Sexual Abuse: Social Inequality and Poverty

Abstract

to prove it, mainly when its victims are children and adolescents. Most of the time, the victims feel ashamed and embarrassed of denouncing this kind of tragedy. This creates an unfavorable scenario and increases the difficulty to help the victims and their families with their multiple pains, including the physical as well as the emotional harms [1]. Child Sex Abuse (CSA) sets up also as a gender and race problem, because it affects mainly girls and black girls; in addition, the crime is committed more than 90% of times by males [2-8].Every day, thousands of children are abused in places that were supposed to be safe. Several studies show that the most common places where this kind of crime occurs were at home and school, not to mention that such atrocity is perpetrated by those who are close to the victim [1,3,4,6,7,9].Sexual abuse is a harmful, humiliating, and traumatic experience to the physical and mental health of men and women with immediate and late consequences. When it comes to immediate repercussions victims usually experience suicidal thoughts, mental disturbs, behavioral disturb, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) [10], and regarding the late consequences, they stumble upon senile depression, and high risk of suicide in elder individuals [11]. Thus, the aim of this study was to analyze the psychiatric and psychological repercussion of children and adolescents, victims of CSA in Brazil. MethodsA systematic literature search was performed