Effect of Childhood Sexual Abuse Within Institutions - Literature review Example

udy Conclusions 29 Recommendations for Future Action 30 Chapter Summary 34 List of Works cited 35 CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION Overview Childhood sexual abuse is a human rights violation affecting all age groups within the childhood period globally. Effects of the Childhood sexual abuse on young lives are very devastating and have both short and long term consequences. Prevalence rate of sexual abuse has been difficult to determine for various reasons; estimates have broadly varied as a result of different definitions of the term and the sensitive nature of the phenomenon accompanied by shame and stigma experienced by victims (Julia, P.46). This makes it disincentive for victims to report its occurrence for fear of stigmatisation.

World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that about 223 million children (150 million girls and 73 million boys) have experienced forced sexual intercourse or other forms of sexual violence globally as reported by (Dube and Anda, p.123). Recent research efforts suggest that sexual exploitation and abuse within institution is a widespread but largely unrecognized problem in many countries. The closed nature of the school environment means that children can be at great risk of sexual abuse in schools.

There is a recognized child sexual abuse problem in schools. For this realization, the following dissertation seeks to establish the effects of childhood sexual abuse within institutions. The first chapter introduces the research problem by presenting background information, stating the objectives and significance of the study as well the research questions. Background to the study The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (Article 34, CRC, 1990) prohibits child sexual abuse. Since UK is a signatory to this convention, (Brown, p.74) argues that.

This study has established that Child Sexual Abuse exists in all the schools in the study areas. Child sexual abuse is intense and widespread mostly in SHS and JHS, manifesting itself in both contact and non-contact forms. Girls are more vulnerable than boys in a ratio of 11: 9 and children within age range of 14-16 years are more at risk of sexual abuse. Poverty, sexual pleasure, lack of protection and peer influence are found to be the main causes of child sexual abuse in schools in the areas studied.

The weak protective environment is further complicated by the ineffective enforcement of laws and implementation of policies and programmes designed for child protection. This study employed both exploratory and descriptive survey. This research approach sought to elicit facts and data on the nature, distribution, degree and the reasons for perpetration of child sexual abuse in schools in the study areas, as well as respondents’ beliefs and perspectives and clearly describe them. Additionally the present study employed library based research design whereby secondary information from multiple archival sources was also compiled to compare and validate the primary sources of empirical materials.

This paper makes a conclusion that the study presented in the preceding chapter four and outlined the conclusions that the study found relevant. The chapter further highlighted several recommendations that can be adopted for conducting future research in an attempt to address the research problem under investigation. Several key issues that have emerged throughout the dissertation were revisited as highlighted in the foregoing sections.