Original Research Article

Knowledge and Perception of Mothers towards Child Sexual Abuse

Shabana Shabbir^*, Muhammad Hussain, Muhammad Afzal, Syed Gilani

Lahore School of Nursing, The university of Lahore, Lahore, Pakistan

^*Corresponding Author's E-mail: shabanashabbir642@gmail.com

Received: 16 June 2022  I  Accepted: 21 July 2022  I  Published: 27 July 2022  I  Article ID: MRJMMS22001
Copyright © 2022 Author(s) retain the copyright of this article.
This article is published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0.

Abstract

Child sexual abuse is an incident that affects a child vigorously, taking advantage of victims who are unable to give their consent. In this action, the abuser violates the rules or social prohibitions of society. Child violence is one of the most significant social issues impacting children. Child abuse is described as the expected injury to the child. It has been a matter of competent communal concern for decades. Physical and sexual acts were the most widely recognized abuses of the early period. Child sexual abuse (CSA) is a universal communal criminal. In this act there is no involvement of a child or the child are unable to give consent about this act as they do not understand the maltreatment that they are facing at some instant. According to World Health Organization, below the age of 18 years 150 million girls and 73 million boys faced sexual violence during their life. The ratio of violence is higher among girls than boys. Incidence is higher among women than among male children. This study indicates 36% female and 29% males have been sexually abused in their childhood. Mothers play a vital role in the success of the sensitivity directive in their children, especially in younger ages. Nearly 50 percent of mothers of sexually abused children claim that they have been sexually maltreated as children. The purpose of the research is to evaluate the mother's awareness and understanding of child sexual exploitation. Assess mothers' awareness and understanding of child sexual exploitation. Finding a connection between mothers' awareness and the selected baseline results. The quantitative descriptive cross-sectional research design is used to perform this study. Questionnaire was used to collect the data. The questionnaires were administered by using convenient sampling. Data were statistically analyzed by descriptive criteria on SPSS version 21 and inferential statistics. The results showed that mothers have adequate knowledge about child sexual abuse (CSA). The recent study showed that mostly mothers have adequate awareness about consequences of child sexual abuse and they stated that CSA cause depression problems that affect academic performance and violent actions. The research shows that mostly mothers didn’t know about the laws for child protection and about the social organization serving for abused children. Explanation for such lack of law awareness is limited programs that give awareness about CSA.

Keywords: Knowledge, perception, mothers, child, and sexual abuse.