Intimate partner violence (IPV, which may also be referred to as domestic violence) is found among all racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic classes, and it is estimated that more than 2 million people—1.5 million women and 834,732 men—are victims of IPV each year (Gazmararian et al., 2000; Tilley & Brackley, 2005; Tjaden & Thoennes, 2000; Tonelli, […]

How can we prevent child sexual abuse? One program that has been explored is the “just say no” campaign, which teaches young children how to say no to inappropriate sexual advances by adults. This program has received much attention. How effective is such a strategy? Even if we can teach children to say no to […]

Currently, the most effective treatments for victims of child sexual abuse include a com­bination of cognitive and behavioral psychotherapies, which teach victims how to un­derstand and handle the trauma of their assaults more effectively. Many victims of sex­ual abuse also have difficulties developing and maintaining intimate relationships. Being involved in a relationship that is high […]

Males often are not taught how to express affection without sexuality, which leads to needing sex to confirm their masculinity, being more focused on the sexual aspect of re­lationships, and being socialized to be attracted to mates that are smaller (Finkelhor, 1984). Keep in mind that the incidence of female offenders may be lower because […]

Three prominent theories—learning, gender, and biological—propose factors that make abuse more likely. Proponents of learning theories believe that what children learn from their environment or those around them contributes to their behavior later in life. Many child sex abusers were themselves sexually abused as children. Many reported an early initiation into sexual behavior that taught […]

Many of us would like to believe that sexual abusers are identifiable by how they look. They are not. Sexual abusers look like nice people. Yet there are things that distinguish abusers from those who do not abuse children. Research comparing child molesters to nonmolesters has shown us that molesters tend to have poorer social […]

It is not uncommon for children who are sexually abused to display what Finkelhor and Browne (1985) refer to as traumatic sexualization. Children may begin to exhibit com­pulsive sex play or masturbation and show an inappropriate amount of sexual knowl­edge. When they enter adolescence they may begin to show promiscuous and compul­sive sexual behavior, which […]

Sexual abuse can be devastating for a child and often causes feelings of betrayal, power­lessness, fear, anger, self-blame, low self-esteem, and problems with intimacy and rela­tionships later in life (Valente, 2005). Children who hide their sexual abuse often ex­perience shame and guilt and fear the loss of affection from family and friends (Seymour et al., […]

There have been conflicting findings regarding the traumatic effects of sexual abuse. Some studies indicate that children are not severely traumatized by sexual abuse (Fritz et al., 1981), whereas more recent studies indicate that it may have long-lasting effects that may lead to other psychological problems, including antisocial behavior, drug abuse, and prostitution. Groth (1978) […]

Although research is limited because of sampling and responding rates, we do know that the median age for sexual abuse of both girls and boys is around 8 or 9 years old (Feinauer, 1988; Finkelhor et al., 1990). Boys are more likely to be sexually abused by strangers (40% of boys, 21% of girls), whereas […]