The Worst Thing That Can Happen to a Kid

"The most common bad thing that happens to children is inexplicably also something that we rarely talk about. Ten percent of children are sexually assaulted before age 18 (Pérez-Fuentes and colleagues, 2012), and yet sexual abuse remains in our cultural shadows. Parents receive little to no education on preventing sexual abuse, and while news stories abound when the latest sex scandal involving kids breaks, sexual abuse prevention receives little attention from mainstream media."

"It hardly merits stating that sexual abuse harms children in profound ways and alters their lives forever, but we can start recognizing childhood sexual abuse as a major driver of poor mental health outcomes. Nobody should need convincing that sexual abuse is bad for kids; it is intuitively obvious. But the depth and breadth of specific ways in which sexual abuse harms kids over the long term deserve our attention."

Childhood sexual abuse is common but under-recognized, with about ten percent of children assaulted before age eighteen. Parents receive little to no education on preventing sexual abuse, and mainstream prevention receives minimal attention. Childhood sexual abuse produces profound, long-lasting harms, including higher rates of depression, anxiety, PTSD, poor physical health, alcohol use disorder, and substance use disorder. Education for families and children can reduce risk by teaching recognition of grooming behaviors and defensive strategies. Preventive efforts should focus on explaining how abuse transpires, identifying grooming tactics like shared secrets, and teaching children that adults should never ask them to keep secrets.

Read at Psychology Today