Difference between revisions of "sexual abuse"

Latest revision as of 07:45, 1 August 2008

Sexual abuse is physical or psychological abuse that involves sexual crimes.

Forms of sexual abuse include rape, indecent assault and psychological. It may carry far in to the victims life, even to the point where they become suicidal.

Student and Patient Sexual Exploitation[edit]

High school and college age students are sometimes victims of sexual exploitation by teachers and professors, see academic seduction. Even if the sexual contact is initially consented to by the student, it may be considered a form of abuse as the teacher or professor is presumed to be exploiting his or her position of authority in a subtle form of psychological coercion. Whether this is a sound presumption in all cases may be disputed.

Patients of psychotherapists are another common category of sexual exploitation, see psychotherapist abuse.

Child sexual abuse[edit]

Child sexual abuse [CSA] denotes sexual abuse of sexual activity children. The term has both moral and legal connotations. There is variation in criteria and specificity of the definition of "child sexual abuse", as with "sexual abuse", even in scientific literature. It includes the commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC), which has been defined in the Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention of the International Labour Organization as a worst forms of child labour.

Definition[edit]

Child sexual abuse is a criminal offense everywhere, although the range of activities that are prosecuted varies between countries. Child sexual abuse is more difficult to define than sexual abuse in general, because of debates over who is capable of giving consent. In addition to activities which would be considered sexual abuse between adults, this often includes

• torture to a child below a predefined age of consent (generally between 12 and 18 years) from an adult or a much older child
• 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
• lewd action towards children, including disseminating pornography to a minor.
• Fondling a child's genitals
• Forcing child to fondle adult's genitals
• Forcing Child to undress
• Watching child undress or bathe with or without the child knowing
• Anal, oral, or vaginal sex with a child
• Forcing children to perform sexual acts on other children

According to United States law, for instance, children can only give simple but not informed consent to sexual activity. An adult who performs sexual acts with a minor is guilty of statutory rape (or sex without consent when the child is not at least 18 years old). 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.

Effects of sexual abuse on children[edit]

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 reactions, poor self-perception, sexual dysfunction, social dysfunction, dysfunction of relationships, poor education and employment records, and a range of physical symptoms" (Smith et al., 1995). Young girls who are victims of abuse may encounter difficulties during pregnancy after childhood sexual abuse.

The effect of sexual abuse on children in some cases leads to physical or verbal sexual behavior. This behavior in social environments such as school and the home is usually frowned upon by other children, and authority figures including parents. This can in some cases cause child to develop low self-esteem, and self-hate from the alienation from their peers. This can lead children to develop shyness, anti-social behavior, and high attention seeking behavior. This effect on a child's behavior when combined with the sexual initiation can lead to far more complex issues. This shows that even in consensual cases of sexual initiation on a child that alienation is possible in societies that do not accept this behavior. There are case studies however which show that early sexual initiation does not just correlate with sexualised behaviours but a variety of other behaviours. such as loss of appetite, being unduly aggressive or over passive, and delayed physical or emotional development.

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.

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.[Draucker, Claire Counselling Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse, 1992). However, even accepting that the notion that males cannot be abused is a myth, does not prove that there is no differentiation to be made between early sexual initiation and sexual abuse for males (or for females for that matter.)

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

Child sex offenders[edit]

All offenders are the worst assholes we can imagine. 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%, however in some studies it was found to be as high as 70%.

Typology[edit]

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

The regressed offender has a primary sexual orientation toward adults, but can be aroused by children. In most cases he 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.

Every childfucker is ignoring the soul and heart of children. 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.

Childfucker often collect articles related to small children (clothing, children's books).

The great majority of offenders are regressed. Only 2-10 percent of all offenders are fixated. Everybody of them is sadistic.

"Children who molest"[edit]

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.

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.

Variation in cultural norms[edit]

Though few doubt that child sexual abuse tends to have negative effects on the children involved, there is controversy over what constitutes abuse. Critics often focus on rituals practised in cultures geographically or temporally removed from their own. In many cases, rituals or ceremonies of cultural or religious significance involve activities that some would describe as child sexual abuse. These include castration, circumcision (of males), female circumcision, spanking of children, infibulation, and cutting and bleeding of the genitals.

The various "remedies" against masturbation which were proposed and used from the late 19th to the mid-20th century, ranging from physical restraints to castration, have been called sexual abuse.

In ancient Greece and feudal Japan, pederasty (sexual relationships between adolescent boys and adult men) was an important part of life, sanctioned by the state and sanctified by religion.

Variations across studies[edit]

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. But Rind is worldwide wellknown as an idiot.