Risk factors for child sexual abuse

We review the risk and protective factors for child sexual abuse. Overall, characteristics of perpetrators, victims, and families of victims were mode rate to strong risk factors for child sexual abuse. However, it is difficul t to distinguish between risk factors for extra-familial and intra-familial child sexual victimization because most of the studies combined these two types of child sexual abuse, although the risk factors for these two types of child sexual abuse most likely differ. Research in this area is difficul t because etiological and prevention models of victimization would differ s ubstantially from those of perpetration. Given the low yearly prevalence of child sexual victimization, very large samples would be necessary to obtai n sufficient power. Thus, most studies have used lifetime prevalence, which may provide much useful information but which add substantial time confoun ds. Finally, child sexual victimization is probably a misnomer, as the natu re, impact, and etiology of sexual victimization most likely differs over t he large age span of childhood and gender. Because improved models and prev ention programs require improved etiological models (based on knowledge of risk and protective factors), we hope that this review will focus stakehold ers on the need for continued research in this area. (C) 2001 Elsevier Scie nce Ltd. All rights reserved.