Child sexual abuse and molestation: The spiral of sexual abuse

Abstract

Child sexual abuse and molestation is common. Large quantitative research studies demonstrate that many people indicate they suffered sexual abuse as children (McGee, Garavan, de Barra, Byrne, & Conroy, 2002; Pereda, Guilera, Forns, & Gomez-Benito, 2009; Radford et al., 2011)-as high as 25% of males and 30% of females in some cases (McGee et al., 2002). However, the number of victims who report their abuse to the police can be as low as 3-6% (McGee et al., 2002) and the level of convictions arising from reported offenses can be as low as 7% (UK Ministry of Justice, 2011). It has been noted that identifying victims of sexual exploitation, even by child protection professionals, can be seriously lacking (Rafferty, 2016). Hence, most sexual abuse and molestation do not lead to a complaint, investigation, prosecution, or conviction. The obvious conclusion is that convicted sex offenders may not be representative of the population of child molesters and other sexual abusers.