Risk Factors for Child Sexual Abuse

Abstract

A number of surveys have by now provided information about the relative risk of persons from various backgrounds to experience sexual abuse during childhood. Interestingly, they are fairly uniform in failing to find differences in rates according to social class or race. However, several other factors have emerged from community studies as being consistently associated with higher risk for abuse: (a) when a child lives without one of the biological parents; (b) when the mother is unavailable to the child either as a result of employment outside the home or disability and illness; (c) when the child reports that the parents' marriage is unhappy or conflictual; (d) when the child reports having a poor relationship with the parents or being subject to extremely punitive discipline or child abuse; (e) when the child reports having a stepfather. The article draws some implications from these findings and makes recommendations for ways to improve subsequent studies of risk factors.