Sharing – Sexual violence against boys is far more common than we think
These are the stories we don’t hear about often enough, and that leaves a whole lot of victims out on their own when it comes to finding support.
“What do you think you know about boys and sexual violence? I thought I knew that boys are victims only rarely, and I automatically equated “child sexual abuse” with adults preying on kids. But I was wrong on both counts.
Many boys are molested by adults, that’s true. But there are strong signs that children are even more likely to be sexually abused or sexually assaulted by other children. In one study of 13,000 children age 17 and younger, three-quarters of the boys who reported being sexually victimized said the person who violated them was another child. In a little more than half those assaults, the violator was a girl. Most boys who had been assaulted had never told an adult.”
Personally, I was sexually abused by another child, an older male. I know there are plenty of other survivors of other children, or even sibling abuse. I’ve also known plenty of others who were abused by females. These stories are out there, even if they don’t make headlines in the same way abuse in churches or with the Boy Scouts does.
Those stories need to be told, and the victims who don’t see themselves in the stories that are out there, deserve better.
