Biological relatedness and early contact as factors in the severity of child sexual abuse

Abstract

The present study of all cases of substantiated child sexual abuse received by a local social service agency in 1981 examined (a) the relationship of early contact between perpetrator and victim to such mitigating factors as attachment and intergenerational boundaries (b) the impact of the incest taboo on the severity of abuse and (c) a variety of descriptive variables to identify various characteristics of incestuous families and the services they recieve. Chi square analyses failed to identify differences between groups in the severity of sexual abuse. However, the sample was not similar to those reported in the literature--containing a high percentage of unemployment, prior marriages, criminal history and prior referrals for child abuse, suggesting that this sample of perpetrators did differ significantly from the general population and from the populations which have been reported in other studies.