Japanese Childhood Victims of Sexual Abuse and their Social Perceptions: Comparisons with Children in Germany, Greece and the USA

Abstract

Empirical Japanese studies of childhood sexual abuse are rare. The few studies that do exist are mostly case studies involving low numbers of respondents. These are usually highly subjective, mostly legal or psychiatric in orientation and cannot be generalized to the Japanese population. In Japan this topic is often avoided as unpleasant; consequently, it is not discussed in conversation and not investigated in research. However, this subject is a compelling social problem that merits the attention of social scientists. The original concept for this study was a product of Gerd F. Kirchhoff and Claudia Kirchhoff (1976) who studied hidden sexual victimization in a German and a US sample in 1974/5. About 20 years later, Gerd Kirchhoff attempted to coordinate a much expanded comparative follow-up study in eight countries: Germany, USA, South Africa, Brazil, Mexico, Hungary, Poland, and Japan. However, data were generated from only half the countries: Germany, USA, Greece and Japan. This study is part of that follow-up study and used the same questionnaire (translated into Japanese) as was originally devised in Germany and later refined by Paul Friday (in English) for the American study. A representative sample of 665 Japanese college students were asked to anonymously evaluate their childhood sexual activities using the large 41-question instrument. The findings suggested a significant distortion of social perceptions by victims of sexual abuse, especially victims of exhibitionism, concerning their estimation of similar experiences of like-gender and like-aged children. One of the surprising findings was the low incidence of these experiences in Japan compared to some of the other countries surveyed earlier. It is clear that significant long-term effects on these victims were evident as a result of their victimizations.