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Article: Child sexual abuse: Offenders, disclosure, and school-based initiatives.(Statistical Data Included)
- Article from:
- Adolescence
- Article date:
- March 22, 2002
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 Libra Publishers, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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The sexual abuse of children is a serious problem, although its extent can only be estimated since it is the most underreported form of child abuse (Finkelhor, 1984). Vogeltanz, Wilsnack, and Harris (1999) noted that in a sample 1,099 women, the prevalence of child sexual abuse ranged from 21.4% to 32.1% and 15.4% to 26.1%, depending upon the definition of child sexual abuse that was used and the method of classifying cases. The National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect (1996) notes that 39% of substantiated cases of sexual abuse involve children under 8 years of age.
Friedman (1990) notes that most states define child sexual abuse as nonconsensual physical ...