In the spring of 1981, under a grant from the National Center for the Prevention and Control of Rape, a survey of parents was conducted in the Boston metropolitan area. [...]
On other characteristics, the sample was quite typical of the Boston population as a whole [...]
[...] If respondents reported any such sexual things or attempts to do sexual things, they filled out a more detailed questionaire on up to three such experiences. As part of this questionaire, respondents were asked, "Do you cnsider these experiences to have been sexual abuse." Only those experiences considered by respondents to have been sexual abuse are reported here as sexual abuse.
[...] Twelfe percent (15% of the women and 6% of the men), said they themselves had been sexually abused.
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While the sex of the victims was relatively mixed, the sex of the perpetrators was virtually entire male (94%).
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The abuse experineces and attempts that the parents knew about included a nextremely large number of experiences that did not involve physical contact (Table 6-4). Fifty-four percent constituted encounters wiht exhibitionists or adults who propositioned the children without actually succeeding in touching them. These data suggest that what most parents consider "sexual abuse" in reference to their own children includes many things that professionals in the field would not consider such. [...] We need to consider another possibility as well: children may be more likely to tell parents about thwarted attempts than about attempts that succeed.
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[...] The children told their parents about an especially high number of experiences with strangers (Table 6-5). [...] Only 10% of the child reports were about relatives, while 32% of the parents had been victimized by a relative. [...]
...we see that half the perpetrators in child report group were under the age of 20, while young perpetrators constitued a much smaller proportion of the self-report sample. [...]
[...] The variabel that most differentiated reported expriences from nonreported experiences was the relationship between the victim and the abuser. When the abuser was a relative, none were reported to police. When the abuser was an acquaintace, 23% were reported. By contrast, when the abuser was a stranger, 73% of the incidents were reported (F=6.88, p<.001).
In comparison to parents dealing with actual abuse, the parents reporting on hypothetical child abuse were much more "report minded."
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[...] asked them if they agreed that these were concerns. Parents did not admit to a great number of concerns about the effects of child sexual victimization. In general they did not think their children were going to suffer ill effects. [...]
The parents who were asked about a hypothetical abuse situation were also presented the same list of concerns, and in contrast to the parents whose children had really been victimized, they show a great deal of concern.
[...] On one hand, these parents may have minimized the possible effects of the experience because to contemplate these effects was frightening. On the other hand, they may have has a more realistic assessment of the situation based on being able to actually see how their child coped with and reacted ot the events which had occured. Their children may have seemed so little effected by these experiences that the probability of serious long-term consequences from the victimization might have struck the parents as extremely remote.
[...] The kind of abuse and abuse attempts they are most likely to hear about are those that occur at the hands of strangers, acquaintances, and other children and those that where no touching occurs. Comparison to parents' own experiences of childhood sexual victimization makes it clear that their childrens' experiences involving relatives, intercourse, and older offender are the ones that parents are least likely to discover.