The Facts
Fig. 1
Child Sexual and Adult Sexual Assault on Males: The Stats
“And those that create out of the holocaust of their own inheritance anything more than a convenient self-made tomb shall be known as “Survivors”
About statistics and male sexual abuse: Even if we took the more commonly accepted figures about child abuse (about one in three girls and one on ten boys are victims of sexual abuse) and assume that they have been inflated tenfold, we ares till talking about millions of children. And it isn’t likely that these figures are exaggerated. In fact, current evidence points to a strong possibility that they represent a significant underestimation. So we are talking about millions of victims and perpetrators.
Sexual Abuse in Context:
“What sort of monster would sexually abuse a little child?”
Isn’t it awful that depraved incestuous families still exist!”
“How wide spread is it really?”
“I can’t imagine anyone we know doing such a thing.”
“That sort of thing only happens among (insert your favourite stereotype).”
“What do you mean by sexual abuse?’
“But they seemed like such nice people.”
“How could I have not known?”
All the above quotes represent the types of questions that are frequently asked by the general public. They reflect a general assumption about the nature of sexual child abuse, stemming from a widespread ignorance and difficulty of looking directly at an upsetting subject. Rather than accept the painful and overwhelming reality, people tend to view the sexual abuse of boys as though either some extremely rare manifestation of individual pathology or another of distasteful customs of some kind of exotic savages. In their desire to avoid unpleasant realities, human beings resort to doubting, denying, or distancing themselves from ugly truths.
We prefer to believe that “It can’t happen here,” maintaining denial at a great cost: repeated isolation and damage inflicted on millions of worldwide or a million boys in Australia - yes millions!