Factors Responsible For Sexual Abuse As Expressed By Students Of Federal College Of Education, Osiele Abeokuta, Nigeria

Oates (1990) reported that in Connecticut in 1672, a father was found guilty of incestuous act with his daughter and executed. The case also exemplified attitude still encountered today: victim blaming. In the 1700s some educators began warning parents to supervise the children at all times, and to ensure they were never nude infront of other adult, in order to protect them from sexual abuse.
    This constituted one of the first indications that society at large recognized the potential for children to be sexually abused (Conte and Short, 1982). By the late 1900s, welfare groups were familiar with child sexual abuse and that the most common form was intra-familial assault (Wurtele and Miller – Poriin, 1992).
Societies – continued to turn a Lind eye/to child sexual abuse until after the “rediscovery of child maltreatment” in the early 1960s by Kempe and his colleagues in the United States (Kempe, Silverman, Steele, Droeyemuller and Silver, 1962).
    The act of sexual abuse was not identified prior to the 1960, because as Oates (1990) states, while society could cope with “stronger danger” and the threat of the stereotypical child molester assaulting children, it was much more threatening to acknowledge that sexual abuse was commonly occurring within the family, committed by family members upon whom children were depended and should have been able to trust. Therefore, as was indicated, in the last National Child Protection, clearing Houses issues paper (Tomison, 1995a). There are problem in arriving at concrete definition of child sexual abuse and neglect, and child abuse is no exception.
    Kempe and Kempe’s (1982) definition, based on Schechter and Roberge’s (1962) work, has been widely used. They defined child sexual abuse as: “The involvement of dependent – developmentally immature children and adolescents is sexual activities which they do not fully comprehend, and unable to give informed consent to and that violate social taboos of family roles”. The importance of the definition lies in the acknowledgement of the limitations of children to give truly informed consent.
    The Australian institute of Health and welfare provide a useful national definition of child sexual abuse: sexual abuse is any act which exposes a child to, or involves a child to, involves a child in, sexual processes beyond his or her understanding or contrary to accept community standards’ (Angus and Woodward, 1993:46). As Goddard and Crew (1993) note, child sexual abuse commonly refers to the abuse of children by the extend family (or non family members); often this abuse stops short of actual intercourse. Incest on the other hand has become progressively more constrained to the extent that it refers specifically to the societal taboo of intercourse between immediate family members.
    Sexual abuse is the use of a child for sexual gratification by an adult or significantly older child/adolescent (Tower, 1989), sexual abusive behaviour range from nudity, disrobing, exhibitionism, to oral, anal or vaginal sex. Child sexual abuse can include:
-    Touching, founding and/or masturbation of a child’s genitals, breast and anus.
-    Having any type of intercourse with a child.
-    Encouraging a child to watch or hear adult sexual acts.
-    Using an object, instrument or body part to penetrate a child’s genital or anus.
-    Having a child touch and fondle another’s genital
-    Using a child in an erotica
-    Showing erotic or pornographic materials to a child
-    Photographing a child in sexual poses.
An unwelcome sexual advance, which requests for sexual favours other verbal or physical conducts of a sexual nature constitute of such conduct is used as a basis for employment decisions affecting such individuals or that such conduct has the purpose or effect of unreasonably interfering with an individuals work performance or creating an intimidating, hostile, or offensive working environment. (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 1980).
The definition above clearly applies to work situations, but the concept has gradually been extended beyond the workplace. It now includes sexual coercion in academic setting and in professional – client relationships.