Quarter of Child Sex Abuse Victims Don't Know Perpetrator

Oct 2012:

Girls age 15 and younger are most likely to be victims of sexual abuse and perpetrators tend to be an acquaintances or family member, while 27 percent of these offenses are committed by strangers, says a new study.

A quarter of child sex abuse victims don't know their attacker, says new research in a study that focused on the relationship between perpetrators and victims from Sahlgrenska Academy at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden.

Anita Carlstedt, PhD, from the Centre for Ethics, Law, and Mental Health at the Institute of Neuroscience and Physiology and the author of the paper, reviewed the records of 196 sex crime perpetrators from Västra Götaland County in Western Sweden.

The majority of child sexual abuse victims in the study were girls younger than 15, most of whom were hurt by an acquaintance or relative. However, 27 percent of the victims did not know their perpetrator.

Among the victims assessed in the study, 85 percent were girls and 12 percent boys. A small fraction — less than 5 percent — of perpetrators had a history of molesting both boys and girls. No physical contact was reported in the majority of the incidences that occurred with a stranger. Details instead reported the nature of the abuse as indecent exposure, masturbation, and sexual harassment.

The study in Sweden found that punishment for perpetrators was minimal, and a little over 10 percent had repeated sex offenses.

Dr. Carlstedt said there's insufficient research into the profile of child sex abuse perpetrators, and too many incidences still go unreported. Many probes also lack thorough psychological assessments. For example, only 8 percent of perpetrators were examined by a forensic psychiatrist before or during the start of the trial.

She said more studies should be conducted to assess the common profiles of child sex offenders, which will help improve the justice system and make forensic psychiatry more effective.

Pamela Pine, PhD and MP, the director and CEO of Stop the Silence: Stop Child Sexual Abuse Inc. based in Maryland, says in the U.S. the reality is different and more disheartening.

In general, she says, countries such as Sweden have a lower rate of sexual abuse, which is said to be due the fact that the country's culture affords more equality between men and women.

The majority of reports in the U.S. on sex offenders indicates these crimes are typically committed by someone the child knows. The U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs reports 6 out of 10 of abusers know the child. However, the individual is typically not a family member, but rather an acquaintance, friend of the family, babysitter, or neighbor. The same report finds 3 out of 10 children are abused by a family member, and just 1 out of 10 cases involves a stranger.

"I think the offender research really needs to be beefed up," says Dr. Pine. "Are there therapies that have definitively shown to change behavior?"

While Dr. Pine agrees with the author's assessment, she also questions the feasibility of such studies. "The thing about offenders is one size does not fit all," she explains. "The reality of a 15 or 17-year-old who is abusing and was abused himself is not the same as a 35-year-old who has been raping children for 20 years." ..Source.. by Jessica Firger, Everyday Health Staff Writer