NAMBLA: In a large-scale (n = 2019) community study in Great Britain, Baker & Duncan that 51% report feeling harmed by the experience. Yet 49% would not say the experience had been harmful, and 4% actually report that the experience had improved the quality of their lives.
Examined self-evaluations of childhood and adolescent sexual experiences as positive, mixed, or negative, and the relationship of these evaluations to adult sexual attitudes and adjustment. 141 Undergraduates completed measures of sexual attitudes, sexual satisfaction, and sexual history (e.g., Sexual History Questionnaire, Sexual Opinion Survey, Sexual Attitudes for Self and Others Questionnaire, and Sexual Satisfaction Inventory). Results show that Subjects who positively evaluated their early sexual experiences were associated with greater erotophilia, more acceptance of various sexual behaviors for self and others, greater sexual satisfaction, and greater acceptance of sexual behaviors at younger ages. Findings emphasize the importance of self-evaluation of one's sexual experiences to understand the relationship to one's later sexuality.
Researchers have generally neglected sexual experiences of boys with adults, assumed them to be the same as those of girls, or tried to understand them by referring to clinical research while ignoring nonclinical research. A review of nonclinical research allows a more complete understanding of boys' sexual experiences with adults and the outcomes and correlates of those experiences. Research with nonclinical samples reveals a broad range of reactions, with most of them being either neutral or positive. Clinical samples reveal a narrower, primarily negative set of reactions. Comparison of the reactions of boys and girls shows that reactions and outcomes for boys are more likely to be neutral or positive. Moderator variables, including presence of force, perceptions of consent, and relationship to the adult, also relate to outcomes. Incestuous contacts and those involving force or threats are most likely to be negative. Problems in this field of research include broad and vague definitions of "abuse" and conflation of value judgments with harm. Effects of boys' early sexual experiences with older persons in general cannot be accurately inferred from clinical research alone or from girls' experiences.
Conclusions: Beliefs about CSA in American culture center on the viewpoint that CSA by nature is such a powerfully negative force that (a) it is likely to cause harm, (b) most children or adolescents who experience it will be affected, (c) this harm will typically be severe or intense, and (d) CSA will have an equivalently negative impact on both boys and girls. Despite this widespread belief, the empirical evidence from college and national samples suggests a more cautious opinion. Results of the present review do not support these assumed properties; CSA does not cause intense harm on a pervasive basis regardless of gender in the college population. The finding that college samples closely parallel national samples with regard to prevalence of CSA, types of experiences, self-perceived effects, and CSA-symptom relations strengthens the conclusion that CSA is not a propertied phenomenon and supports Constantine's conclusion that CSA has no inbuilt or inevitable outcome or set of emotional reactions. An important reason why the assumed properties of CSA failed to withstand empirical scrutiny in the current review is that the construct of CSA, as commonly conceptualized by researchers, is of questionable scientific validity. Overinclusive definitions of abuse that encompass both willing sexual experiences accompanied by positive reactions and coerced sexual experiences with negative reactions produce poor predictive validity. To achieve better scientific validity, a more thoughtful approach is needed by researchers when labeling and categorizing events that have heretofore been defined sociolegally as CSA.
NAMBLA: Bender and Blau studied a group of 16 children 5 to 12 years of age who were having sexual contacts with adults, and then examined the same group sixteen years later with A.L. Grugett and found no problems which she felt could reasonably be attributed to the sexual experiences.
DD: (Niet-statistische) meta-analyse naar de gevolgen van sex met volwassenen als kind en de van belang zijnde variabelen.
Cite (Sandfort): Het ontbreken van kennis om het genitaal functioneren te benoemen, kan er volgens Constantine bijvoorbeeld toe leiden dat door seksuele opwinding angst- en schuldgevoelens worden veroorzaakt.
[V]olgens Constantine is de beleving controle te hebben over het al dan niet deelnemen aan seksueel contact in belangrijke mate bepalend voor de latere betekenis van dit contact.
NAMBLA: Reviews 30 studies, most of which include child-adult contacts. Breaks down experiences by their consequences for the child: positive, neutral, or negative. Examines relationships between several variables and observed outcomes. Concludes that 13 of these studies found that "for the majority of subjects , there is essentially no harm; and six [other studies] even identified some subjects for whom, by self-evaluation or other criteria, the childhood sexual encounter was a positive or possibly beneficial experience."
