en sexual relations. In this study, delinquency was operationalized as being placed on probation for one of these types of offenses by the Wayne County Juvenile Court.
Sexual Abuse - Sexual abuse is defined by the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (1998) in terms of several inappropriate physical behaviors inflicted on children including: sexual touching and fondling, exposing children to adult sexual activity or pornographic movies and photographs, having children pose, undress or perform in a sexual fashion on film or in person, peeping into bathrooms or bedrooms to spy on a child, committing or trying to commit rape on a child. The Academic further notes that sexual abuse of a child involves forcing, tricking, bribing, threatening or pressuring a child into sexual awareness or activity, and involving an older or more knowledgeable child using a child for sexual pleasure. In the conducted study, sexual abuse is operationalized in terms of self-report data; that is, sexual abuse is said to occur if subjects report that it did occur.
According to Hopper (1997), in America, approximately one in three girls is sexually abused before age 18, and one in four by age 14. It is further noted that most abused and neglected children never come to the attention of authorities; and that this is especially true of sexually abused children in which an intense sense of shame operates to maintain the secret.
Finkelhor (1994) reports that these rates are similar throughout the world. Indeed, it is noted that:
Surveys of child sexual abuse in large nonclinical populations of adults have been conducted in at least 19 countries in addition to the United States and Canada, including 10 national probability samples. All studies have found rates in line with comparable North American research, ranging from 7% to 36% for women and 3% to 29% for men. Most studies found females to be abused at 1.5 to 3 times the rate for male...