Mental health articles

Children at greater risk of sexual abuse at different times Children appear to be at greater risk of sexual abuse at different times during childhood. Whether this is a result of or coincidental to their developmental stage is currently unclear. Most studies, when examining risk of abuse by age, have concluded that risk is greatest between the ages of seven and 13 (Finkelhor, 1994). To determine this risk, researchers have divided the number of children abused at any given age by the total number of respondents, giving an estimate of risk at any given age. A slightly different method of computing risk is to consider the number of children abused at any given age by those who have not previously been abused. This method controls for a previous history of abuse and gives a somewhat different picture of risk. In Russell’s (1983) community prevalence study, greatest risk for the first experience of abuse peaked between the ages of 11 and 13, with a somewhat smaller peak in later adolescence (Bolen, 1998b). As noted earlier, age of greatest risk may also vary by race. In this same secondary analysis of Russell’s data, African American females and Latinas were at greatest risk of abuse throughout early and middle adolescence, whereas Caucasian females had a somewhat linear increase in risk of abuse over the age of the child, with a slight increase in the preteen years. Previously it was suggested that these differential pathways were best explained at the level of the macrosystem. All retrospective studies on child sexual abuse report a very low prevalence of abuse during the first five years of life. This finding contradicts incidence studies that find that the greatest incidence of reported abuse occurs between the ages of three and five and then decreases over time (Sedlak & Broadhurst, 1996). Issues of infantile and early amnesia probably account for the lower report of early abuse in retrospective prevalence studies (Williams, 1994). While the incidence studies represent a very biased population (i.e., only those cases for which abuse has been disclosed or discovered and substantiated), the incidence of abuse at these early ages does suggest that even very young children are attractive to offenders. At this age, the extreme discrepancy in power and reliance of the children upon their caregivers may place these very young children at increased risk of abuse. Elementary school-age children may also be at increased risk of sexual abuse because of their reliance upon caregivers and the extreme discrepancy in power between an adult male and young child. Because these children are becoming increasingly independent, new risk factors emerge as they are allowed to move into their immediate environment with somewhat less supervision. The greater independence and relative naivete of these children may be the more important risk factors for this age group, especially because they assume that these locations are safe. Preteen children, because they are moving into and through puberty, have a greater awareness of their own sexuality. Combined with their continued naivete, they may remain especially susceptible to abuse. Again, their increasing independence may be a contributing risk factor. Further, as discussed earlier, the socialization of preteens appears to be much more heavily focused upon gendered norms, thus potentially increasing risk for preteen females of sexual abuse. Teenagers, because they are now more fully developed, may become more attractive to certain potential offenders. Only those pedophiles with explicit tastes for younger children will now be eliminated as potential offenders. The adolescents’ increased independence allows them to move unsupervised into areas beyond their immediate environment, thus making them accessible to more potential offenders. The female adolescents’ interest in developing romantic heterosexual relationships makes them especially susceptible to certain types of approaches such as date rape. This developmental approach, as can be seen, emphasizes not what can be considered as negative attributes, but normal attributes of children that make them more susceptible to potential offenders. This framework is not only intentional but imperative because it allows the emphasis to be placed upon those characteristics of the child that are most attractive to potential offenders. It thus removes the potential for victim blaming.

Tags: sexual abuse