The Consequences of Child Sexual Abuse on Adult Survivors

If We Don’t End Child Sexual Abuse, 

This Is How It Can Affect A Person’s Adult Life

Shayani Sarkar, YKA

The 1999 World Health Consultation on child sexual abuse stated that “Child sexual abuse is the involvement of a child in sexual activity that he or she does not fully comprehend, is unable to give informed consent to, or for which the child is not developmentally prepared and cannot give consent, or that violates the laws or social taboos of society. Child sexual abuse is evidenced by this activity between a child and an adult or another child who by age or development is in a relationship of responsibility, trust or power, the activity being intended to gratify or satisfy the needs of the other person. This may include but is not limited to: — the inducement or coercion of a child to engage in any unlawful sexual activity; — the exploitative use of a child in prostitution or other unlawful sexual practices; — the exploitative use of children in pornographic performance and materials.”

Victims of sex crimes often develop behavioral problems, tendencies towards physical aggression, non-compliance, and/or self-destructive behavior which might lead to delinquency. Running away, vandalism, and even going into sex work (without any real understanding of it) are common outcomes too. Further evidence suggests that adult survivors are twice as likely to be arrested for crimes like violent abuse than the their non-abused counterparts.

What The Numbers Show

Children who experience child sexual abuse are nine times more likely to commit crimes than non-victims, research finds. And 50-70% of all women and a substantial number of men treated in psychiatric settings have histories of sexual or physical abuse or both (Carmen et al, 1984; Bryer et al., 1987; Craine et al., 1988).

Over 95% of perpetrators who sexually abuse female children and over 80% of those who abuse male children, are men. Most of these men went through childhood abuse themselves (Fergusson & Mullen, 1999). Numerous-studies have documented that the most violent criminals were physically or sexually abused as children (Groth, 1979; Seghorn et al, 1987).

A study of convicted killers reports 83.8% suffered severe physical and emotional abuse and 32.2% were sexually violated as children (Blake, 1995). Many survivors of child sexual abuse are counted among the orphaned, abandoned, and the destitute. They are counted among children of those compelled to do sex work. They are counted among migrants and refugees too.

Victims of child sexual abuse often face psychotic disorders, drug and alcohol dependency, or depression. They also suffer from post-traumatic symptoms which may turn into often criminal behaviours, as well as substance abuse, attempt to suicide, and aggression, among other things. Research shows that male survivors face the same symptoms as female survivors but act out in different ways. Where boys prefer to act out the trauma, girls tend to show symptoms of self-destructiveness and rage.

Abuse And Victimization

Research has shown that women with a history of child sexual abuse are more likely to experience trauma and victimization in adulthood. Many will suffer from sexual victimization as they tend to acquire a greater number of sexual partners.

A Cause For Female Delinquency

Survivors have a tendency to run away from home, particularly females. By running away, a girl may take to various kinds of deliquency, like stealing, and even snap decisions about going into sex work, which can lead to arrest and incarceration. Research suggests that at least half of all female delinquents have been sexually abused in childhood.

A Highway To Substance Abuse And Violent Crime

Victims of child abuse often become drug abusers. Research has shown that children who have experienced sexual assault, often fall prey to cigarettes, alcohol, or drugs to vent out their frustration. They show a greater probability–compared to non-abused children—to use intravenous drugs later in life.

A Way Forward

Children survivors of sexual assault often suffer from symptoms of physical aggression and may get arrested for committing crimes which are violent in nature.

They must also deal with feelings of shame and self-blame, and, as a result, they are hesitant to speak out about it, they do not receive counseling and are never able to recover from it .

It is important that child sexual abuse is recognized as a serious ailment in our society. It is important that various non-governmental organizations begin conducting various outreach programs in schools so that children know that child sexual abuse is a crime. 

It is important that all the states develop a National Child Traumatic Stress Network which will provide services for children who are traumatized by child sexual abuse so that they can heal and can reconcile back to the community. It is important that therapy is made available for survivors of child sexual abuse.

Each of these interventions destroys the internalized negative messages in the minds of the survivors, guardians and society at large.

As a part of the healing process victims of child sexual abuse, abused children should be introduced to the art of Writing Therapy. This kind of intervention helps them to vent out their frustrations through writing.

