Social support for child-attracted persons (CAPs) may be important for increasing well-being, thereby reducing the risk of committing child sexual abuse. Unfortunately, in-person social support may be difficult to obtain because of stigma. CAPs may instead turn to online forums for people who are sexually attracted to children. The present study looks at the emotional, informational, and tangible support CAPs offered and received through online forums. We recruited 353 CAPs from Twitter and multiple online forums. The survey covered basic demographics, frequency of forum use, reasons for forum use, social support received or offered, helpfulness of forums, and their quality of offline support. Most CAPs said that they initially sought out forums to avoid feeling alone in their attraction; the quality of offline support was rated as moderate. Emotional support and informational support were the most frequently endorsed forms of social support. CAPs who visited more forums reported forums to be less helpful, which could reflect “forum shopping.” A Poisson regression predicting online support from quality of offline support and various demographic and forum use variables did not reveal any significant results. This is the first quantitative study to look at the benefits of forums for CAPs regarding specific types of social support. The authors consider if certain forums, in addition to professional help, could be part of a repertoire of resources for CAPs who may be struggling.
Introduction: There is growing evidence about the prevalence of sending, receiving, or resharing nude images by youth (sexting). Less is known about the demographic, technology use, and social context correlates of sexting. Using logistic regression, we looked at predictors of sexting behaviors in minors. Methods: Participants were a market panel sample of 394 youths aged 9-12 and 602 youths aged 13-17 (M age = 13.5, SD = 2.50, 60.3% females) recruited for an anonymous online survey in the United States. The survey comprised questions about demographic characteristics, sexting behaviors, technology use, attitudes, and perceived norms. The four outcomes were sending nude or near-nude images or videos (images), receiving images sent without the depicted person's knowledge, nonconsensually resharing images, or having one's own images nonconsensually reshared. Results: Regression analyses showed gender, gender/sexual minority status, use of dating apps and particular online platforms, self-sharing and resharing attitudes, and friend norms predicted sending images. Age, resharing attitudes, and friend norms all predicted receiving nude images of other youths. Household income, geographic location, some online platforms, resharing attitudes, and friend norms all predicted nonconsensual resharing of nudes. Age, use of encrypted apps, and friend norms predicted having one's own image nonconsensually reshared. Conclusions: We partially replicated prior research by finding associations between age and gender. Further, we identified technology use factors including the use of dating apps and particular platforms. Attitudes about sexting and perceived friend norms were robust across sexting behaviors, suggesting these factors are potentially important for intervention.
The present study examined North American clinician stigma and willingness to treat those with sexual interest in children. Clinicians (N = 101) were randomly assigned to a vignette describing a referral of a client with a sexual interest in children and asked whether they would accept the client for treatment. Vignettes differed in what the client was seeking treatment for (low mood or managing sexual interest) and sexual offence history (no offence history or a contact offence against a child). Clinicians with lower stigma were more likely to accept a referral for a client with sexual interest in children and, in general, clinicians were least likely to accept a referral for a client with a sexual offence against a child looking to manage their sexual interest. Implications and future directions are discussed.
Autoerotic asphyxiation (AEA) involves enhancing sexual arousal by deliberately self-inducing a reduction of oxygen to the brain. Most studies of AEA have focused on those who have expressed distress or who have died from the practice. The present study explores correlates of AEA-related distress in a community sample, focusing on self-reported measures of psychological distress, substance misuse, and sexual sensation seeking. Individuals who expressed an interest in AEA ( n = 165) participated in an online anonymous survey. Findings revealed a significant positive association between AEA-related distress and symptoms of depression, and a significant negative association between AEA-related distress and sexual sensation seeking. Both depression and sexual sensation seeking remained associated with AEA-related distress at the multivariate level. The findings are consistent with prior literature on AEA that suggests comorbidity with depression and highlights the importance of psychological screening when people present to clinicians due to AEA, particularly for depression. Contrary to our hypothesis, those with higher sexual sensation seeking reported lower levels of AEA-related distress. Future research on AEA-related distress may benefit from using a sexual sensation seeking measure that better assesses sexual dysregulation.
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