How widespread is child sexual abuse?

Children Today, July-August, 1984 by David Finkelhor

How Widespread Is Child Sexual Abuse?

Starting in the mid-1970, child welfare professionals began to notice a dramatic increase in the number of cases of child abuse that involved some kind of sexual exploitation. As such cases continued to mushroom in the late 1970s, these professionals were jointed by journalists, publishers and film producers who also became alarmed about the problem.

Soon the public was being exposed to a wave of books, magazine articles and television programs describing or, in many cases, graphically portraying this disturbing type of child abuse.

People at all levels, from politicians and policymakers to informed newspaper readers, came to know that child sexual abuse is one of the most serious forms of child abuse and much more common than was once thought. But exactly how common is it?

Everyone has heard figures: half of all girls, one in four girls, one in 10 boys. Where do these figures come from? Is sexual abuse really this widespread?

Unfortunately, there are no precise and reliable figures on the incidence of child sexual abuse in the United States. And there may never be. By its very nature, sexual abuse is a problem that is concealed. Gathering statistics about it is a frustrating and precarious undertaking. So the cases actually uncovered by statisticians and researchers may represent only a tip of an unfathomable iceberg.

Nonetheless, several efforts have been made to try to gauge the extent of sexual abuse. Some of these attempts have come much closer to the truth than anyone expected.

The American Humane Association (AHA) publishes nationwide statistics on child abuse and neglect. These figures are collected from the 50 states, which in turn get their figures each year by counting the cases that were officially reported to each state's child protection authorities.

AHA's tally of sexual abuse cases reached a high of 22,918 in 1982, the most recent year for which statistics have been assembled.

Although this figure is 10 times larger than the 1,975 cases of sexual abuse tallied in 1976, the first year of AHA's collection effort, everyone recognizes that even 22,918 is a drastic undercount. It is well known to professionals in the field that a great number of sexual abuse cases are never officially reported and thus would not be included in the AHA count.

To try to improve upon these figures, the National Center for Child Abuse and Neglect (NCCAN) commissioned an even more comprehensive study of the incidence of child abuse and neglect.2 In the National Incidence study, conducted in 1979, 26 counties in 10 states were chosen as representative of the country. By using a toll-free telephone number and confidential questionnaires distributed to agencies throughout these counties, researchers hoped to find out about cases that were known to professionals but had not been officially reported.

Extrapolating from the 26 counties to the nation as a whole, the National Incidence study estimated that 44,700 cases of sexual abuse were known to professionals in the year beginning April 1979. The researchers figured that their procedures uncovered almost twice as many cases as would have been known to the official reporting agencies alone.

Although 44,700 cases of sexual abuse in a single year is a serious problem, even this figure is still considered a gross underestimate. What is missing is information on all the abuse that occurs but is not known to any agency or professional at all. This abuse is known only to victims and perpetrators and, perhaps, to a few family members and friends. This abuse may well constitute the majority.

Surveying Victims

To try to find out the scope of this unreported abuse, several researchers have taken another approach. They have tried to ask victims directly. Unfortunately, there are problems to asking such questions of children who are currently victims: Parents would be unlikely to give permission to interview them, and children might be put in danger of retaliation if they did tell.

So, removing themselves one step, researchers have interviewed adults about sexual abuse that may have happened to them when they were children.

One of the first researchers to take this approach was Alfred Kinsey in his famous study of female sexuality.3 Kinsey and workers asked 4,441 female subjects if they had ever been "approached while they were preadolescent by adult males who appeared to be making sexual advances, or who had made sexual contacts.' Twenty-four percent said such a thing had happened to them. This is the source of a widely quoted statistic that one in four women are sexually abused.

There are several important facts to note about Kinsey's estimate. For one thing, more than half of the experiences the women in his study reported involved contacts with exhibitionists only. For another, his figures do not include any experiences occurring to adolescent girls or any abuse at the hands of offenders who were not adults.

Another estimate about sexual abuse based on adults reporting about their childhood comes from a study conducted by this writer, who asked 796 students at six New England colleges and universities to fill out questionnaires about childhood sexual experiences of all types.4