Personal History of Childhood Abuse Among Clinicians

• NCJ Number: 149341
• Journal: Child Abuse and Neglect Volume: 18 Issue: 5 Dated: (May 1994) Pages: 455- 472
• Author(s): R Nuttall; H Jackson
• Date Published: 1994
• Length: 18 pages
• Grant Number(s): MH19076-01
• Sponsoring Agency: National Institute of Mental Health
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Survey
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

A survey conducted by the authors determined the prevalence, characteristics, and effects of a history of childhood sexual and physical abuse among professionals responsible for evaluating child sexual abuse allegations.

Abstract

A gender-stratified random sample of 1,635 United States clinicians was drawn from the most current national directories of clinical social work pediatrics, psychiatry, and psychology. A total of 656 completed questionnaires constituted a 42-percent response rate. Thirteen percent of the men and 20 percent of the women reported a personal history of childhood sexual abuse; 7.3 percent of the men and 6.9 percent of the women reported a history of physical abuse as children. The modal age at which both genders were sexually abused was 8 years. The modal age at the time of physical abuse was 10 years for both sexes. Of those sexually abused, 50 percent of both genders were physically abused for 3 or more years. Older females were more likely to report a history of sexual abuse than were their younger cohorts. In this population, physical abuse was overwhelmingly perpetrated by parents; however, the modal perpetrators of sexual abuse (for both females and males) were male acquaintances or male strangers. Fathers and stepfathers were unlikely to be perpetrators of sexual abuse (3 percent for males and 12 percent for females) in this sample. For both genders, particularly males, sexually abused respondents were less likely to be married than their nonabused cohorts. Both men and women who had been sexually abused were more likely to be in nonmarital relationships than were those who had not been sexually abused. Women who had been sexually abused were less likely to have raised children than were women who had not been sexually abused. Respondents who had been sexually abused or physically abused were more likely to believe allegations of sexual abuse contained in 16 vignettes that alleged sexual abuse. 10 tables and 43 references