Study finds that 15% of girls and 5% of boys were victims of sexual abuse by age 16

[ResisterRex]

Thinking about recent threads where girls who report rape and sexual assault are being told they're privileged and others are worse off, this study shows just how much more likely they are to be victims than the other half of the population.

The overall number of child victims is reckoned to be 500,000.

I'm pretty sure these proportions are not exactly new but they are sobering. Any proportions would be sad to read - and this set of data must demonstrate why boys and girls need spaces of their own to receive counselling and so on.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/04/19/one-10-children-sexually-abused-age-16/

"One in 10 children are sexually abusedd_ by the age of 16, according to a Home Office-funded study that warns victims face a geographical lottery on action by police and local councils to protect them.

The research found that 15 per cent of girls and five per cent of boys were victims of child sexual abuse by the age of 16, based on official government and NSPCC data.
Yet while some local councilss_ were identifying hundreds of children as being potential victims of abuse, others were reporting none.
Two councils identified no children for whom they had concerns about sexual abuse, whilst five identified more than 70 for every 10,000 living in their areas, according to the research by the Centre of Expertise on Child Sexual Abuse (CSA).
There were also wide variations in police forcess_, with a threefold difference in the rate of recorded child sexual abuse offences relative to child population between the best and the worst."

And this is the background against which anybody who raises concerns about safeguarding or the protection of children is a bigot/prude/extremist/member of Al Qaeda women's wing.

I can’t read the article. This equates to 4-5 girls and 1-2 boys in a class of 30. Why is safeguarding not higher on the agenda?!

Because it seems to be one of the open wounds, like social care, that we tolerate collectively, even when we find it intolerable individuals.

We tolerate sexual assault and rape in schools to the point where girls are effectively told not to raise it because they're privileged (recent Highgate thread) or it's minimised for them or they're blamed for it.

An earlier distressing thread about children who are raped or sexually assaulted in school:

In the first incident, a staff member saw the children in the corner of the playground – but then proceeded to tell the girl off.

“She was told off for having her knickers and her tights down around by her knees with one of these boys behind her,” Anna said.

On a second occasion, another member of staff saw one of the boys with his head up her skirt. The assistant told off the girl for letting the boy stick his head up her skirt, and the boys were just told to “run away”. The girl was not talked to separately, asked what had happened or whether she was OK.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3364173-Our-kids-were-raped-by-classmates-DfE-wont-listen
Based on
www.tes.com/news/our-kids-were-raped-classmates-dfe-wont-listen

I'm surprised by these figures, which seem far too low. How are they collected?

I remember at least three sexual assaults (physical contact) by male strangers, and many examples of verbal harassment and indecent exposure, before I was 16. Much of this was before I reached puberty, when I was visibly a child. I didn't have an unusual or unsafe childhood, and grew up in a normal stable family.

It's not something I often discuss, but almost every woman I've spoken to about this remembers being flashed at, or followed, or had other sexual harassment before the age of 16.

thinkingaboutLangCleg I have seen the same figures before, and in the context that I read them in, I think these look like the figures for the kind of repeated sexual abuse that people think of when you say "child sexual abuse". The kind the police might conceivably bother with prosecuting, if the fates align so that the situation gets uncovered.

They're not counting getting groped on the tube at 13, or men committing indecent exposure at girls on the way to school.