It’s fair to say no social problem is more agonizing than the sexual abuse of children. This heartbreaking global scourge constitutes a “public health emergency” that leaves deep marks in the lives of many millions of young victims all over the world.
It’s precisely these tragic consequences that have prompted so many dedicated efforts to help victims and prevent further abuse. Yet, becoming more vigilant in watching for signs as adults and teaching children what’s appropriate can only stop so much of it.
In order to make more serious progress in eradicating sexual violence, far more attention needs to be paid to the vast risk-factor literature exploring conditions that make the sexual victimization of children more (or less) likely.
Ever since working at the University of Illinois on research with Nicole Allen, a national expert in family violence, I’ve been fascinated by what steps can be taken to truly eradicate the abuse of children and women within any community.
More recently, I’ve had the chance to lead a small research team reviewing studies exploring risk factors for sexual violence against women and children (especially girls, but also boys), paying attention to both perpetration and victimization studies. This original analysis was completed this spring with the support of Deseret News.
Out of 500 studies reviewed, we looked at 215 focused especially on the incest and sexual abuse of children by parents or other relatives in a home, as well as the exploitation of young people by strangers external to a steady place of residence.
These studies from around the world also examine the assault of latency age and teenage children in various contexts, including competitive sport clubs, youth-serving nonprofits, churches and schools, with dating violence also receiving much more attention in recent decades.
The aim was to see what could be learned by bringing together diverse scientific findings examining root contributors to the worst kinds of abuse from all over the world — focused especially on what researchers exploring sexual abuse in Nigeria call “factors that enhance the vulnerability of the child.”
By doing so, we add our voice to the ongoing, international project to “further unravel the complicated … interactions related to victimization,” as European analysts wrote recently — ultimately considering how “specific combinations of characteristics may contribute to an increased likelihood of victimization.”
All of this, of course, can inform even more effective steps in communities around the world to better protect children.
For the first time today, we publish a high-level summary of what we have learned to date — with the extensive, full reports including all references set for public release later this summer.
10 trends that decrease vulnerability
1. Improving family economic well-being
Consistently, studies demonstrate that children growing up in families and neighborhoods with limited economic resources are more likely to experience sexual victimization — a risk that appears to grow as poverty deepens (parents unemployed, families going without food, living in substandard housing, with adolescents forced to work.)
The opposite is also true. For instance, youth whose fathers were employed were “about four times less likely to experience sexual abuse than respondents whose fathers were unemployed” according to one Nigerian study from 2017.
2. Increasing family educational opportunities
When children grow up where education is encouraged and valued, they are less likely to be sexually victimized. This shows up first in analyses of parental education level — with studies from Africa to Brazil to the U.S. showing that boys and girls whose parents have more education are also more likely to be protected against victimization (with risk consistently increasing as parental education declines).
Children’s own higher education level also decreases this risk, starting with just being in school at all. This is especially true if the schools are smaller, if the child feels comfortable at the school and if they are doing well academically.
By comparison, children with lower levels of education are more vulnerable to victimization — especially those who drop out completely. As Canadian researchers summarized in a 2007 review, “adolescents who have no intention of pursuing postsecondary schooling or who have not obtained their high school diploma are at greater risk of being victims of sexual and physical violence.”
3. Growing up within an intact family
Although most sexual abuse happens within homes, studies repeatedly show that children growing up with married parents are less likely to be abused in any way, including sexually. This is especially true when that marital relationship is cooperative and healthy — with “parental togetherness” and “harmony” identified in one 2017 Nigerian study as “protective factors that buffer children from sexual abuse.”
No such marital protections exist, however, in the presence of significant amounts of conflict and other kinds of emotional and physical aggression in the marriage and home generally. Another African study found a 2.5-fold increased risk of children being sexually abused when they experienced conflict between parents — a result that aligns with some U.S. data.
Following parental separation, divorce or death, a child naturally experiences more residential instability and often significantly less parental supervision. That frequently includes a greater likelihood of being in close, regular contact with other older men who are “not the biological father.”
Studies frequently show that living with only one parent, whether father or mother, raises the risk of sexual victimization. Divorced parents, according to a 2023 Haitian analysis, are “strongly associated with higher odds of sexual victimization.”
One U.S. research team observed in 2009 that “living with a non-intact family” is among the “most robust correlates of any abuse history."
Consistently, children with incarcerated fathers also experienced 5.5 times more child sexual abuse in one New Zealand analysis.
Even higher risk comes when children live with neither of their parents, such as living with friends or another relative, living in foster care or other institutions, or especially if they are homeless and on the streets.
By contrast, multiple studies found that children living with both parents are less likely to be victimized — with the same Nigerian analysis finding children living in these homes “two times less likely to experience sexual abuse.”
