How victim age affects the context and timing of child sexual abuse: applying the routine activities approach to the first sexual abuse incident

Nadine McKillop; Sarah J Brown; Richard Wortley; Stephen Smallbone

doi:10.1186/s40163-015-0031-8

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How victim age affects the context and timing of child sexual abuse: applying the routine activities approach to the first sexual abuse incident

Journal article

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How victim age affects the context and timing of child sexual abuse: applying the routine activities approach to the first sexual abuse incident

Nadine McKillop, Sarah J Brown, Richard Wortley and Stephen Smallbone

Crime Science, Vol.4(17), pp.1-10

2015

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s40163-015-0031-8

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Abstract

Criminology

sexual abuse onset

routine activities approach

situational theories

offence timing

victim age

guardianship

The aim of this study was to examine from the routine activities approach how victim age might help to explain the timing, context and nature of offenders' first known contact sexual abuse incident. One-hundred adult male child sexual abusers (M = 45.8 years, SD = 12.2; range = 20-84) were surveyed about the first time they had sexual contact with a child. Afternoon and early evening (between 3 pm and 9 pm) was the most common time in which sexual contact first occurred. Most incidents occurred in a home. Two-thirds of incidents occurred when another person was in close proximity, usually elsewhere in the home. Older victims were more likely to be sexually abused by someone outside their families and in the later hours of the day compared to younger victims. Proximity of another person (adult and/or child) appeared to have little effect on offenders' decisions to abuse, although it had some impact on the level of intrusion and duration of these incidents. Overall, the findings lend support to the application of the routine activities approach for considering how contextual risk factors (i.e., the timing and relationship context) change as children age, and raise questions about how to best conceptualize guardianship in the context of child sexual abuse. These factors should be key considerations when devising and implementing sexual abuse prevention strategies and for informing theory development.

Details

Title: How victim age affects the context and timing of child sexual abuse: applying the routine activities approach to the first sexual abuse incident
Authors: Nadine McKillop (Author) - Griffith University
Sarah J Brown (Author) - Coventry University, United Kingdom
Richard Wortley (Author) - University College London, United Kingdom
Stephen Smallbone (Author) - Griffith University
Publication details: Crime Science, Vol.4(17), pp.1-10
Publisher: SpringerOpen
Date published: 2015
DOI: 10.1186/s40163-015-0031-8
ISSN: 2193-7680
Copyright note: Copyright © 2015 McKillop et al. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made
Organisation Unit: University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland; School of Law and Society; Sexual Violence Research and Prevention Unit; School of Law and Criminology - Legacy
Language: English
Record Identifier: 99449289402621
Output Type: Journal article

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