NAMBLA: Reviews findings of [Con81]. Discusses implications for treatment, prevention, and social policy. Includes proposals for legal revisions. Among the findings of this major literature review: "The most important determinant in the outcome of adult-child sexual encounters is the child 's perception of freedom of choice in participating."
Objective: To identify the lifetime prevalence of non-consensual sexual experiences in men, the relationship between such experiences as a child and as an adult, associated psychological and behavioural problems, and help received.
Design: Cross sectional survey.
Setting: England.
Subjects: 2474 men (mean age 46 years) attending one of 18 general practices.
Main outcome measures: Experiences of non-consensual and consensual sex before and after the age of 16 years that is, as a child and adult respectively, psychological problems experienced for more than 2 weeks at any one time, use of alcohol (CAGE questionnaire), self harm, and help received.
Results: 2474 of 3142 men (79%) agreed to participate; 71/2468 (standardised rate 2.89%, 95% confidence interval 2.21% to 3.56%) reported non-consensual sexual experiences as adults, 128/2423 (5.35%, 4.39% to 6.31%) reported non-consensual sexual experiences as children, and 185/2406 (7.66%, 6.54% to 8.77%) reported consensual sexual experiences as children that are illegal under English law. Independent predictors of non-consensual sex as adults were reporting male sexual partners (odds ratio 6.0, 2.6 to 13.5), non-consensual sex in childhood (4.2, 2.1 to 8.6), age (0.98, 0.96 to 0.99), and sex of interviewer (2.0, 1.2 to 3.5). Non-consensual sexual experiences were associated with a greater prevalence of psychological problems, alcohol misuse, and self harm. These sexual experiences were also significant predictors of help received from mental health professionals.
Conclusion: Almost 3% of men in England report non-consensual sexual experiences as adults. Medical professionals need to be aware of the range of psychological difficulties in men who have had such experiences. They also need to be aware of the relationship between sexual experiences in childhood and adulthood in men.
DD: The importance of this study for us is that it is one of very few studies that actually look at consensual child-adult sexual experiences as a separate category. Other studies either study non-consensual sex only or throw both consensual and non-consensual sex into one group. The study seems to indicate a negative effect for consensual sex, but it is much smaller than for non-consensual sex either as an adult or a child, and might be not stastically significant.
Cite (Rind/Tromovitch/Bauserman): Coxell and his colleagues, all abuse researchers, examined a nonclinical sample of nearly 2,500 men in Great Britain, recruited from general medical practices. They were interested in psychological correlates of non-consenting sexual experiences, but also inquired about sexual things the men had done prior to age 16 with someone at least 5 years older that they had wanted to do, so as not to miss these "abusive" experiences. Throughout their paper they distinguished repeatedly between consensual sex and non-consensual sex - their terms. They found that 5.3% of the men had had non-consenting sex prior to age 16 (with peers or persons significantly older), but that 7.7% had had consensual sex prior to age 16 with persons significantly older. We examined the findings reported for their key dependent measure, which was whether the men had reported a psychological problem of at least two weeks duration sometime in their life. We compared their results for three groups of men on this measure: those with no CSA prior to age 16, those with consensual CSA, and those with non-consenting CSA. The results were that the consenting group had no more problems than the control group, with a very small effect size (r = .02). However, the non-consenting group had significantly more problems than either of these groups, with an effect size of r = .10 when compared to the control group and a somewhat larger effect size when compared to the consenting group (r = .15). These results, obtained by abuse researchers using a huge nonclinical sample where consent served as an explicit key moderating variable, provide very strong support for the utility of the simple consent construct.
München: 157 kindliche Opfer von Sexualdelikten wurden nach durchschnittlich acht Jahren katamnetisch nachuntersucht. Nur in 6 Fällen (4%) ließen sich langfristige Schädigungen auf das Delikt zurückführen.
