Prevalence of sexual child abuse among secondary school students in Igunmale, Benue State Nigeria

Abstract

Sexual child abuse seems to have become a public health problem of great concern in Nigeria with majority of the cases unreported. The impact of sexual child abuse can be long lasting affecting the emotional health of the growing child even into adulthood.  The objective of this study is to determine the prevalence of sexual child abuse as well as the association between sexual child abuse and the socio-demographic characteristics of secondary school students in Igunmale, Benue state. Cross sectional research design was used for the study. The population of the study was 800 students from six secondary schools in Igunmale Local Government Area Benue State.  A sample size of 300 students was used. A researcher developed questionnaire; Prevalence of Sexual Child Abuse Questionnaire (PSCAQ) was utilized for the study. The research questions were analyzed with frequency and percentage while chi-square statistics was used to test the null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. Findings showed that 53.3 per cent of secondary school students experienced sexual abuse in Igumale. Older students experienced higher proportion (56.9%) of sexual child abuse. Majority of male students experienced sexual child abuse (56.6%) more than female students (50.9%). Parents with no formal education have the highest percentage of sexual child abuse of 63.3%. Age and gender are not significantly associated with the experience of sexual child abuse among secondary school students. However, parental education was significantly associated with the experience of sexual abuse. The authors recommended that there is need for health educating parents on the mitigation of child abuse. Training on child sexual abuse should be made public, so that both educated and non-educated parents will know how to guide their children to avoid being sexually abuse.