Child Sexual Abuse Presenting to Police Centers in Khartoum-Sudan; Pattern and Victim Associated Factors

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Recently, the issue of Child sexual abuse (CSA) in Sudan started to become public, following recurrent accidents of severe injuries and deaths. A cross sectional, prospective survey including 282 sexually abused children has been conducted from 1/3 to 30/6/2012. The aim was to identify patterns of child sexual abuse in Khartoum-Sudan in addition to pre abuse, peri abuse and post abuse factors that put the children at a risk of abuse. The survey was conducted through a questionnaire which was analyzed within SPSS 16. Pattern of child sexual abuse was found to be (92.6) through Contact), mainly sexual intercourse (60.2%). Offenders were extra familial figure (88.3%), mainly neighbors (44.0%) and people in the surrounding (17.4%). Only 14.2% were total strangers. (11.7%) abused by an intra familial figure, and (3.6%) by incest. Repeated sexual abuse was (18.1%) and significantly linked to females and older children and significant when living with stepfather, stepmothers and when offender used persuasion to commit the abuse. The most targeted age group was from 5-10 years (45.4%). Most of the abuses took place in areas significantly known to child and family and significantly related to offenders (44.1%) and the family (23.8%). Associated family factors to Child Sexual abuse were Low income, Crowdedness, restricted values, absence of sexual education and parent’s low education. Disclosure rate was (61.0%) mainly to parent. Females and older children were significantly less disclosing. Timing of disclosure was immediately (58.2%). Significant causes of delay were fears of parent’s reaction and feeling of guilt, shame, love, confusion, fear, responsibility, and young age, mother use of corporal punishment and offender use of persuasion. Parent’s reaction was mainly supportive and non-offending (89.4%). Negative parental reaction was significantly associated to females and older children. Areas of difference from international studies were; high rates of penetrative sexual abuse (SA), low rate of interfamilial SA, high rates of immediate disclosure, no significant gender differences between victims. Crowdedness and low income were significantly associated with CSA. For prevention and management; Child protection programs and more wide scale research are needed.