We have also seen on this blog that CSA often results in a child abandoning their education - see 11th story on link - "Indian survivors of sexual abuse drop out of school due to social stigma and finances, says study In Focus".

Also read: Project Baalrakshak: An Endeavour To Eradicate Child Sexual Abuse

References

Jeremy Travis, 1995,”Victims of Childhood Sexual Abuse later criminal consequences by national institute of justice”, National Institute of Justice.

Joseph H Beitchman, Kenneth J Zucker, 1992, “A review of the long term effects of child sexual abuse”, Child Abuse and Neglect, Volume 16, Issue 1 .

Judith Cashmore , Rita Shackel, 2013 “The long term effect of child sexual abuse”. Child Family Community Australia, (CFCA) Paper no 11.

Kathleen Kendall Tackett, 2011, “The Long Shadow Adult Survivors of Childhood Abuse”, “The hidden feelings of motherhood coping with mothering stress, depression and burnout”.

Anna Foundation, 2001, “What can happen to abused children when they grow up if no one notices, listens or helps?”

World Health Organization, 2007, “The cycles of violence, The relationship between childhood maltreatment and the risk of later becoming a perpetrator of violence”.

Pedophile's Charter Rights Trumps Victim's Rights to Justice in Canada

How can this happen in Canada?

1st Manitoba court case tossed due to court delays; accused child sex abuser free

By Sean Leslie, Reporter Global News

Manitoba Law Courts Winnipeg John Woods / The Canadian Press / File

WINNIPEG — Charges against a man accused of abusing a young girl for six years have been stayed because of an almost four-year delay in bringing the case to court.

The victim claimed it took place between 1996 and 2003 when she was between six and 12-years-old.

The accused, from a remote northern community, was facing several charges including sexual assault, sexual interference and uttering threats to cause death.

He was supposed to stand trial in April but the judge agreed with a delay motion filed by his defence lawyer, resulting in the case getting tossed.

The judge ruled the amount of time between when the charges were laid and the trial was set to conclude, 44.4 months, was too long.

“There really is no issue here. The gross period under review

is August 1, 2013 to April 13, 2017"

"By anyone’s standards … that is an unreasonable delay,” read the decision from Queen’s Bench Justice Robert Dewar.

I agree completely, so why was it allowed to happen? Wasn't there some opportunity to start the case in 2014, or 2015, or 2016? Who authorized the delays? Why? Is there no-one in charge?

So is there no way for the victim to get justice in Canadian law? Is it her fault there were delays? Why is the pedophile's right to a speedy trial more important than the victim's right to justice? I don't understand how the victim can be so completely disregarded by Queeen's Bench? She is being revictimized by the very court that should be giving her justice. This is disgraceful and somebody out to be fined or fired or sued, or all three. 

This is the first criminal case in Manitoba to have charges stayed following the Supreme Court ruling last year limiting the amount of time prosecutors can take to bring an accused to trial.

The case is one of around twenty in which delay motions have been filed by defence lawyers since then.

“As set out by the Supreme Court of Canada, anything in superior court over 30 months would be presumptively viewed as unreasonable,” said Alex Steigerwald, the defence lawyer representing the man in the case.

WATCH: Alex Steigerwald talks about case that was tossed due to delays

“The courts are sending a very clear message I think in this case, that an accused, an individual who has been accused or alleged to have committed an offence, their charter rights will not be trampled,” continued Steigerwald.

The victim's rights, on the other hand, can go to hell. Or does the victim have any rights? It appears criminals have charter rights but victims have none. At the very least, this travesty of justice should trigger an inquiry to determine what went wrong.

The crown has thirty days to decide if they want to have the decision reviewed but that usually doesn’t happen.

The accused and certain details of the case can’t be revealed because of a court ordered publication ban.

Prominent Mideast Studies Professors Sexually Harassed Students

by Cinnamon Stillwell
American Thinker

The famously self-righteous field of Middle East studies, which lambasts outside criticism as "censorship" and condemns America, Israel, and the West while lauding Islamists, now finds itself on the defensive. Two of its leading lights, the University of California, Berkeley's Nezar AlSayyad and the University of California, Los Angeles's Gabriel Piterberg, have been accused of sexually harassing female graduate students.

