Overview of child sexual and substance abuse among children in Ethiopia

Abstract

Background: Child sexual abuse is common typically concealed while substance abuse is unhidden in their nature of practice globally. Objective: The study aims to express the overview of child sexual and substance abuse among children in Ethiopia. Method: A facility-based cross-sectional study design with simple random sampling method was used to recruit study participants, after the allocation of sample size to the study institutions. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used to describe the variables and to show the association of factors. Results: A total of 450 children participated in the study. The mean age of the study participants was 13.67. More than 38% of the study participants were of age below the mean age. The majority of 61.3% of the study population were living with their parents. Factors associated with child sexual abuse were sex (AOR = 2.92; 95% CI; 1.84,4.63), alcohol intake (AOR = 2.53; 95% CI; 1.461, 4.36), chewing chat (AOR = 3.84; 95% CI; 1.68, 8.75), cigarette smoking (AOR = 3.83; 95% CI; 1.67-8.81), age (AOR = 4.38 (95% CI: 2.90, 6.62), educational level (AOR = 0.64 (95% CI: 0.44, 0.93), living conditions (AOR = 4.44; 95%CI: 0.73, 26.87), and conflict between parents AOR = 2.50 (95% CI: 1.43, 4.35). Moreover, the age and educational level of the study participants were statistically significant at P < 0.05. Conclusion: The study concluded that a significant proportion of children who participated in the study experienced sexual abuse and/or substance abuse. Therefore, there should be an intrusion to reverse the prevalent children's sexual and/or substance abuse in the country.

Keywords

• child sexual abuse
• child substance abuse
• ethiopia
• risk factors