The “stranger danger” myth and the evolving history of child abuse and reporting

How a better understanding of trauma is helping us treat unspeakable crimes against kids

Few, if any, human behaviors are more shrouded in secrecy than child sexual abuse. Over the past 100 years our view of this behavior has evolved. Prior to the twentieth century, child sexual abuse did not have a public face. In an earlier era, it was sufficient to simply deny that the abusive act had happened. Families, friends, and neighbors were more complicit in accepting it as an unfortunate, nearly acceptable fact of life. This is not to say that everyone turned a blind eye, but as the act was often committed by a trusted family member or friend, it was routinely covered up. Therefore, whatever the consequences, the victim was left with little or no support.

In fact, Sigmund Freud reversed his earlier position that a child’s sexual interaction with an adult led to neurosis. In a letter to Wilhelm Fliess in 1897, Freud stated, “I was driven to realize in the end that these reports were untrue and so came to understand that the hysterical symptoms are derived from phantasies and not real occurrences.” He dismissed sexual abuse of children with some Freudian logic about the transference of the Oedipal complex.

After World War II, clinical views on sexual abuse of children shifted from denial to placing the blame on the victim. In many cases when the crime came to light, it was often determined that the victim was to blame; that the child was somehow responsible for the adult’s aberrant behavior. Vladimir Nabokov’s 1955 novel Lolita walks the fine line between an adolescent girl being the victim or the criminal.

Fortunately, our understanding of this activity has changed in the past 40 years.

A global shift in the understanding of child abuse

C.H. Kempe’s article, The Battered Child Syndrome in The Journal of the American Medical Association in 1962 triggered a series of studies and reports identifying the scope of child abuse, including sexual abuse, at the hands of caregivers. Funding to study child abuse issues, as well as television shows and movies exploring the topic, followed in its wake, bringing exposure and light to this problem.

PTSD and the impact of trauma

In the 1980s, the clinical definition of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) was established after years of slowly developing stemming from both World Wars and the Vietnam War. The criteria for PTSD diagnosis is an assemblage of psychological problems following exposure to a traumatic event. The clinical ratification of PTSD was a watershed moment for advocates of childhood sexual abuse victims because it provided a theoretical framework to explain the behavioral problems exhibited by sexual abuse victims. As a result, the victim is afraid to come forward and often suppresses the memory, leading to eating disorders, relationship problems, and a host of behavioral difficulties. It also freed the victim from blame for the assault. After far too long, we had a framework to navigate abuse and trauma.

But placing all child sexual abuse under the traumatogenic umbrella has issues. Certainly, some such acts are traumatic, having the dynamics of violence, fear, and life-threatening impact on the victim. These are cases of severe abuse most often perpetrated by strangers. Case history tells that most do not fall into this category. Ninety percent of Indiana children who come to a Child Advocacy Center are there at the hands of an abusive family member, usually the parents.

Crime reporting has improved, but most cases go unreported

There are a dizzying array of statistics and agencies that report on child sexual abuse. In a 2005 report, the Crimes Against Children Research Center sums up the difficulty in the accuracy of reporting:

“One problem concerns how abuse is defined. Generally sexual abuse is thought to involve a young child who is victimized by an adult acquaintance or family member. However, there are many other forms of sexual abuse, such as a 12-year-old being sexually assaulted by a 15-year-old. Some estimates try to count all forms of abuse; others don’t.

Cases reported by official agencies have generally been investigated by professionals so we know they meet a particular standard. On the other hand, we also know that many cases never get reported to officials, so these sources of data usually underestimate the number of victims.

Numbers are reported for different time periods. Some numbers are based on how many children were abused in a single year. Other numbers are based on a lifetime or a full childhood, such as what percentage of all children were ever abused. A problem with adults reporting about their childhood is that it reflects the rate of abuse at sometime in the past, but not necessarily the current rate.”

David Finkelhor, Director of the Center, reports that:

• 1 in 5 girls and 1 in 20 boys is a victim of child sexual abuse;
• Later in life, 20% of adult women and 5-10% of adult men recall a childhood sexual abuse incident;
• In a 12-month time frame, 16% of youth ages 14 to 17 had been sexually victimized in the U.S.
• Children between the ages of 7 to 13 suffer the highest frequency of sexual abuse.

It is safe to say the somewhere between 10-15% of child sexual abuse cases are committed by strangers under traumatic circumstances. According to a 2003 National Institute of Justice report, 3 out of 4 adolescents who have been sexually assaulted were victimized by someone they knew well. It is not “stranger danger” that constitutes the risk to our children today.

Despite discrepancies in data, certain trends are clear:

• Females are more at risk than males.
• Men are more frequent perpetrators.
• Most sex crimes are committed by people who know the victims.

It also follows that the actual act is less traumatic than we may think for some victims. This is not to diminish either the criminality or the post-traumatic impact. Both are real and damaging. However, interviews with victims reveal that at the time of the abuse, a child may not be aware that what is taking place is either sexual or morally wrong.

In The Trauma Myth, author/researcher Susan Clancy describes the disconnect.

“[Child] Victims said that since they did not understand what the perpetrator was doing or asking them to do, they had no way to process or make sense of sexually toned encounters. The word used by 92% of the victims when asked to describe how they were feeling? Confusion.”

“Sexual abuse may not be a horror show for most victims when it happens, but it certainly can become so later on in life.” says Clancy. It is as an adult that the victim realizes the full consequences of the perpetrator’s actions. And therein lies the trauma.

Although the numbers vary, the occurrence of child sex abuse has declined over the past 40 years. The US Department of Health and Human Services reported a 31% decrease in substantiated cases from 149,800 to 103,600 between 1992-1998. The National Institute of Health estimated the prevalence of child sexual abuse at 10.14% (24.8% in men, and 75.2% in women) between 2004-05. In 2023, child advocacy centers investigated 236,601 cases involving sexual abuse allegations, of which 106,470 were pursued for investigation and prosecution.

However, as long as 70% to 80% of child abuse cases are not reported, a clear picture of the extent of child sex abuse will be elusive. Through the clinical repository of child sexual abuse as a traumatic experience, much has come to light, even though not all CSA experiences are traumatic ones. Although we may never know the true extent of child sexual abuse or eliminate its occurrence, great progress has been made. Victims of childhood sexual abuse now have access to many resources to treat PTSD and other trauma which were not available in the past, such as Victim Advocacy,better and more widely available  mental and physical health care, and a culture that better understands the challenges kids face as they become adults.