Christina Parker
PSHYCH 610
September 30, 2013
Krista Bridgmon
Abstract
Childhood sexual abuse is a subject that is not researched very deeply. One issue is traumatizing the victims even more by studying them on a long-term base. There are questions that researchers want to answer but designing the right study to achieve the answers is sensitive work. One such question is “Are victims of childhood sexual abuse more likely to engage in sexual activity at earlier ages than non-abused”? Research is lacking in the area of childhood sexuality and without this research psychologists are unable to adequately …show more content…
I tried blocking the summer out but that only made it worse for me so I decided to make sex meaningless because up to the time he ripped it from me I thought it was special and only for marriage. I cannot say that had this not happened I would not have become sexually active but I truly believed in waiting. A year after having the option ripped from me and trying to hide the pain I broke down and started having sex with friends interested in sex. By the time I was 16 the number of partners I had been with was 6. I always wondered if I used another coping mechanism would I still have such a high number. I have been with my husband for 20 years and have just begun to truly feel the intimate connection I should have felt from the beginning.
I am conducting this study to gain a greater understanding of how violation of trust and body may or may not cause a child to engage in sexual activity at an earlier age than non-abused children. The available literature on childhood sexual abuse is insufficient on many levels and lack adequate methodologies for approaching treatment or study of victims of childhood sexual …show more content…
Therefore findings gathered from research could be effected, interfering with the validly and reliability of the study.
Research has documented that CSA survivors are more prone to suffer from social, emotional and behavioral problems than non survivors; difficulties include, however are not limited to, anxiety, depression, guilt, difficulty with interpersonal relationships, self-destructive behaviors, lowered self-esteem, and promiscuity. According to research evidence, early sexual experiences often have an influence on later sexual behavior. When initial sexual experience is abusive, it could elicit explicit effects on ensuing sexual behaviors. Research has found that survivors of CSA engage in risky sexual behavior at higher rates than individuals who have not experienced such abuse. A number of studies furthered Costas and Landreth’s findings and reported that risky sexual behavior in adults previously abused was exhibited in many forms; having many sexual partners, failing to use condoms during intercourse increasing the risk of sexually transmitted infections and having anal