In 1993 it was estimated that there are 60 million survivors of childhood sexual abuse in America today.
Young girls who are forced to have sex are three times more likely to develop psychiatric disorders or abuse alcohol and drugs in adulthood, than girls who are not sexually abused.
Psychiatric disorders were from 2.6 to 3.3 times more common among women whose case included intercourse, and the risk of substance abuse was increased more than four times.
1 in 4 girls and 1 in 6 boys will be victims of some form of sexual abuse before age 18. (Study in 1988 by Diana Russell)
According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, In 2003, 12.4 children (around 896,000) were victimized per 1000.
Of those children, 60.9% experienced neglect.
18.9% were physically abused.
9.9% suffered sexual abuse
4.9% were emotionally / psychologically abused
2.3% suffered medical neglect
Some children suffered multiple types of abuse.
In an adult retrospective study, victimization was reported by 27 percent of the women and 16 percent of the men.
The average age for the occurrence of reported abuse was 9.9 for boys and 9.6 for girls.
Victimization occurred before age eight for 22 percent of boys and for 23 percent of girls.
Most of the abuse of both boys and girls was by offenders 10 or more years older than their victims.
Girls were more likely than boys to disclose the abuse.
Forty-two percent of the women and thirty-three percent of the men reported never having disclosed the experience to anyone.
Source: Finkelhor et al., 1990.
The Bureau of Justice Statistics in 2000 include the following statistics
67% of victims of sexual assault were juveniles (under age 18);
34% of sexual assault victims were under age 12;
1 of every 7 victims of sexual assault were under age 6;
40% of offenders who victimized children under age 6 were juveniles (under age 18).
The following child abuse stats are from The Bureau of Justice March 1996
1 in 5 violent offenders serving time in a state prison reported having victimized a child.
3 in 10 child abusers reported that they had committed their crimes against multiple victims
3 in 4 child victims of violence were female
For the vast majority of child victimizers in State prison, the victim was someone they knew before the crime.
A third had committed their crime against their own child.
About half had a relationship with the victim as a friend, acquaintance, or relative other than offspring.
About 1 in 7 reported the victim to be a stranger to them.
More than half the violent crimes committed against children involved victims age 12 or younger.
7 in 10 offenders with child victims reported that they were imprisoned for a rape or sexual assault.
Two-thirds of all prisoners convicted of rape or sexual assault had committed their crime against a child.
Inmates who victimized children were less likely than other inmates to have a prior criminal record- nearly a third of child-victimizers had never been arrested prior to the current offense.