stranger abuse

["Becky Bolen" <bbolen@xxxxxx>]

My apologies for responding so late, but I was having technical problems.


In response to the question regarding why males are at greater risk of
stranger abuse, the finding is misleading. Actually, the survey shows that
girls are at equal risk as boys to be abused by strangers.
40% of males and 21% of females who were sexually abused in childhood were
abused by strangers. When considering prevalence, however, 5.9% of all
males and females in their study were sexually abused by strangers as
children.
This changes the interpretation to suggest that boys and girls are at
equal risk to be abused by strangers. On the other hand, females in their
study
are at greater risk to be abused by acquaintances, neighbors, authority
figures, "others," and intrafamilial offenders. Siegel et al. (1987) found
that girls were slightly more likely than boys to be abused by strangers
(prevalence of 1.4 and 1.0% respectively). Regretfully, these are the only
two known prevalence studies to provide information on stranger abuse
against boys and girls. For girls, Russell found that 7.3% were abused by
strangers; Saunders et al. (1992) found that .8% of girls were raped by
strangers.

Source: Bolen, R. M. (2001). Child sexual abuse: Its scope and our
failure. NY: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers.

Hope this adds to the discussion, as late as it is.

Becky Bolen