experimentation

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Therapies used on children have included controversial methods historically used in the "treatment" of homosexuals such as aversion therapy, where children are, for example, forced to smell ammonia while looking at nude pictures or to listen to audio tapes describing sexual situations. In order to measure sexual response, devices like penile plethysmographs and vaginal photoplethysmographs are sometimes used on these children.

Related Topics:
Aversion therapy - Penile plethysmograph - Vaginal photoplethysmograph

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Variation in cultural practices, norms and research findings

Between cultural relativists and cultural universalists there is no consensus whether and which among different past or present cultural practices in Western or non-Western societies can be defined as abusing either general universalistic human rights or special universalistic rights of children due to which there is no generally accepted definition which of them can be listed as CSA. In different cultures the practices sanctioned by cultural norms involve for example cutting and bleeding of the genitals, female circumcision, circumcision (of males), castration, infibulation, sexual relationships between adolescent boys and adult men sanctioned by the state and sanctified by religion in ancient Greece and feudal Japan, child prostitution tolerated in some societies as a way for children to support their families, groping of schoolgirls in Japanese trains, in the Western societies now abolished remedies against masturbation (once named 'self-abuse'), and nudity in public baths and nudistic settings etc.

Related Topics:
Cultural relativists - Consensus - Female circumcision - Circumcision - Castration - Infibulation - Greece - Japan - Groping - Masturbation - Nudistic

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Because of the lack of the universal definition the research on CSA is open both to personal biases of the researchers and of their critics.

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Epidemiology

Goldman (2000) notes that "the absolute number of children being sexually abused each year has been almost impossible to ascertain" and that "there does not seem to be agreement on the rate of children being sexually abused". A meta-analytic study by Rind, Tromovitch, and Bauserman (1998) found that reported prevalence of abuse for males ranged from 3% to 37%, and for females from 8% to 71% with mean rates of 17% and 28% respectively. A study by Fromuth and Burkhart (1987) found that depending upon the definition of CSA used, prevalence among men varied from 4% to 24%.

Related Topics:
2000 - 1998 - 1987

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