A global perspective on child sexual abuse: Meta-analysis of prevalence around the world

Our comprehensive meta-analysis combined prevalence figures of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) reported in 217 publications published between 1980 and 2008, including 331 independent samples with a total of 9,911,748 participants. The overall estimated CSA prevalence was 127/1000 in self-report studies and 4/1000 in informant studies. Self-reported CSA was more common among female (180/1000) than among male participants (76/1000). Lowest rates for both girls (113/1000) and boys (41/1000) were found in Asia, and highest rates were found for girls in Australia (215/1000) and for boys in Africa (193/1000). The results of our meta-analysis confirm that CSA is a global problem of considerable extent, but also show that methodological issues dras-tically influence the self-reported prevalence of CSA. Keywords child sexual abuse, epidemiology, gender/sex differences, community samples, adult retrospective reports, cultural/ethnic issues There is no question about the negative effects of child sexual abuse (CSA) on children’s psychological well-being and their development into adulthood. CSA is associated with a variety of problems in the short and the long term for both male an