The Effect of Sexual Abuse

Half of sexual abuse survivors wait up to five years before disclosing they were victimized, reports as study published in The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry.

The collaborative study Université de Montréal, the Universite du Quebec a Montreal and the Universite de Sherbrooke surveyed 800 Quebec men and women and found 25 percent of respondents never divulged being sexually abused as children.

“The number of victims who never reveal their secret or who wait many years to do so is very high,” says co-author psychology professor  Mireille Cyr,  of the Université de Montréal. ”

“This is regrettable because the longer they wait to reveal the abuse, the harder and more enduring the consequences will be.”

The research team found that 16 percent of women remain quiet about abuse, while 34 percent of men never share their secret.

The investigation found that 22 percent of women and 10 percent of men reported beings survivors of abuse, which ranged from molestation to rape. This is similar to previous research  findings..

Anxiety, depression, troubles concentrating and irritability are psychological distress symptoms experienced by abuse victims. Some  victims suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, others relive the abuse psychologically while others have dulled emotions or become hyper-vigilant.

The data suggests that victims are more likely to denounce their abuser when he or she is a stranger. However, in 85 percent of cases for female victims and 89 percent for male victims, serious abuse such as rape is committed by friends or family members.

In a separate study from the University of California, San Diego’s Anxiety and Traumatic Stress Disorders Program childhood sexual abuse may affect health even in old age.

In women, early sexual assault appeared to increase the risk of arthritis and, unexpectedly,  breast cancer, with multiple abuse episodes increasing disease risk by two- to three-fold compared with a single episode. In men, early sexual assault appeared to increase the risk of thyroid disease.

The researchers did not find the associations between sexual abuse and obesity or headaches observed in other studies. Meanwhile a study from Queensland Australia found that childhood sexual abuse and symptoms of sexual dysfunction in adult men and women.

A fourth study correlated the likelihood of young victims to become adult victims of sexual or physical abuse found female survivors of childhood sexual abuse are three to four times likely to be victims of physical or sexual abuse as adults.

The study was conducted by Professor Isabelle Daigneault, of the Université de Montréal Department of Psychology.

Published in The International Journal of Child Abuse & Neglect, she examined 9,170 women and 7,823 men throughout Canada

“It’s the first time that we combine data on sexual abuse during childhood and eventual relationship problems,” says Daigneault.

Male survivors of childhood sexual abuse are three times more likely to be victims of physical abuse as men. However, too few men reported sexual abuse as adults to establish a statistically significant correlation.

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