Nezar AlSayyad

In October, UC Berkeley concluded an investigation, finding that, between 2012 and 2014, AlSayyad, who chairs the Center for Middle Eastern Studies (CMES) and teaches architecture, built a relationship, including frequent social invitations and hugs, with graduate student Eva Hagberg Fisher in an effort to "groom" her. A car ride during which he put his hand on her thigh and proposed a trip together to Las Vegas was the final straw.

The report found that AlSayyad isolated the student from other professors and was on the exam committee whose approval was required for her to complete her dissertation. He also edited a journal in which many students hoped to be published.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that two other students complained about AlSayyad's conduct, including one who filed a complaint in April alleging they had sex over twenty years ago under similar circumstances. While AlSayyad denies the charges, the investigation upheld Hagberg Fisher's claims and the university suspended him for a semester.

Berkeley graduate students, upset at the university for its initial silence, expressed their disapproval by walking out of AlSayyad's section, protesting outside his department, and marching across campus chanting, "Protect Students, Not Tenure." They have the option of completing one of his required courses with a new instructor.

Some current and former students sent a letter to Berkeley's administration defending AlSayyad and asking that the university "withhold judgement" until the investigation has concluded. Transforming the Egyptian-born AlSayyad into the victim, the signatories asserted an atmosphere of "increased conflicts and racist sentiments" could lead to a rush to judgement, "especially when the subject is being identified in the news as a Middle East scholar." It's little wonder he claimed earlier, "I actually feel terribly victimized."

Gabriel Piterberg

The case of UCLA history professor and former Center for Near Eastern Studies director Gabriel Piterberg is even more abhorrent. In September, UCLA settled with two graduate students who sued the university in 2015 for taking insufficient action and for discouraging them from filing formal complaints against Piterberg, whom they alleged had repeatedly sexually harassed and assaulted them over a period of years.

Piterberg had served as one of the student's dissertation advisor, while the other had to work in the same building with him. His position on the departmental funding committee forced her to seek funds outside of the history department.

UCLA's settlement with Piterberg fined him $3,000, ordered him not to meet with his students in his office with the door closed, required him to attend sexual harassment training, and suspended him for one academic quarter.

The university's leniency sparked student protests, faculty outcry, and a petition demanding his dismissal. Another petition calling for his removal from the European University Institute in Florence, Italy led to his resignation as a visiting scholar.

Piterberg, a boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) advocate and an "anti-war" activist, has made a career of falsely accusing Israel and the U.S. of doing what he himself is guilty of: taking advantage of a weaker party. He has vehemently opposed outside criticism of academe -- little wonder given his own behavior.

While AlSayyad has spoken out against attempts to utilize government funding to reform Middle East studies, he doesn't share Piterberg's blatantly politicized biased approach to scholarship. His influence behind the scenes, however, has been problematic, particularly his role in procuring a $5 million donation from the Sultan bin Abdulaziz Al Saud Foundation for UC Berkeley's Sultan Program in Arab Studies.

Graduate students are extremely vulnerable to the demands of their professors, including their politics, methodology, and opinions of other scholars. Yet these two full professors at prestigious institutions violated the fundamental tenets of their scholarly vocation and behaved not just deplorably, but illegally toward students entrusted to their care.

The field of Middle East studies, rightly condemned for its politicized scholarship, displays its moral rot. Sanctimonious pronouncements from such quarters should be disregarded accordingly.

Cinnamon Stillwell is the West Coast representative for Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum. She can be reached at stillwell@meforum.org.

Campus Watch Research

Child Sex Abuse Doesn’t Create Paedophiles, Apparently

Some very interesting research with regard to pedophiles,

some of which I take issue with, but it's certainly worth the read.

    The research data is mixed and flawed. l i g h t p o e t/Shutterstock

Xanthe Mallett

Xanthe Mallett
Senior Lecturer in Forensic Criminology, University of New England, 
Australia

A popular misconception is that most child sex offenders were once victims themselves. The theory is based on the erroneous assumption that they’ve become paedophiles – those preferentially sexually attracted to prepubescent children – because of their victimisation.