A history of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) has been shown to be an important contributor to poor psychosocial adjustment in adult life. However, the long-term impact of childhood physical abuse (CPA) has been neglected, and research has often failed to consider moderating factors such as a negative family environment. This article investigates the relationships among adult psychological adjustment and self-esteem, family-of- origin environment variables, and a history of CSA or CPA. A self-report questionnaire was administered to a general community sample and a tertiary student sample. Findings indicated that family-of-origin variables did not predict psychological adjustment. However the community group exhibited poorer psychological adjustment than the student group. For the community group, family cohesion and CSA were the best predictors of adult adjustment and self-esteem. For the student group, only CPA significantly contributed to the prediction of adult psychological adjustment. Statistical and conceptual limitations, as well as directions for future research, are discussed.
A review of 45 studies clearly demonstrated that sexually abused children had more symptoms than nonabused children, with abuse accounting for 15-45% of the variance. Fears, posttraumatic stress disorder, behavior problems, sexualized behaviors, and poor self-esteem occurred most frequently among a long list of symptoms noted, but no one symptom characterized a majority of sexually abused children. Some symptoms were specific to certain ages, and approximately one third of victims had no symptoms. Penetration, the duration and frequency of the abuse, force, the relationship of the perpetrator to the child, and maternal support affected the degree of symptomatology. About two thirds of the victimized children showed recovery during the first 12-18 months. The findings suggest the absence of any specific syndrome in children who have been sexually abused and no single traumatizing process.
Cite (Okami): Kirkpatrick stelt vast dat 68% van haar proefgroep in eigen bewoordingen positief op de ervaringen reageert: 38% zegt dat de meeste of alle ervaringen plezierig waren en 67% zegt dat de contacten "vrijwillig" waren. Slechts 25% van de proefgroep zegt in eigen bewoordingen dat de ervaring in wezen onplezierig was en 33% zegt dat in zeker mate dwang werd gebruikt om medewerking te verkrijgen.
Alhoewel in dit onderzoek ook ervaringen tussen leeftijdsgenoten zijn opgenomen en Kilpatrick in haar eerste onderzoeksrapport geen specifieke scheiding maakt tussen contacten tussen volwassenen en niet-volwassenen, en contacten van jeugdigen met volwassenen enerzijds en met leeftijdsgenoten anderzijds, analyseert zij op uitgekiende wijze de variabelen, zoals de leeftijd van de ondervraagde bij voorbeeld op het moment dat het gebeurde plaatsvond en de leeftijd van de andere deelnemer.
Het bleek dat er er in de door de ondervraagden zelf geformuleerde reacties geen significante verschillen waren tussen de contacten waarbij wel en waarbij niet van leeftijdsverschil sprake was. Terwijl bij sommige ervaringen van jeugdigen met volwassenen de kans op negatieve reacties groter was dan bij andere - dat was trouwens ook bij sommige ervaringen tussen leeftijdsgenoten het geval - beoordeelden de ondervraagden de ervaringen met volwassenen, in het algemeen genomen, niet ongunstiger dan de ervaringen met leeftijdsgenoten.
NAMBLA: Presents findings and recommendations from a survey of 501 subjects. "Within the definition of victimology currently employed by many researchers is the assumption that children, who have sexual experiences with or propositions from persons who are 5 or more years older than they, are automatically victimized, and harm is done. The findings of this study repudiate such an assumption."
Cite: Kilpatrick (1987) reviewed 34 studies that attempted to account for long-range differential outcomes of childhood sexual experiences and found the studies did not support the hypothesis that experiences inevitably lead to long-term harmful effects.
Cite (Underwager & Wakefield): Levitt and Pinnell, in a comprehensive article, examined the relationship between childhood sexual abuse and adult psychopathology. They maintain that empirical investigations of childhood sexual abuse conclude that not all victims are emotionally injured and a majority of victims suffer no extensive harm. They examined four reviews of the literature, comprising 94 studies that investigated the impact of childhood sexual abuse. Some reported that most victims have been harmed; a few reported no harm; and most found that a minority of victims had been harmed. A dysfunctional home is more likely to result in emotional disturbance than is any single type of sexual abuse. Levitt and Pinnell state that "the traditionally accepted link between childhood sexual abuse as an isolated cause and psychopathology in childhood lacks empirical verification"
N.N.: [...] reviews 37 good-quality studies. These covered 9,230 people who claimed that in childhood they had experienced unwanted sexual contact from an adult in a position of relative power.
