NCJ Number
165912
Date Published
1996
Length
34 pages
Annotation
The General Accounting Office (GAO) identified 25 studies that provided quantitative information on whether persons sexually abused as children were at heightened risk of becoming sexual abusers of children in adulthood.
Abstract
Of the 25 studies, 23 were retrospective; that is, they began with a sample of known adult sex offenders and sought to determine whether these adults were sexually abused themselves during childhood. Only two studies were prospective, and these began with samples of sexually victimized children and tracked them into adulthood to determine how many became sex offenders. Several of the retrospective studies indicated that a substantial percentage of adult sex offenders said they had been sexually abused as children. A majority of studies, however, found that most adult sex offenders said they had not been sexually abused during childhood. These studies varied in terms of their estimates of the percentage of such offenders who had been abused, from 0 to 79 percent. The two prospective studies employed analytical methods that were better suited to establishing a link between child sexual abuse and adult sex offending. Between 7 and 26 percent of sexually abused children in these studies were found to be sex offenders as adults. The GAO concludes that childhood sexual victimization is not sufficient by itself to explain adult sex offending. Brief descriptions of the retrospective studies are appended. 31 references and 2 tables