One in Three American Women Are Sexually Abused as Children: the Tragic Lifelong Consequences

A critical predictor of adult wellness is one's childhood experience, a period mythologized as happy but fraught with hazards. Unfortunately, America has a culture of child abuse - emotional, sexual, and physical. It creates generational illness by not addressing this problem. This investigation will review research on childhood sexual abuse and its impact on female victims.
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Nearly one in three women were sexually abused as minors, an incredible statistic indicating a sick society in need of fundamental reform.

Child sexual abuse is common, severe, is reported rarely, and the victims usually know their abuser. Preadolescent girls are at the most significant risk.

According to the American Psychological Association, sexual abuse is 'an undesired sexual activity, with perpetrators using force, making threats or taking advantage of victims not able to give consent.'

Sexual abuse takes different forms, such as fondling or sucking of sexual body parts, forced sexual intercourse, indecent exposure, and both oral sex and bodily penetration. Force includes coercion, manipulation, and threats where a person cannot consent.

Nearly one woman in three reported sexual abuse before the age of 16 years in the United States:

• A substantial number of these incidents (70%) involved genital contact or more severe abuse, and 12% of the victims were imperiled by sexual intercourse.
• The victims usually knew their abusers, with family members in 38% of cases and acquaintances in another 46%.
• Strangers accounted for 15% of all abuse experiences.
• Most of the abusers were young men.
•  Reporting of the abuse was infrequent, and only about 7% of all abuse was ever officially reported.

What the failure to report means is societal pressure using shame creates a perfect environment for serial predators,  thereby creating even more preventable injuries. 
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Major depressive disorders are affected by hereditary, environmental, and dispositional factors. For example, both routine life stressors and those linked plainly with abuse have long been considered leading contributors to the onset of depression, in which severe depression is strongly related to sexual, emotional, and physical abuse. 

Women tend to reveal more long-term changes in stress reactivity compared to males, which may be the reason for increased depression in females. Medical professionals diagnose women with depression twice as often as men, and are more likely to have suffered some form of abuse as a child. The proportion of women who faced depression during their lifespan was the highest among those who were victims of abuse.

Women who have experienced abuse or other types of trauma are more likely to develop a variety of different mental health illnesses. Males and females respond to sexual abuse differently.  Men tend to express their negatively charged sentiments, which can explain the high prevalence of hostility and outward-facing antisocial behavior. Women tend to turn their self-loathing inwards, with corrosive, life-altering results, anxious, distrusting, and carrying what they consider to be a shameful secret in their being.

Abuse revises how people identify themselves and the world around them, with prevalent adverse effects on self-esteem, physical and mental development, and social relationships.

Physical abuse occurs within a web of connected conducts, including authoritarian control, anxiety-provoking behavior, and bodily injuries or discomfort that is perpetrated by any person close to the victim. A meta-analysis with a total of over nine million participants found the global prevalence of childhood physical abuse to be 18%, with a material difference between studies based on the judgment of professionals relative to self-reported studies (0.3% vs. 22%, respectively). This points to the underdiagnosis of physical abuse, an immense problem.

Psychological abuse is behavior intended to undermine a person's well-being or self-esteem. The outcomes of psychological abuse differ depending on the circumstances and the age of the victim. In general, like other types of abuse, it is intentional behavior to convey to the victim that they have no merit (i.e., they are worthless or unwanted) or that something is wrong with them. Emotional abuse includes acts that disturb the emotional health of the individual. Such acts include restricting a person's movements, stigmatization, mockery, intimidation and bullying, prejudice, rejection, and other nonphysical forms of antagonistic action. Emotional abuse can represent an ongoing pattern of behavior occurring across many different situations or be limited to or triggered by a specific problem. It is the least registered type of abuse, and its occurrence is challenging to estimate. 

Studies that have examined the effects of multiple types of abuse have shown childhood emotional abuse to be more significantly linked to depression compared to sexual and physical abuse.

The anguished experiences of abuse can also affect mood regulation as the fundamental violations that live inside the person, often unreconciled and aching, can prompt uneven, difficult to understand, and unusual responses. Rumination and behavioral avoidance are both associated with emotional abuse during childhood and are strongly related to depression.

Experiences of early emotional abuse may be particularly damaging since primary attachment figures are often the source, lending credibility to irrational criticisms. These experiences increase attachment insecurity, avoidance, and isolation, which also play a significant role in the development of depression.

Victims of abuse often are unable to shake their anger, fear, shame, and guilt. Frequently, they attempt to cope by inhibiting all of these emotions. For example, a person who has difficulties revealing the concealed pain that resulted from abuse may also be unable to effectively understand and deal with their depression, concealing the history from therapists and resulting in poorer treatment and recovery outcomes.

The fracture that childhood abuse causes distances the victims from all of humanity, often condemning them to a tortured and lonely life.  The injury is more than a temporal injury, never forgotten, often simply buried, creeping out in inappropriate ways that further distance the victim from other people, and a joyful life.

Is there an answer to helping these victims? Visibility would help as often these people feel they are alone, and somehow they encouraged or caused the abuse. They were actually raped and had no guilt in the foul crime perpetrated on them. If they understood the frequency of this horror, perhaps they would feel more comfortable seeking treatment and opening up about their predicament.
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Creating a more open societal concept about the frequency of abuse could encourage victims to come forward, and aggressive enforcement of existing laws could help jail predators, interrupting serial abuse and reducing harm. Enforcement, interdiction, jail time, and treatment all would help change the story arc associated with this societal illness.