Child Sexual Abuse

Renee Z. Dominguez & Connie F. Nelke & Bruce D. Perry

Child sexual abuse is a significant public health problem not only in the United States but around the world. In the United States, one out of three females and one out of five males have been victims of sexual abuse before the age of eighteen. Sexual abuse occurs across all ethnic, racial, socioeconomic, and religious groups. Unfortunately, sexual abuse is a relatively common experience in the lives of children. A report released by the National Institute of Justice in 1997 revealed that of the 22.3 million children between the ages of twelve and seventeen in the United States, 1.8 million were victims of serious sexual assault or abuse. There are gender differences with regard to sexual abuse incidents; specifically, girls are two times as likely as boys to experience sexual victimization during childhood, and they are at eight times the risk during adolescence. Because significant physical, emotional, social, cognitive, and ...

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