Child Sexual Abuse: A Global Tragedy

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When we talk about sexual abuse, it is natural for us to think about the sexual abuse happened among adults. Actually, sexual abuse towards children is also very common not only in the United States, but also common around the world. First of all, I am going to explain what child sexual abuse is. Child sexual abuse is the abuse that happens to children before they turned eighteen and usually perpetuated by trusted family and friend instead of strangers. Both touching and non-touching behaviors belong to sexual abuse. It could be difficult for children to give consent or reject the perpetuator because they do not know enough about the sexual activities, or they might be afraid to endanger other people. After the abuse experience, it is unlikely …show more content…

Author Hornor argues that children being sexually abused respond differently by stating “Not every child reacts to sexual abuse in the same manner.” Additionally, she argued that boys and girls deal with the impacts in various ways by stating “Boys and girls cope differently with the stressor of sexual abuse. Girls are more likely to exhibit internalizing behaviors, such as depression and disordered eating …. Externalizing behaviors such as delinquency and heavy drinking are more likely exhibited by boys.” (Hornor 2010) However, even though she stated the different reactions among boys and girls, she just mainly concentrated on the effects for girls. From the list of effects she mentioned (including Psychiatric disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, suicide, substance abuse), she only focused on the internalized consequences that affect the victims themselves. I argue that the author did not include any deep explanation about externalized behaviors led by the abuse, as well as the effects to the victim’s offspring. The babies are usually premature if their mothers experienced sexual abuse, and the mothers are usually teenagers. Most of the results are only focusing on the female, which left out the things that could happen to male. When we …show more content…

He argued this by saying “Children taught by both parents and teachers demonstrated greater gains in knowledge …. Children who were taught by the programme both at home and school were better able to recognize inappropriate touch requests and to demonstrate higher levels of personal safety skills compared with children taught only at school.” (Kenny 2008) He argues that it is important to make children aware of sexual abuse starting from a young age and learn how to protect themselves from the perpetrator. This is supported in his article by saying “Just as it is important for parents to teach their children about traffic and fire safety, it is equally important for them to teach their children about personal safety.” (Kenny 2008) The author noted that there are self-protection programs that are designed for children, and he described the positive and negative impacts to the children. Although the author provided a lot of information about the ways that adults can do to help children prevent child sexual abuse, the data were collected from the articles are outdated; most of the information are over ten to twenty years. I argue that the situation might be different nowadays compare to the past, things could

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