Studied a sample of 24 Danish children selected from a larger group of 56 c
hildren who had received obscene telephone calls from a single adult offend
er to ascertain the psychological consequences of this form of sexual abuse
. The sample is unusual in that the source of the abuse was the same for al
l of the children, and none of them had records of prior or concurrent abus
e from other sources. Almost all children suffered significant psychologica
l consequences from these calls, those who obeyed the caller's demands expe
riencing more serious consequences than those who did not. A comparison was
made with the consequences suffered by an additional group of 7 children w
ho had experienced direct physical sexual abuse by the same offender.