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How Much Child Sexual Abuse is “Below the Surface,” and Can We Help Adults Identify it Early?

Child sexual abuse (CSA) occurs frequently in society to children aged between 2 and 17. It is significantly more common in girls than boys, with the peak age for CSA occurring when girls are aged 13–17. Many children experience multiple episodes of CSA, as well as having high rates of other victimi...

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Autores principales: Martin, Erin K., Silverstone, Peter H.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2013
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3711274/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23874306
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2013.00058
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author Martin, Erin K.
Silverstone, Peter H.
author_facet Martin, Erin K.
Silverstone, Peter H.
author_sort Martin, Erin K.
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description Child sexual abuse (CSA) occurs frequently in society to children aged between 2 and 17. It is significantly more common in girls than boys, with the peak age for CSA occurring when girls are aged 13–17. Many children experience multiple episodes of CSA, as well as having high rates of other victimizations (such as physical assaults). One of the problems for current research in CSA is different definitions of what this means, and no recent review has clearly differentiated more severe forms of CSA, and how commonly this is disclosed. In general we suggest there are four types of behavior that should be included as CSA, namely (1) non-contact, (2) genital touching, (3) attempted vaginal and anal penetrative acts, and (4) vaginal and anal penetrative acts. Evidence suggests that CSA involving types (2), (3), and (4) is more likely to have significant long-term outcomes, and thus can be considered has having higher-impact. From the research to date approximately 15% of girls aged 2–17 experience higher-impact CSA (with most studies suggesting that between 12 and 18% of girls experience higher-impact CSA). Approximately 6% of boys experience higher-impact CSA (with most studies suggesting that between 5 and 8% experience higher-impact CSA). The data also suggests that in over 95% of cases the CSA is never disclosed to authorities. Thus, CSA is frequent but often not identified, and occurs “below the surface” in the vast majority of higher-impact cases. Helping adults to understand “below the surface” CSA might help them to recognize it early, but there are very few indicators specific to CSA, making this a challenging goal to achieve. Nonetheless, given that CSA frequently occurs with other types of abuse, a training program that focuses on both CSA and other abuse may offer a method to allow both early recognition and prevention by adults in the general population.
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spelling pubmed-37112742013-07-19 How Much Child Sexual Abuse is “Below the Surface,” and Can We Help Adults Identify it Early? Martin, Erin K. Silverstone, Peter H. Front Psychiatry Psychiatry Child sexual abuse (CSA) occurs frequently in society to children aged between 2 and 17. It is significantly more common in girls than boys, with the peak age for CSA occurring when girls are aged 13–17. Many children experience multiple episodes of CSA, as well as having high rates of other victimizations (such as physical assaults). One of the problems for current research in CSA is different definitions of what this means, and no recent review has clearly differentiated more severe forms of CSA, and how commonly this is disclosed. In general we suggest there are four types of behavior that should be included as CSA, namely (1) non-contact, (2) genital touching, (3) attempted vaginal and anal penetrative acts, and (4) vaginal and anal penetrative acts. Evidence suggests that CSA involving types (2), (3), and (4) is more likely to have significant long-term outcomes, and thus can be considered has having higher-impact. From the research to date approximately 15% of girls aged 2–17 experience higher-impact CSA (with most studies suggesting that between 12 and 18% of girls experience higher-impact CSA). Approximately 6% of boys experience higher-impact CSA (with most studies suggesting that between 5 and 8% experience higher-impact CSA). The data also suggests that in over 95% of cases the CSA is never disclosed to authorities. Thus, CSA is frequent but often not identified, and occurs “below the surface” in the vast majority of higher-impact cases. Helping adults to understand “below the surface” CSA might help them to recognize it early, but there are very few indicators specific to CSA, making this a challenging goal to achieve. Nonetheless, given that CSA frequently occurs with other types of abuse, a training program that focuses on both CSA and other abuse may offer a method to allow both early recognition and prevention by adults in the general population. Frontiers Media S.A. 2013-07-15 /pmc/articles/PMC3711274/ /pubmed/23874306 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2013.00058 Text en Copyright © 2013 Martin and Silverstone. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in other forums, provided the original authors and source are credited and subject to any copyright notices concerning any third-party graphics etc.
spellingShingle Psychiatry
Martin, Erin K.
Silverstone, Peter H.
How Much Child Sexual Abuse is “Below the Surface,” and Can We Help Adults Identify it Early?
title How Much Child Sexual Abuse is “Below the Surface,” and Can We Help Adults Identify it Early?
title_full How Much Child Sexual Abuse is “Below the Surface,” and Can We Help Adults Identify it Early?
title_fullStr How Much Child Sexual Abuse is “Below the Surface,” and Can We Help Adults Identify it Early?
title_full_unstemmed How Much Child Sexual Abuse is “Below the Surface,” and Can We Help Adults Identify it Early?
title_short How Much Child Sexual Abuse is “Below the Surface,” and Can We Help Adults Identify it Early?
title_sort how much child sexual abuse is “below the surface,” and can we help adults identify it early?
topic Psychiatry
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3711274/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23874306
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2013.00058
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