Papalia and Olds (1992) report that in the United States two million children per year are abused and neglected and that a substantial portion of these children are victims of sexual abused or incest. One way in which many young people respond to childhood sexual abuse/incest is by running away from home. The purpose of this paper is to examine a sampling of the current literature (studies conducted from 1990 to 1993) for connections between childhood sexual abuse and youth runaway behavior.
Childhood Sexual Abuse and Youth Runaway Behavior
As just noted, one finding that has been repeatedly observed in the childhood sexual abuse and runaway literature is that sexually abused children often runaway from home as teens. This can be seen in a study conducted by Feitel, Margetson, Chamas and Lipman (1992) who interviewed 140 clients (aged 13 22 years) receiving services in a shelter for homeless youths in New York City. The authors were specifically interested in obtaining information about runaways' backgrounds as well as the incidence of diagnostically valid behavioral and emotional disorders of those young people seeking help from the shelter.
Interview data revealed that most of the teens using the shelter came from backgrounds characterized by severe emotional deprivation as well as physical and/or sexual abuse. In terms of psychological and emotional disorders, of the 140 youths who completed the full interview, 90 percent fulfilled Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-III--Revised (DSM-III--R) criteria for an emotional or behavioral disorder.
Regarding these disorders, it was found that: 59 percent of respondents had conduct disorder, 75 percent were depressed, 41 percent had considered suicide, and more than 25 percent had actually attempted suicide. These findings indicate that not only are sexually abuse children likely to become runaways, they are also likely to suffer from conduct disorder...