Preventing Child Sexual Abuse—The Prevention Project Dunkelfeld

Abstract

It is well established that childhood adversity, including sexual abuse, dramatically increases the risk for developing a wide range of psychiatric disorders and certain medical diseases later in life.1 Enduring effects of childhood abuse on the developing brain and its regulatory outflow systems, the autonomic, endocrine and immune systems, very likely to contribute to disease vulnerability.2 Furthermore, the prevalence of sexually offending against children is high and has developed into a global health issue. A review of 38 prevalence studies in 21 countries resulted in prevalence rates of recalled childhood sexual victimization of approximately 20% for women and 10% for men (eg, 3). Obviously official statistics account for only a fraction of all cases of child sexual abuse and the use of child abuse images, inappropriately called “child pornography offenses.” Those cases not reported to the authorities constitute the largest part of sexual offenses against children and are in German referred to as Dunkelfeld (literally “dark field”).