Childhood sexual abuse, as defined by the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA, 1996), includes using persuasion, enticement, and other inducements to coerce a child to engage in sexually explicit conduct or simulation of sexual acts. Survivors of sexual abuse frequently have a legacy of both psychological and physical problem throughout life. There has been considerable literature published in the past 20 years focusing on the long-term consequences of childhood sexual abuse. Survivors
Introduction In recent years, due to the church sex abuse scandal, childhood sexual abuse has become one of the most highly publicized crimes in the United States. Unfortunately, despite this newfound interest in the scandalous topic of abuse, incest and more common sexual abuse cases involving family continue to be overlooked by society and the media. Understandably, intra-familial sexual abuse is a delicate and complex subject to acknowledge and dissect. Yet, by ignoring the subject entirely, we
Introduction Studying how sexual abuse in childhood effects a person socioemotionally develops through their young adult years is especially important. This is so because young adulthood is already difficult because it is a hard transition period in which they are no longer a child and need to function in the adult world. It is known that childhood sexual abuse has a huge impact on most of the child victims to the point where when they are adults they have developed differently in at least the
Child Sexual Abuse (CSA) constitutes a very small amount of cases, but nonetheless it is extremely detrimental for children. Studies evaluated the consequences of childhood sexual abuse and revealed that such traumatic experiences can harm the child physically, psychologically, and emotionally. The disturbing experiences can also negatively impact the child during their adolescence and adulthood. The World Health Organization (WHO) recognizes child maltreatment as physical and emotional abuse, negligence
Childhood Sexual Abuse and Eating Disorders Recently, a great amount of psychological literature has focused on finding biological and genetic causes of mental illnesses and disorders, including eating disorders. However, according to recent twin studies, the heritability component of eating disorders may only account for 0% to 70% of the variance (Fairburn, Cowen, & Harrison, 1999). The leaves an ample amount of room for speculation of possible environmental risk factors for eating disorders
Effects of Childhood Sexual Abuse in Adulthood Child abuse is a serious issue in today's society. Many people have been victims of child abuse. There are three forms of child abuse: physical, emotional, and sexual. Many researchers believe that sexual abuse is the most detremental of the three. A middle-aged adult who is feeling depressed will probably not relate it back to his childhood, but maybe he should. The short-term effects of childhood sexual abuse have been proven valid, but now the
Child sexual abuse has been reported up to 80,000 times a year, but the number of unreported instances is far greater, because the children are afraid to tell anyone what has happened (American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry). Childhood sexual abuse is a traumatic experience affecting the lives of not only the victim, but those close to the victim as well. Many think there is only one person truly traumatized, but in fact, everyone involved is affected. The victim has to deal with their
Sexual assault impacts all races, societies, ages, and monetary classes. The upsetting actuality is that sexual assault has progressively become one of the quickest growing crimes in the United States of America. Due to the social disgrace attached to these sorts of violations, a large number of these cases go un-reported. When we think of sexual assault we typically associate that with women, however, men have also been targets what’s very surprising is that a lot of the male survivors do not identify
Studies related to the coping mechanisms of those who experienced child sexual abuse indicate that they are more likely to cope with their trauma by disengaging, avoiding, and withdrawing. Simon, Feiring, & Cleland (2016) identified several different processing strategies survivors of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) use to cope with their trauma. These include the processing strategies of constructivism, absorbance, and avoidance. The constructive processing strategy is the healthy processing strategy
Sexual Abuse in Childhood and Adolescence Reason for Choosing Topic When this assignment was given at the beginning of the quarter, I had no idea what I was going to write about. The realm of family violence and child abuse is so broad that I had to take a step back and look at the various topics and ways I could take this paper. I eventually chose sexual abuse in childhood and adolescence because I have never been able to grasp why the perpetrators think what they are doing is right, and if