This is a tidy explanation for a minority of offenders. But for most victims of child sex abuse, this is not only untrue, it’s harmful. It can increase stigma and prevent people from speaking up about their abuse. Some victims may fear they will one day become an offender, or at least develop the desire to offend.

Scary numbers

The estimated prevalence of sexual abuse against children varies depending on the study. Prevalence estimates of abuse against males range from 1.4% to 8.0% of the population for penetrative abuse and 5.7% to 16.0% for non-penetrative abuse.

FYI - Averaged out that would be 4.7 and 10.9%. 

Combined that would be 15.6% - 1 in 6.4.

For females, prevalence rates are estimated at 4.0% to 12.0% of the population for penetrative abuse and 13.9% to 36.0% for non-penetrative abuse.

FYI - Averaged out that would be 8.0 and 25%.

Combined that would be 33% - exactly 1 in 3.

Many empirical studies have investigated a link between sexual victimisation as a child and later sex offending or other delinquent behaviours. As I wrote in my last Conversation article, some studies suggest “anywhere between 33% and 75% of child sex offenders report being sexually abused as children”.

Others debunk the theory. A 2001 study, for example, combined self-reports of childhood abuse histories with polygraph tests for child sex offenders.

Before the polygraph test, 61% of adult offenders claimed to have been sexually abused as children, compared to 30% after the polygraph. This indicates that more sex offenders claim to have been sexually abused as children than actually have a history of abuse.

A more recent study from 2016, of more than 38,000 males, found that very few who were sexually abused went on to become offenders themselves: only 4% of the sexual offenders studied had a confirmed history of child sex abuse themselves.

Operative word here is 'confirmed' history. Below she states that experts estimate that only one in 20 cases of child sex abuse are reported. If they are never reported, how can they be confirmed? 4% is much too low from what I observe in prisons and with generations of first nations subsequent to residential school abuse. 

The researchers said the findings may provide:

reassurance that sexually abusing others may be a rare outcome of sexual victimisation.
So, the answer to the question “does child sexual abuse create paedophiles” is, largely, “no”. A small percentage of victims will go on to become offenders, but the vast majority won’t.


A word of caution with the data

Our current understanding of the victim-offender cycle in child sexual abuse comes from studies based on interviews with incarcerated sex offenders or those in treatment programs, or self-report measures. These are inherently unreliable methods, which fail to get to the bottom of a sex offender’s victimisation history.

Another problem with these studies lies not with the offenders themselves, but with the researchers’ “expectancy biases”. Those interviewing sex offenders, for instance, may ask about childhood sexual abuse and note its presumed significance to the offender’s criminal history. They may end up putting more emphasis on this link than other (perhaps more causative) factors.

Third, experts estimate only one in 20 cases of child sexual abuse are ever reported. We are therefore missing huge swathes of the information.

Fourth, lost from this analysis are two core groups whose voices are essential to this dialogue if we are to ever truly understand the cycle of violence within child sexual abuse: the offenders who are never caught; and paedophiles who never offend against children. We know virtually nothing about either of these two groups.

We must subdivide the category of 'paedophiles who never offend against children' into those who access child pornography and those who don't. Those who do are offending against children by driving the market for child pornography which cannot exist without sexually abusing children.

Another group that is heavily under-researched are the victims of child sexual abuse who don’t go on to offend. One study entitled I Couldn’t Do It to a Kid Knowing What It Did to Me looked at 47 men who were victims of child sexual abuse. Four themes arose as to why these men would not go on to become offenders themselevs: empathy, morals, a lack of sexual desire, or a combination of the three.

Researchers recognise these limitations, but because child sexual abuse and the attraction to children are such taboo and hidden subjects, it makes it almost impossible to use more reliable methods of data collection.

Very few paedophiles, for instance, would ever admit to having sexual desires towards children, as they fear being ostracised by their community, workplaces and families, even if they have never (and would never) harm a child.

If we want to protect children from sexual abuse, we need to better understand why most victims of child sexual abuse don’t offend as much as we need to understand why some do.

It is in the public interest to base treatment plans and support networks on accurate research and a full understanding of this issue; otherwise they are destined to fail.