The Epidemic Of Child Sexual Abuse
I was scrolling on TikTok earlier today and came across this particular one. It was a woman telling her story about how she was sexually assaulted by her father at the age of 10. He was a single father and would do it every day before taking her to school. So, I searched for those specific words and the amount of similar stories I saw was baffling. It compelled me to research the topic more. The data I found is horrifying and this was only based on the reported cases. Many people go their whole lives not saying a word about their situations.
All of my numbers are coming from indianaprevention.org, so check them out to learn more. This is a trigger warning for people who don’t like to see or think about these types of situations. One out of every four girls is sexually assaulted and one out of every six boys is sexually assaulted. One in five children is sexually solicited on the internet. More than 90% of abusers are people children know, love, and trust. 30-40% of victims are abused by a family member. 50% are abused by someone outside of the family whom they know and trust. An average serial child molester may have as many as 400 victims in his lifetime. Over 75% of serial rapists report they were sexually abused as youngsters. Sexually abused children who keep it a secret or who "tell" and are not believed are at greater risk than the general population for psychological, emotional, social, and physical problems often lasting into adulthood. An estimated 42 million survivors of childhood sexual abuse exist in America today.
This is one of the biggest reasons I love having social media because we have people coming out and telling their stories about the reality of these situations. A lot of people feel safer coming out on the internet because they can be anonymous. From my anecdotal experience though, a lot of these people do show their faces on camera, which makes them even braver. The sad truth from what I have seen is that parents or loved ones never believe when a child in their family comes to them about these kinds of moments. Especially when it’s their parent doing the assaulting. Parents are more likely to get away with this because the other parent will feel inclined to believe their partner, the adult over a child. In turn, this isolates the child, and they feel hopeless. This is why 85% of child sexual abuse cases never get reported. It’s also why victims of child sexual abuse are more likely to be sexually promiscuous.
Another important conversation we should start having is boys being assaulted as well. The double standards I have seen from boys being sexually assaulted by a woman and girls being sexually assaulted by a man are insane. For example, there have been many girls assaulted by teachers. When these stories come out to the public, everyone is calling for the man’s head, and rightfully so. But when the roles are reversed and it’s a woman teacher assaulting a boy, all I ever hear is, “I wish that happened to me as a child. Why weren’t there any women like this when I was younger?” So, men will complain that boys being assaulted isn’t taken seriously but will act like that when a story comes out about it. It just doesn’t make sense. We need to treat all cases the same because no matter the gender it is equally traumatizing for both.
It's no secret that girls who are sexually abused are more likely to get pregnant before 18 and kids in general are more likely to be promiscuous. They are also more likely to develop PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) and suicidal thoughts. Sometimes kids don’t report it because they don’t even know they were assaulted and can’t process it until they’re older and realize it then. However, by then it’s too late to report.
It feels like this doesn’t get talked about enough and we need to start paying attention to our children. If a child comes to you and tells you someone did something bad to them, you have to take it seriously. It makes no sense not to believe them. Why would a child randomly bring up an inappropriate and detailed disturbing moment like that? It blows my mind that a child would go up to a loved one, detail a traumatizing moment and their loved ones just brush it off because they’re a child and don’t know any better. We need to watch out for our own family members, as messed up as that sounds. You truly can’t trust anyone these days. Especially looking at the stats that most kids are more likely to get abused by a loved one.