The Heinous Act of Child Sexual Abuse

Although the heinous act of child sex abuse (CSA) carries no universal definition, the features that usually constitute such abuse is the presence of a dominant adult who may force or coerce a child into any form of physical or non-physical sexual exploitation. Attempts have been made to catergorise the various levels of abuse that can occur which include; non-contact, genital touching, attempted penetration and the act of penetration (Martin & Silverstone, 2013). Despite accurate attempts in the catergorisation of abuse, these same attempts were produced alongside the argument that the majority of CSA occurs “below the surface” and echoes a widely held misconception that, child sex abuse remains an invisible crime. Social attitudes and a lack of a collective definition of child sexual abuse may help to conceal the true scope of the problem; as no universally recognised understanding keeps the nature of the issue ambiguous (Crooks & Baur, 1996). The notion that child abuse is one of the most hidden and invisible crimes of the contemporary civilised society; has slowly become one that is dated (D. Nanjunda, 2008). Many academic studies find difficulty in determining the true prevalence of CSA, because of the contrasting methodological techniques adopted by various researchers; such as the analytical model by Summit (1983) and Budin and Johnsons (1989) work, all informed by contrasting sets of data (Gilbert et al 2009). With such difficulties it would be detrimental to the area of study, to make bold assertions that 95% of CSA is never disclosed or occurs “below the surface” as Martin & Silverstone (2013) argued in their research. It is detrimental as discussed previous; assertions made from conflicting research will report a false...

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...thin CSA and rape research (Bell et al, 2006), fictional vignettes. Due to the contemporary nature of the issue being explored however, limitations in previous work such as unrealistic scenarios that are not represent to the real nature of the issues; will therefore be avoided to ensure a strong methodological validity is maintained. Attempts to explore perceptions and attitudes surrounding abuse using small sample qualitative work such as Budin and Johnson (1989) will not provide adequate participant numbers or appropriate procedure needed. The main limitation observable within previous studies is the non-representative methods adopting scenarios that are unrealistic or built of small samples unable to gage a valid public perception. The originality and contemporary aims of the study will be measured using the most appropriate methods to explore the issues at hand.