Percentage of males who are sexual abusers?

by Peggy H
(Nova Scotia, Canada)

What would be the % of men in society that do abuse? For example, I was once told that 7 out of 10 men are sexual abusers. Is this statistic correct?

Thank you!
Peggy H

Reply from Darlene: Absolutely NOT CORRECT by any statistical data that I'm aware of! Read the rest of my answer below.

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Percentage of males who are sexual abusers?

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Jan 17, 2008
 Male sex offenders...
by: Anonymous

Allow me to clear up the statistic I believe you are referring to: A Canadian study (see my male sex offenders page on this site) reflected that 7 of 10 males who are sexual offenders were themselves victims of childhood sexual abuse.

Statistics show that 96% of perpetrators are male; but this is a definable stat since it's been determined that these particular males already perpetuated a sexual assault against at least one child. There is no way to know for sure what percentage of males in society sexually abuse, since child sexual abuse is one of the most under-reported crimes there is. But I, for one, have a whole lot more faith in the general male population than to believe that 70% of men are sexual abusers.

Darlene Barriere
Violence & Abuse Prevention Educator
Author: On My Own Terms, A Memoir
Jan 22, 2008
 Sexual abuse stats
by: Anonymous

Please mention to your readers that sexual assault statistics are probably the most UNRELIABLE of all crime statistics. Sex crime statistics suffer from contradictory and incomplete definitions, blatant biases, reverse-sexism, politically correct man-as-monster slandering, woman-as-saint pandering and a host of other issues that impede reliable reporting. For instance, female-male sex crimes are not even seen as sex crimes in some jurisdictions. In others the definitions rape have been 'raped' for perverted political power to everything remotely related to sex is considered rape. Laura Kipnis in the Female Thing (2006) did a good job showing how absurd feminism has been about rape fearmongering and rape reporting but she is also an apologist for 'romantic', or 'educative' rapes of boys by filthy older women so please take what she says with a grain of salt. In any case I believe your readers need to know that rape research and rape reporting are terribly unreliable, often politicized and rarely sex-neutral.

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