Child Sexual Abuse and Its Psychosocial Effects on Female Children in Addis Ababa

Abstract

Background: Child sexual abuse (CSA) is known to be an ever increasing problem across nations. The situation in Ethiopia is even tragic and subtle in that it is concealed in various harmful traditional practices. This study attempts to examine the psychosocial effects of CSA through early marriage, rape and child prostitution.

Methods: The data were collected from a randomly selected 80 respondents in Addis Ababa. a pre-tested structured interview schedule was employed to collect the quantitative data. This was also substantiated with a qualitative case study. The quantitative data were analysed using SPSS for windows version 11.

Results: It was found out that the respondents experienced various sorts of negative psychosocial problems as survivors of early marriage, rape and child prostitution. These include sadness 53 (66%) in all the forms of CSA, worthlessness and negative self-esteem 39(49%) in the survivors of early marriage and child prostitution, hatred of males (53%) as well as hopelessness and helplessness (48%) in rape survivors. A statistically significant association was found between early sexuality and such background variables as level of literacy (p < 0.05), religious affiliation (p < 0.001) and regional affiliation (p < 0.01) of the respondents.

Conclusion: Age at first marriage and at the inevitable sexual engagement was by far less than the age set by any legal documents currently available in Ethiopia. In addition, the perceived situation of being child prostitute, rape survivor and early married resulted in various degrees of negative psychosocial effects. Finally, the importance of family planning and health education, promoting girls’ education, provision of assertiveness training to girls, and other strategies are recommended.