4. Strengthening the quality of parent-child relationships
While you would expect negative parent-child relationships within any abusive context, there’s repeated evidence that poor relationships with a mother and father also precede and predict abuse of various kinds, including sexual violence.
Available studies look specifically at vulnerability to victimization connected to a “lack of closeness” with a parent and “low warmth” relationships within a “rigid” family climate. Children whose parents display harsh, authoritarian parenting behavior are also at greater risk of being sexually victimized.
Also at risk are children whose parents reflect a “laxness of monitoring” and overall neglect.
U.S. and Finnish researchers report that “adolescents who had older friends and parents who did not monitor their social relationships were at greater risk of sexual abuse.”
One Canadian study of abusive coaches observed how they often admitted to persuading mothers and fathers to “relinquish some or all parental control” to themselves — with the researchers acknowledging that “for the abused athlete, the bond of trust established between him or herself and the perpetrator is often a substitute for a weak relationship with a parent.”
By contrast, studies in Africa and the U.S. found, unsurprisingly, that “high” and “frequent parental monitoring” is connected with less sexual violence against children and teens. This is also true for positive, warm, healing relationships between parents and children overall.
5. Tightening community accountability
To the extent any community has allowed isolated access to children historically, this has sadly proven to raise the risk of victimization. That includes abuse connected with “unguarded access to children” by religious leaders, “unsupervised coaches,” rogue law enforcement, predator physicians, leaders of boys and girls’ clubs and other places where perpetrators can seek out “volunteer work with organizations through which they can meet children.”
One study of 41 serial perpetrators found that 57% reported having picked their profession either partly or specifically in order to access children. Such privileged, close contact with youth is often taken for granted within special trusted roles — clergy, coach, teacher, mentor, counselor, camp staff and scout leader.
This is one reason that children whose families have healthy and ongoing social connections are less likely to be sexually victimized. And it’s also why thorough accountability and supervision at a community level also measurably drops the risk of abuse – something many different kinds of communities have improved at in recent decades.
This is also why healthy peer groups make such a difference, and why negative friend and sibling relationships increase the risk of children being sexually abused. That includes settings where older adolescents have “unsupervised opportunity with younger victims.”
Australian researchers report that sibling sexual abuse is “the most common form of intra-familial child sexual abuse” — an outcome that is more likely among “step-siblings and half-siblings,” when compared with full siblings.
In the absence of this kind of proactive, robust community supervision, what’s clear is that isolation of any kind appears to be quickly exploited by adult and older teenage perpetrators.
This is especially true for five groups of young people: (1) girls (2) younger children (3) youth who identify as sexual/gender minorities (4) children who have experienced abuse previously and (5) disabled children — all of whom consistently show higher risk for sexual victimization.
6. Healing from mental health struggles
While you would expect poor mental health in the aftermath of abuse, there’s repeated evidence that young people who struggle with various mental health challenges are also more likely to be victimized sexually, as well as to become perpetrators themselves.
This appears to be largely due to the emotional vulnerabilities associated with high levels of despair, hopelessness, fear and anger. But it’s also clear that some psychiatric treatments can involve emotional blunting and heightened indifference — making affected youth more likely to be sexually victimized.
There’s also evidence for “drug-induced activation” and manic symptoms in treated youth that can sometimes manifest as excessive hypersexuality and uncharacteristic sexual aggression against other youth.
Where abuse has taken place, it’s especially critical to help young victims receive as much compassionate support as possible to heal from earlier trauma. That’s confirmed by abundant evidence showing that previous abuse of any kind sets up a child for future sexual victimization and perpetration.
7. Avoiding risky sexual behavior
A significant number of studies find that youth who are sexually active at a younger age or who have multiple, casual sexual partners are at heightened risk of being sexually victimized and also of perpetrating themselves.
Adults who are promiscuous are also at greater risk of sexual violence, including against children. This is especially true in the presence of cognitive distortions that justify exploiting children as a legitimate “need” that doesn’t “really harm” the child.
Over 100 studies have likewise linked compulsive pornography use to sexual aggression, coercion and violence against women and children, contrary to industry-friendly messaging that mass consumption of explicit material somehow “reduces” sexual violence.
One 2023 review of 27 studies involving 16,200 young participants in North America, Europe, Asia and Africa concluded that “significant associations were found between exposure to both violent and non-violent sexual content” and the likelihood of engaging in “problematic sexual behaviors” (frequently involving force, coercion and aggression).
