Addressing the Lifelong Impact of Child Sexual Abuse

Name: Institutional Affiliations: Date: Why Child Sexual Abuse is a Problem Child sexual abuse proves a significant health problem encountered by many children worldwide, as argued by Bustamante et al. (2019) and Walsh et al. (2019). Child sexual abuse has lifetime implications on the child’s well-being which makes it a controversial issue that stirs hot debates worldwide. It is an abuse that leaves the victim with physical, mental, and psychological problems though preventable, by considering the suitable measures that define it as an issue of relevance to analyze and elaborate. Child sexual abuse statistics indicate that 1 out of 4 girls and 1 in 13 boys experience child sexual abuse in their life (Bustamante et al., 2019). Unfortunately, over 90% of child sexual abuse becomes perpetrated by a person well known to the child or the family, which defines this abuse's evilness. America is among the nations where child sexual abuse is defined as underreported though it amounts to $billions of economic burden, impacting this nation’s economic development adversely. Among the significant physical health implications of child sexual abuse on the child's life are STDs and STIs, early and unwanted pregnancies. Other physical health effects include physical injuries, chronic health conditions such as heart diseases, obesity and cancer later in life, while severe cases lead to death. Depression and posttraumatic stress disorder serve as the significant mental health effects of CSA on victims. Substance use like opioids, risky sexual behaviors like sex with multiple partners and unprotected sex, and increases risk of suicide or suicide attempts prove potential behavioral consequences of CSA. Esteem issues, negative attitude and fears towards the opposite gender, increased risk of sexual victimization in adulthood, and non-sexual intimate partner violence is among the psychological torture that CSA exposes to children in their lifetime. Besides CSA causing adverse effects on child victims, families also endure stress associated with the same abuse. For instance, families experience financial strain trying to support the victim to overcome their experience through counseling and medical attention. Families also encounter shame which hinders transparency in discussing the abuse experience inhibiting the recovery of the victim. The parent's relationship with the abused child is always at risk as children tend to see their parents from an angle of the gender that sexually abused them, which also derails the recovery process. Parents also experience mental health problems like depression, stress among other psychologically related traumas, upon discoveries of their child’s CSA cases. Child sexual abuse, therefore, remains a significant problem whose relevance to debate and formulate lifetime remedies cannot be ignored. Summaries of the Prevention/Intervention programs “I have the right to feel safe: Evaluation of a school-based child sexual abuse prevention program in Ecuador” is a Child sexual program developed for children by Bustamante et al. (2019). These authors argue that an effective prevention program aims at providing children with strategies to protect themselves against child sexual abuse from the perpetrators. For this reason, the named prevention program aimed at analyzi