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Defining Childhood Sexual Abuse
Total Life Counseling Center provides sexual abuse counseling in the Orlando, Winter Park, Central Florida area for children and adults.
Childhood
sexual abuse has only become a societal issue in the past several decades.
Consequently there is a lack of research, much of which began in the 1980’s.
Finkelhor and Brown (1986) defined sexual abuse as any sexual activity involving
a child under eighteen in which the other person is five or more years older
than the child and in which any implicit or explicit coercion is used. Because
of this power differential, older adolescents or adults are able to lure younger
children into a sexual relationship which they do not have the maturity to give
consent. Sexual abuse itself can be any number of intrusiveness behaviors
ranging from pornography to exhibitionism to penetration (Wickham and West,
2002).
About 20%
of females and 10% of males will experience childhood sexual abuse.
There is no set of symptoms with predictable sequelae for abuse. Abuse is not a
just a traumatic event that happens sometime in the child’s life. It is enmeshed
in the fabric of a dysfunctional family of origin and entwined in the
conditioning process that occurred before and following abuse (Finkelhor, 1990).
The combination of the already distorted family relationships, the event itself,
and the condition contributes to the child’s maladaptive functioning. Abuse
twists the child’s cognitive and affective capacities (Finklhor, 1990) and thus
colors the way he or she views life.
Written
by Evelyn Wenzel LCSW, CAP. Mrs. Wenzel works with many sexually abused
children, adolescents and adults in the Orlando area. For individual or group
therapy, contact her at Total Life Counseling (407) 248-0030.
Evelyn Wenzel helps the healing process with her counseling with victims of sexual abuse in the Central Florida area.
BLOGS:
"Defining Childhood
Sexual Abuse" by Evelyn Wenzel, LCSW
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Please see blogs for topics of signs of sexual abuse, child sexual abuse, sexual abuse statistics, sexual abuse victims, sexual abuse treatment and more.
References
Finkelhor, D. Early and long-term effects of child sexual abuse: An update.
Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 21,
325-330.
Finkelhor, D., & Brown, A. (1986). Impact of child sexual abuse: A review of
the research.
Psychological Bulletin, 99,66-77.
Wickham,
R., & West, J. (2002).
Therapeutic Work with Sexually Abused Children.
Sage
Publications.
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