8. Overcoming aggression, lack of empathy and impulsivity
Young people who display a marked lack of empathy, along with significant anger and hostility, are more likely to be involved in sexual violence. This is especially true if boys show a behavioral pattern of fighting, conduct disorders and disciplinary problems at school. Penn State researchers found that “delinquent youth” were “more likely to have favorable attitudes toward the abuse, to initiate the sexual encounter and to experience repeat victimizations.”
Young people who spend time with “delinquent” friends are also more likely to sexually offend and be victimized themselves — especially if they themselves demonstrate consistent patterns of aggression, impulsivity and rule-breaking. These are the patterns U.S. researchers find lead to a “heightened risk for most types of victimization.”
Dutch researchers reported in 2023 that “impulsivity increases the odds of future sexual victimization as a child.” And German researchers found earlier that the lack of self-control likewise predicts “sexually aggressive behaviors” among adolescent boys.
Adults who display low empathy and callous, aggressive, criminal patterns — as well as overall lack of impulse control — are also more likely to sexually offend against children.
9. Avoiding drug and alcohol influences on both youth and adults
Substance abuse has multifaceted impacts on abuse, starting at home — since the children of parents who use alcohol are more likely to be sexually victimized and to sexually offend against other children.
Teenage boys who use substances, both drugs and alcohol, are more likely to perpetrate sexually on others. And teenage girls who use alcohol are also more vulnerable to being victimized sexually by other adolescents and adults.
This is true in a dating context as well, with University of Maryland researchers summarizing: “substance abuse during a date is linked to experiences of sexual and physical violence.”
Even “being in places where one’s friends are drinking alcohol” is “associated with an increased risk of victimization” according to the same scholars.
Adults who perpetrate against children often struggle with drugs and alcohol as well – this frequently being one of many factors bringing a man (or woman) to the point of being willing to exploit someone so vulnerable.
10. Deepening faith commitments and religious practice as a family
Youth who report frequent attendance at church have repeatedly been found in studies within different countries to have less risk for abuse of various kinds, including sexual violence — especially when they demonstrate “intrinsic religiosity” (sincere faith).
For instance, adolescent girls who rated themselves as very religious in a 2021 South African study were 80% less likely to describe any previous experience of sexual violence in their lives compared to girls who were not religious.
In the other direction, young people who report infrequent attendance show heightened risk for both sexual victimization and perpetration. This pattern is true for sexual minority youth as well and shows up all around the world.
The Sexual Satisfaction and Function Survey asked nearly 1400 women in 2019-2020 whether they had experienced sexual abuse as a teen, and how often they attended religious services during high school.
In a new analysis of the data, Deseret News contributor Stephen Cranney found those women who reported attending religious services weekly during their high school years were significantly less likely to talk about experiencing sexual abuse as a teen, compared with those who were less religious in high school.
None of this is to minimize heartbreaking instances where a child is assaulted in a religious home, or by a perpetrator acting in a religious position. And, indeed, there is no such protective religious influence in a home or community where children are harshly controlled and manipulated by domineering adults. When such devastating abuse happens with a person of such immense trust, it can prompt for a young person what one scholar described as “rage and spiritual distress that pervades their entire life being.”
Like other communities, faith communities are actively taking more steps around the world to prevent such tragedies. Meanwhile, it seems clear that healthy and cooperative religious communities generally reduce victimization, in part, because children with such a faith commitment shaping their lives and homes typically engage in less risky sex, less substance abuse and have fewer negative friends.
Multiple, overlapping risk factors
In summary, when less educated parents who are no longer married and use alcohol are raising children in a home that struggles to find sufficient material resources, lacks healthy community connections and is absent any higher purpose or meaning, those children are, statistically speaking, measurably more likely to be sexually abused, according to studies across the world.
Clearly, none of these factors operate in a vacuum independently of each other — with interlinkages among all 10 factors that build on each other.
As we consider ways to further protect children, it’s important to recognize that when educated parents who are happily married raise children in a home with adequate financial support, nourishing community connections and a sincere and healthy religious commitment, those children are far less likely to get caught up in drugs and alcohol and are less likely to be victimized sexually.
That leaves these young people protected to live their lives seeking beauty, goodness and joy — like children around the world deserve.
Special thanks to Laura Whitney, Odessa Taylor, Jacob Orse, and Brigham Powelson for helping to gather and sift through published studies, and to Diana Gourley for helping edit the review. In addition to recent support from Deseret News, the author expresses thanks to Public Square Magazine for initial funding for the project.
If you or someone you love has experienced sexual assault of any kind and need additional support in the U.S., contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline (1-800-656-HOPE)- with virtual and text-based options available. This is a confidential networking service in the U.S. helping connect victims with local agencies who can offer therapeutic support across the country. Similar kinds of hotlines exist in many countries around the world.