The review has serious limitations: welcome contacts from ordinary adults were plainly excluded; advances from family members were very much included; clinical and legal samples were included, rather than using only representative population samples -- as in the work Bruce Rind and colleagues; the work of Rind et al. is not even mentioned; the review takes no account of stress caused to children by the post-CSA process of investigation and litigation; and published academic reports always over-represent studies finding 'significant' effects.
Nevertheless, despite the Calgary authors Elizabeth Paolucci, Mark Genuis and Claudio Violato themselves being eager to claim substantial harm to come from CSA, only 14% of their victims showed more psychological distress (on objective tests) than is found in controls: 86% had no detectable long-term effects to show for their experience of CSA.
More surprisingly (in view of previous research, e.g. Rind's), outcome was not affected by the victim's sex, class, age when abused, relationship to the perpetrator, the amount of contact experienced, or the type of contact (voyeuristic vs frottage vs penetration). The psychometric measures used were of 'post-traumatic stress disorder', depression, suicidal ideation, sexual promiscuity, victim-becoming-perpetrator, and academic failure.
The authors show their size-of-effect to be about half the size-of-effect achieved on the mortality rate of representative American physicians who experimentally took aspirin. Properly considered, Paolucci et al.'s results further attest that, contrary to the liberal-left view of the world, children are not doomed, passive creatures of the environment and its stresses.
WWW: (on RBT): Third, this lack of connection between "CSA" and adjustment has been reported by others and is nothing new (see,eg, Pope & Hudson [...]).
To evaluate the implications and conclusions of literature reviews (e.g., J. H. Beitchman et al, 1991) on psychological correlates of child sexual abuse (CSA) that have relied on studies using clinical and legal samples, the authors conducted a literature review/meta-analysis of 7 studies using national probability samples. Contrary to previous conclusions, it was found that, in the general population, CSA is not associated with pervasive harm, and that harm, when it occurs, is not typically intense. CSA experiences for males and females are not equivalent; a substantially lower proportion of males reported negative effects. The authors also found that conclusions about a causal link between CSA and later psychological maladjustment in the general population cannot be made safely because of the reliable presence of confounding variables.
DD: Uitleg voor 'het grote publiek' van de resultaten in eerdere artikelen van de auteurs.
Over the last quarter century the incest model, with its image of helpless victims exploited and traumatized by powerful perpetrators, has come to dominate perceptions of virtually all forms of adult-minor sex. Thus, even willing sexual relations between gay or bisexual adolescent boys and adult men, which differ from father-daughter incest in many important ways, are generally seen by the lay public and professionals as traumatizing and psychologically injurious.
This study assessed this common perception by examining a nonclinical, mostly college sample of gay and bisexual men. Of the 129 men (aged 17-25 yrs) in the study, 26 were identified as having had age-discrepant sexual relations (ADSRs) as adolescents between 12 and 17 yrs of age with adult males. Men with ADSR experiences were as well adjusted as controls in terms of self-esteem and having achieved a positive sexual identity. Reactions to the ADSRs were predominantly positive, and most ADSRs were willingly engaged in. Younger adolescents were just as willing and reacted at least as positively as older adolescents. Data on sexual identity development indicated that ADSRs played no role in creating same-sex sexual interests, contrary to the "seduction" hypothesis. Findings were inconsistent with the incest model.
DD: Onderzoek naar vrijwillige en onvrijwillige sexuele ervaringen van jeugdigen, met leeftijdsgenoten en volwassenen. Vrijwillige ervaringen hebben positieve effecten, onvrijwillige negatieve, ongeacht of ze met leeftijdsgenoten of volwassenen waren - hoewel er wel een verschil was in de grootte van de effecten (in het bijzonder onvrijwillige ervaringen met volwassenen werkten sterker negatief dan die met leeftijdsgenoten). Een van de weinige werken waarin vrijwillige ervaringen met volwassenen apart worden behandeld.
