Victims of Abuse
Who are the Victims?
+ The average age for reported sexual abuse is 9 years, meaning that there are still a considerable number of victims under 9 as well as over.
+ 50% of all victims of forcible fondling, forcible sodomy, and sexual assault with an object are under age twelve.
+ 20% of children will receive sexual solicitation via the internet.
+ Less than 1% of abuse alledged by a child is false.
Who are the Abusers?
+ 30-40% of reported abusers are immediate or extended family members of the victim.
+ As many as 50% of abusers know their victims and are in a position of trust with the victim and/or family.
+ As many as 40% of abusers are larger or older children, siblings, cousins, friends, neighbors, peers.
+ A US Department of Education report in 2004 indicated that 7% or 3.5 million 8th to 11th graders reported having physical sexual contact from an adult in their school.
+ Only an estimated 10% of sexual abusers are strangers.
Male Victims and Under-reporting Abuse
Excerpts from "The long-term effects of child sexual abuse"
"Recent research also indicated that men are less likely to disclose child sexual abuse during childhood compared with women and to make fewer more selective disclosures (Hunter, S.V., 2011; O'Leary & Barber, 2008). O'Leary and Barber, for example, reported that 64% of women but only 26% of men had told someone about the abuse when they were children. Men took significantly longer than women to discuss it with someone, and "it was not uncommon... for men to report taking in excess of 20 years to talk about their experiences" (p.139).
...cultural images of how "real men" should think, feel and act can create:
powerful barriers to male victim/survivors of child sexual abuse disclosing their experiences to others, accepting their experience as one that may have had a formative influence on their lives, and healing from the trauma of abuse... [This] means that many in society have difficulty fully acknowledge and accepting the reality of the sexual abuse of males during the childhood/adolescence, and the trauma it can inflict. (p. 5)
...Other researchers have similarly suggested that under-reporting of sexual abuse by boys may be linked to "community assumptions" that have often labelled them as future perpetrators: as homosexual; or because they fear being treated as social outcasts, liars, or as emotionally weak" (Mezey & King, 1989, cited in Neame & Heenan, 2003, p.4; Stott, 2001, in Fergus & Keel, 2005).