Child Sexual Abuse Impact

Impact of sexual abuse on children

David Finkelhor and Angela Browne came up with a model where they suggested a conceptualization of the impact of sexual abuse. They came up with a four trauma causing factors which included traumatic sexualization, betrayal, powerlessness and stigmatization. The dynamics altered children’s cognitive and emotional orientation to the world. The dynamic of stigmatization tend to distort children’s sense of self worth and value, powerlessness distorts a child’s ability to control their lives, thus these distortions may result in some of the behavioral problems commonly seen in victims of child sexual abuse. (Finkelhor & Browne, 1985)

2.4.1Traumatic sexualization

This refers to the development in which a child’s

Conversely, even with the use of force, a form of traumatic sexualization may take place as a result of the horror that becomes linked with sex in the stir of such an occurrence. The level of a child’s perceptive may also affect the degree of sexualization. Incidents in which the child, because of early age or developmental level, knows few of the sexual insinuations of the activities may be less sexualizing than those involving a child with greater awareness. Children who have been traumatically sexualized emerge from their experiences with inappropriate repertoires of sexual behavior, with confusions and misconceptions about their sexual self-concepts, and with unusual emotional associations to sexual activities. (Finkelhor & Browne, 1985)

Some of the effects of sexual abuse that seem readily connected to the dynamic of traumatic sexualization include masturbation, knowledge of information that is inappropriate to a child’s age, some of the children especially young adolescent boys will even become sexually aggressive and victimize their peers and younger children Clinicians have remarked about promiscuous and compulsive sexual behavior that sometimes characterizes victims when they become adolescents or young adults, although this has not been confirmed

Many aspects of the sexual abuse experience contribute to this dynamic. We theorize that a basic kind of powerlessness occurs in sexual abuse when a child’s territory and body space are repeatedly invaded against the child’s will. This is exacerbated by whatever coercion and manipulation the offender may impose as part of the abuse process. Powerlessness is then reinforced when children see their attempts to halt the abuse frustrated. It is increased when children feel fear, are unable to make adults understand or believe what is happening, or realize how conditions of dependency have trapped them in the situation. An authoritarian abuser who continually commands the child’s participation by threatening serious harm will probably instill more of a sense of powerlessness. But force and threat are not necessary; any kind of situation in which a child feels trapped, if only by the realization of the consequences of disclosure, can create a sense of powerlessness. Obviously, a situation in which a child tells and is not believed will also create a greater degree of