OK: Vele tabellen met voor leken nogal onbegrijpelijk sociaal-wetenschappelijk cijfermateriaal sieren het ruim 250 pagina's dikke boek. Toch heeft Sandfort zijn onderzoek zeker niet alleen voor collegae laten publiceren. Veel aandacht is besteed aan een zorgvuldige presentatie van de resultaten, met de bedoeling dat de media de boodschap niet al te vertekend aan den volke bekend zou maken. (...)
In zijn onderzoek heeft Theo Sandfort zowel contacten met volwassenen als met leeftijdsgenoten betrokken. Daarmee is meteen één van de verschillen aangegeven die de schrijver in zijn onderzoekopzet onderscheiden van eerder verricht onderzoek naar de gevolgen van seksuele contacten in de kinderjaren. Sandfort heeft scherpe kritiek op de vooringenomendheid die in veel onderzoek op dit terrein besloten ligt. Kinderen worden uitsluitend opgevoerd als 'slachtoffers' van volwassen 'daders' en het seksuele contact wordt daarmee gedefinieerd in termen van 'seksueel misbruik'.
In het eerste hoofdstuk geeft de schrijver een overzicht van verricht onderzoek naar seksuele contacten in de jeugdjaren. (...) Goed gedocumenteerd bekritiseert de schrijver een aantal tekortkomingen die veel onderzoek kenmerken.
(...) In het tweede hoofdstuk werkt de schrijver de probleemstelling en de begrippen die hij hanteert nauwgezet uit. Hij beschouwt seksueel functioneren als een ontwikkelingsproces, waarin seksuele contacten op jonge leeftijd als negatieve, maar ook als positieve leerervaring een rol kunnen spelen. Sandfort verwacht dat vrijwillige seksuele contacten in de kinderjaren een positief effect hebben.
(...) Uiteindelijk heeft hij 283 jongeren bereid gevonden en met hen is door een aantal zorgvuldig getrainde interviewers diepgaand gesproken. Aan de hand van een uitgebreide, gestandaardiseerde vragenlijst zijn gesprekken gevoerd (...). Daarin kwamen de jeugdervaringen aan de orde, maar ook het huidige functioneren - zowel op het gebied van de seksualiteit als meer in het algemeen - en werd gevraagd naar achtergrondfactoren (...)
De gegevens uit de gesprekken en die uit enkele aanvullende schriftelijke vragenlijsten, zijn vervolgens op alle manieren door elkaar gehusseld, aan elkaar gekoppeld, uit elkaar gerafeld; de uitkomsten zijn aan alle kanten bekeken, gecorrigeerd naar beïnvloeding door achtergrondvariabelen, statistische verbanden zijn gewogen op hun significantie. Het beschrijven van al die analyses beslaat het grootste deel van het boek en dat deel is dan ook het meest technisch. (...)
Voorzichtig concludeert Sandfort dat de resultaten van het onderzoek zijn veronderstellingen over seksuele contacten als leerervaringen ondersteunen. De effecten komen echter niet overal even sterk naar voren en de negatieve en positieve contacten lijken op verschillende 'meetpunten' m.b.t het huidige functioneren hun invloed te doen gelden. 'Het negatieve effect van onvrijwillig seksueel contact lijkt vooral tot uitdrukking te komen in de problemen die de jongeren nu in seksuele contacten hebben; ook hebben jongeren met die ervaringen nu meer last van psychische en lichamelijke klachten. De meisjes met onvrijwillig contact zijn nu ook minder tevreden met hun seksuele leven.' En: 'Het gehad hebben van vrijwillig seksueel contact hangt vooral samen met de mate waarin men nu zin heeft in seks, de sterkte van de seksuele opwindbaarheid en de geringere angst die men heeft voor seksueel contact.' Verder lijkt voor jongens te gelden dat '... vrijwillige seksuele contacten leiden tot een grotere tevredenheid met het seksuele leven op latere leeftijd.'
München: [E]ine Befragung von männlichen und weiblichen Studenten, die in ihrer Jugend sexuelle Kontakte mit Erwachsenen hatten. Die Ergebnisse zeigen große Unterschiede zwischen den männlichen und weiblichen Interviewten. Weiterhin wird deutlich, daß kindliche und jugendliche sexuelle Erlebnisse in der öffentlichen Darstellung bei weitem überdramatisiert werden.