Evaluation of Child Sexual Abuse Cases

Abstract

Objective:Sexual abuse means the sexual exploitation of an individual, who is described as a child in the international treaties and national legal texts, by adults. The present study aims to reach the profile of our region, Turkey, concerning child abuse through the features of the victims applying to the center to reveal the possible differences by comparing the studies in the literature, and to define the additional risk factors to the ones known.Methods:Our study was conducted in Trabzon Child Protection and Advocacy Center. The children who applied during a period of one and a half year, between January 2015 and June 2016, were included in this study. This study involved the retrospective evaluation of the records kept by the center.Results:In this study, 86 (83.5%) of children were girl, 17 (16.5%) of them were boy, and the girl/boy ratio was 0.19. Regarding the age groups, 19 (18.4%) of them were nine years old or younger; 37 (35.9%) of them were between 10 and 14 years old; 47 (45.6 %) of them were 15 years old and older. While the youngest age identified in our study was four, the oldest child age was 18. The average age was 13.11±3.817 years.Conclusion:The findings obtained in this study suggest that in child abuse, the victim hides the abuse for years due to fear, threat or believing not to be relied on and to be humiliated. Thus, victims who suffer from recurrent abuses for long years come out.

Keywords

• child abuse
• sexual abuse
• child protection centre