Sexual Assault of Children and Youth and Other Sexual Offenses - Essay Example

Sexual assault is not common only in women. Today, wives, children, grandmothers, mothers, and even boys and men face sexual assault. The belief is that co-workers, classmates, neighbors, or a stranger would commit a sexual assault, but it is also possible that a family member or friend, or relative to sexually assault someone. "Sexual assault of children is a crime that our society abhors in the abstract, but tolerates in reality" (Burgess and Groth 15). Incest is one of the forms of sexual assault of children.

Incest is when there is sexual activity between close relatives, which is illegal or taboo in the society. Sexual abuse of children can include trickery, sexual contact by force, bribery where there is a difference in age, power, size, or knowledge. Sexual abuse in a particular child could be once or multiple incident over a long period of time. It is found that abuse is usually committed by a person who knows the child. The abuse committed on a child can increase over time, especially if the abuser is a part of the family or a close relative.

Prostitution, exhibitionism, and pornography are some ways in which children are abused other than the sexual assaults mentioned above. When people think of a child molester, they imagine an ugly old man taking children away by giving them some candy. No one pictures their neighbor, mom, dad, or uncle. This misconception has been dismissed. A child molester can come from all walks of life and all social and economic groups. They can be rich, poor, male, female, religious or non-religious, from any race or culture.

Children can be molested by strangers or people they don't know and by people they know, like friends, relatives, or caregivers. Though majority of the people found guilty of sexual offence to children are men, women also molest children. Child molesters can be divided into two groups based on their behavioral patterns. A small percentage of child molesters who have a life long attraction to children, these people do not get attracted to adults. Majority of child molesters have adult partners and do not have an exclusive attraction towards children, also, they do not molest children multiple times.

Sometimes an adult molests a child of the same sex, however, they need not be homosexual. Though it is believed that child molestation occurs when children are picked up from the street and molested forcibly, in the majority of child molestation cases, adults seduce children through delicate persuasion and intimidation and are usually known to the child. Child molesters who do not know their victims use methods like force, tricks, or bribery, or pretend to be friendly, to attract their victim.

A child molester has many different characteristics. The child molester is usually married, prefers the company of children than adults, are often homosexuals and sometime bisexuals as well, they often wish to work for programs involving children, feel the want to have an emotional relationship with children, sometimes collect photographs of their victims and also collect child-adult pornography and child erotica, may be alcoholic, or a drug addict, may offer to take children out for walks or picnics, and many more such traits are examples of characteristics of child molesters.

There are various definitions of the term pedophilia or paedophillia found in law enforcement, the