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This thesis focuses on disclosure of sexual abuse by men who were sexually abused either as children or adolescents. The research questions that it set out to answer were 'why and how do males in Australia disclose to another person that they have been sexually abused?' Aims were to understand disclosure from the perspective of male survivors in Australia, identify the factors that inhibit, trigger and facilitate disclosure, and develop a theory of disclosure reflecting the processes involved.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Delaware, 2005. / Principal faculty advisor: Ruth E. Fleury-Steiner, Dept. of Individual & Family Studies. Includes bibliographical references.

This creative thesis illustrates how the writer initiated a ‘call-and-response’ dialogue as a healing strategy to heal her relationship with her non-abusive biological father after revealing to him that her stepfather had sexually abused her from ages 14 to 22. This memoir both contributes to the field of Women’s Studies and provides an example that other sexual abuse survivors can follow to heal their intimate relationships.

Sexual abuse is defined as any act which forces or coerces a child into engaging in non-consensual sexual activities that they may not understand. As child sexual abuse is recognized as a mental health and public health concern, increased research efforts have been directed towards identifying the physical, emotional, and cognitive effects of child sexual abuse. The majority of such research uses adult survivors of child sexual abuse and is quantitative, retrospective, and correlational in design. Qualitative approaches with adults are few; thus far, descriptive research with children is largely limited to forensic applications. Pargament (1997) proposes the existence of religious coping, or the introduction of the sacred in an individual’s search for significance in times of stress. Initial research efforts have begun to delineate the positive and negative religious coping strategies used within various adult populations. The purpose of the present investigation is to gain an experiential understanding of religious coping from the perspective of adolescent girls who have experienced sexual abuse. Open-ended interviews and phenomenological analysis with each of the 6 participants revealed the complexity present in their experience of religious coping. The presence of a highly relationship-based experience of religious coping is discussed and its implications for the assessment and treatment of complex posttraumatic stress disorder are explored. Finally, implications of the present investigation for the adolescent participants and members of spiritual communities are delineated.

Title from title page of PDF (University of Missouri--St. Louis, viewed March 8, 2010). Includes bibliographical references (p. 56-64).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--West Virginia University, 2003. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains viii, 132 p. Vita. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 97-107).

Research supports a link between poor body esteem, depression, and sexual dysfunction among childhood sexual abuse (CSA) survivors. Though the interplay of these factors also impacts nonabused women, it is possible that the impact is differentially affects these populations. The present study examined the degree to which body esteem may act as psychological mechanism through which CSA impacts adult sexuality, while controlling for the effects of depression – a problem that affects many abuse survivors. Data were collected from 108 women, 73 of who reported CSA. Women with CSA reported poorer body esteem, lower sexual functioning, less sexual satisfaction, and higher depression than women without CSA. Multivariate regression analysis revealed that body esteem significantly predicted sexual functioning and sexual satisfaction and there were significant interactions between body esteem and abuse history, and among body esteem and marital status. Depressive symptom severity was not a moderator in the relationship between body esteem and sexual functioning-satisfaction. These findings suggest that treatments for CSA survivors with sexual difficulties might benefit from addressing body esteem concerns. / text

published_or_final_version / Sociology / Master / Master of Social Sciences