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Reactions of Boys and Girls to Sexual Abuse and to Sexual Encounters with Peers

  • Empirical Research
  • Published:
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Abstract

To understand the etiology and consequences of child sexual abuse it is important to study the victims’ subjective reactions to such incidents. Because researchers have not been able to survey children about sexual abuse, not much is known about how subjective reactions are related to gender, age, age difference, and the social relationship between the offender and victim. The present study fills this gap using data gathered from a large, nationally representative sample of Finnish children ages 11 to 17 (N = 32,145). Analyses of abuse are based on a sample of 1520 children (78% girls), while analyses of peer sexual experiences are based on a sample of 3551 children (55% girls). Multivariate analyses adjusted for the use of coercion, the intimacy of the sexual experience, and other incident characteristics. It was hypothesized that, as a result of sex differences in sexuality and attitudes toward deviant behavior, girls are more sensitive than boys to age and age difference. Three findings supported the hypothesis: (1) girls were more likely than boys to have a negative reaction to sexual encounters regardless of the age difference; (2) for girls, age was negatively associated with the likelihood of a negative reaction, but age had no effect for boys; and (3) girls reacted negatively to age difference while boys did not. However, girls did not react more negatively unless the offender was at least eight years older. The results highlight the susceptibility of adolescent boys to encounters with older women. They further suggest that ignoring the role of the victim limits understanding of the vulnerability of young people to sexual abuse.

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Notes

  1. The investigation of subjective reactions to abuse is controversial, especially if the results suggest that some victims do not have negative reactions to such incidents (Dreger 2015; Rind et al. 1998). Scholars may be concerned that this kind of evidence increases tolerance for illegal and immoral behaviors and stigmatizes innocent young victims. We believe that the benefits of examining the subjective reactions outweighs the risks.

  2. Approximately 18% of the incidents were described as on-going. Most respondents (74%) who indicated that the encounter was on-going still answered the appraisal question. Those that did not were treated as missing data for the analyses of appraisals.

  3. Penetrative sex includes both vaginal and anal sex. Sexual touching includes incidents where one or both parties touched the other’s genitals (either directly or above the clothes) as well as “simulated” sexual intercourse without penetration. Other incidents are those without direct genital contact, such as exposure of the genitals or breasts by one or both parties, or a suggestion to do something sexual.

  4. As defined by the survey, peers could be as much as four years older than the reporting child, but in most cases there was an age difference of less than one year.

  5. This statistic may be biased since the 2013 survey only asked about the most recent incident. However, the pattern was also observed in the 2008 survey

  6. It is possible that there was some pressure or coercion from the offender when the respondents said they initiated it.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Sarah Fonte and Jennie Noll for comments on earlier drafts of our paper. We also appreciate financial support from the Children, Youth and Families Consortium at Penn State.

Author Contributions

R.F. and J.S. conceived of the study, participated in its design and coordination and drafted the manuscript; C.W. participated in the design, the writing, the literature review, and interpretation of the data; S.F. participated in the design, the writing, and the analysis of the data; N.E. participated in the collection of the data, translation of the survey, and addressed issues of coding. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Funding

We received some support from the Children, Youth and Families Consortium at Penn State.

Data Sharing and Declaration

Data from each survey are freely available from the Finnish Social Science Data Archive (www.fsd.uta.fi). The study numbers for the surveys are as follows: FSD2406 (1988), FSD2416 (2008), and FSD2943 (2013).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology and Criminology, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, 16802, USA

    Richard B. Felson

  2. Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, USA

    Jukka Savolainen

  3. Northwestern Oklahoma State University, Alva, OK, USA

    Sarah Fry

  4. State University of New York at Albany, Albany, NY, USA

    Corey Whichard

  5. University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

    Noora Ellonen

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  1. Richard B. Felson
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Correspondence to Richard B. Felson.

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The study is based on secondary data collected in another country. The work is original and is not submitted elsewhere. Ethical guidelines were followed.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study. Students were given opportunity to end survey at any time.

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Felson, R.B., Savolainen, J., Fry, S. et al. Reactions of Boys and Girls to Sexual Abuse and to Sexual Encounters with Peers. J Youth Adolescence 48, 1869–1882 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-019-01111-1

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