Lisa N:
Matt25 you have posted broken links and ancient studies. Try again
Lisa N
catholicnews.com/data/abuse/abuse19.htm
Picture of child sex abuse in U.S. society clouded by lack of data
By Agostino Bono
Catholic News Service
WASHINGTON (CNS) – The clergy child sex abuse crisis has thrown light on a major problem throughout the United States that is still much in the shadows.
Child sex abuse is grossly underreported and underinvestigated, making a comprehensive national picture difficult to develop, according to experts researching the issue.
But, they added, it is a national problem that cuts across professions and organizations dealing with children.
Most abusers are not strangers but individuals who are well-known to children, including relatives, friends and people in positions of trust, said experts interviewed by telephone by Catholic News Service.
“As a ballpark figure, in excess of 200,000 children a year are sexually abused” in the United States, said David Finkelhor, director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire.
Sid Johnson, president of the nonprofit Prevent Child Abuse America, said about 500,000 reports of child sex abuse are made yearly to state child prevention agencies. His organization estimates that 20 percent of women and 5 to 16 percent of men in the United States experienced sex abuse as minors.
Finkelhor, also a sociology professor at the University of New Hampshire, said about 70 to 80 percent of the abusers are relatives or people known to the children.
Other experts told CNS that the figure may well reach 90 percent.
National surveys of adults abused as minors show that a significantly higher number of girls are abused than boys and that men greatly outnumber women as abusers.
Prevent Child Abuse America estimates that 90 percent of the abusers are men.
A congressionally mandated national study, updated in 2001, done by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said that about three times as many girls are abused as boys.
** The bottom line in these reports is that the greatest danger is men abusing girls.
psychology.ucdavis.edu/rainbow/html/facts_molestation.html**
The distinction between gender of victim and sexual orientation of perpetrator is important because many child molesters don’t really have an adult sexual orientation. They have never developed the capacity for mature sexual relationships with other adults, either men or women. Over the years, this fact has been incorporated into various schemes for categorizing child molesters. For example, Finkelhor and Araji (1986) proposed that perpetrators’ sexual attractions should be conceptualized as ranging along a continuum with exclusive interest in children at one extreme, and exclusive interest in adult partners at the other end.
Typologies of offenders have often included a distinction between those with an enduring primary preference for children as sexual partners and those who have established age-appropriate relationships but who become sexually involved with children under unusual circumstances of extreme stress. Perpetrators in the first category – those with a more or less exclusive interest in children – have often been labeled
fixated. Fixation means “a temporary or permanent arrestment of psychological maturation resulting from unresolved formative issues which persist and underlie the organization of subsequent phases of development” (Groth & Birnbaum, 1978, p. 176). Many clinicians view fixated offenders as being “stuck” at an early stage of psychological development…
Conclusion The empirical research does
not show that gay or bisexual men are any more likely than heterosexual men to molest children. This is not to argue that homosexual and bisexual men never molest children. But there is no scientific basis for asserting that they are more likely than heterosexual men to do so. And, as explained above, many child molesters cannot be characterized as having an adult sexual orientation at all; they are fixated on children.
