Prevalence and Characteristics of Child Sexual Abuse in Slovenia

Abstract

Although childhood sexual abuse (CSA) remains a problem of international proportion with numerous, severe and long-lasting consequences, there is a lack of systematic data in Slovenia on the prevalence of the problem and its specificities. The present analysis represents the first comprehensive attempt to determine the prevalence of CSA in Slovenia, including individual characteristics of abuse (type, recurrence, gender of victim, perpetrator(s), age at the time of abuse, socio-economic background of victims, etc.). The data are from the 2019 Slovenian study on Adverse Childhood Experiences, and the results show that in Slovenia, 9.5% of women and 2.6% of men have experienced at least one type of sexual abuse by a person at least five years older than them by the age of 18. For women, lower socioeconomic status in childhood is associated with a higher risk of CSA, and for men, it is belonging to an ethnic minority and living in a smaller town. Most perpetrators of female victims come from the within the family; for men, the proportion of perpetrators from the neighbourhood is particularly high.