Child Sexual Abuse - Chapter 10: Boys as Victims

David Finkelhor

The Free Press, New York, pp.150-170, 1984

[...]

In the 1978 [may be 1979? Mike] survey, college students were asked about childhood sexual experiences with a much older person - defined as five or more years older for a child under 13 and 10 or more years older for a child under 17. The prevalence figures for such experiences are discussed below.

[here]

[...]

Second, a body of opinion and research has emerged in recent years which it trying hard to vindicate homosexual pedophilia (O'Carroll,1980; Sandfort, 1982). These reports have given accounts of seductions initiated by boys as seen through the eyes of pedophiles or as told by boys recruited through pedophile networks. Undoubtedly such boy-initiated sex does occur, but there is no evidence that the major proportion of boy-adult sexual encounters are of this sort. Available evidence suggests the opposite: most are not.

[...]

Prevalence of Sexual Abuse Among Boys

[...] But sexual abuse of boys suffers under an additional burden: some of the better studies of the prevalence of sexual abuse have limited themselves to females (Kinsey et al. 1953; Russel, 1983) or have quite small samples of men (Bell & Weinberg, 1978; Finkelhor, 1979). So resources are more limited when one attempts to estimate the true prevalence of sexual abuse of boys.

Bell and Weinberg Survey

[here]

Finkelhor Boston Survey

[here]

Finkelhor Student Survey

[here]

Fritz, Stoll, and Wagner Student Study

[here]

Texas survey

[here]

Estimating Prevalence

[...] To produce that many victims, approximately 46,000 to 92,000 new victimizations would have to occur each year. [...] The National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect (NCCAN, 1981) estimated approximately 7600 cases of sexually abused boys known to professionals in the country for 1979.

[...]

The National Reporting Study

[...]

The American Humane Association (AHA) was gererous in providing me with data for the 6096 substantiated cases of sexual abuse (including 803 cases involving boys) that were included in the aggregated statistics for 1978. Not all states provide individual case data on sexual abuse, so the 6069 cases represent the contributions of only 31 states and territories. Some important states with a large number of reported cases, such as California and Washington, are missing from the data base.

There are certain severe limitaions to these data from the AHA study on sexually abused boys. [...]

Still the AHA study is an extremely large collection of sexual abuse cases, and it is readily available for analysis. The 803 cases of abused boys are numerous enough to provide the opportunity for elaborate statistical analysis. But keep in mind that the remainder of this section deals with reported cases.

Sex of the Abuser

[...]

Boys and Nonfamily Abuse

[...]

Boy Victims Are Much Younger tha Girls

[...]

Family Backgrounds of Abused Boys

[...]

Boys Victimized in Conjunction with Girls

[...]

Abuse of Solo Boys Is Quite Different

[...]

Abuse by Mothers and Fathers

[...]

Summary

1. Estimates drawn from surveys of men in the general population would indicate that perhaps 2.5% - 8.7% of men are sexually victimized as children. Comparison with similar sutdies of girls would suggest 2-3 girls are victimized for every boy.
2. Boys, like girls, are almost commonly victimized by men.
3. Boys are more likely than girls to be victimized by someone outside the family.
4. Boys are more likely than girls to be victimized in conjunction with other children.
5. Victimized boys are more likely than girls to come from impoverished and single-parent families and are also more likely to be victims of physical abuse as well.
6. The abuse of boys is more likely to be reported to the police than to a hospital or child protective agency.