Abstract
The widespread reports of school adolescents being victimized by sexual harassment have raised concerns towards understanding how adolescents cope with such incidents. This study assessed the influence of perpetrator identity on the likelihood of schoolgirls employing certain sexual harassment coping strategies. A cross-sectional descriptive survey design was utilized in this study. The target population constituted of adolescent ordinary level secondary schoolgirls in Mbulu Town Council and the sample size was 400 girls. The sampling procedure was a two stages cluster sampling. The data were collected using a questionnaire and analyzed by binary logistic regression using the statistical package for social science software (SPSS). Perpetrator identities were found to influence coping strategies adopted by schoolgirls. Senior students revealed an association with normalization coping strategy while strangers were associated with engagement coping strategy. Classmates, teachers, senior students and strangers were associated with detachment coping strategy, whereas non-teaching staff was associated with help-seeking coping strategy. It is recommended that adolescents should be provided with sexuality education so as to mitigate the tendency of normalizing harassment in peer relationships. Also, further interventions should focus on emphasizing the usage of help seeking strategy rather than detachment. Moreover, boarding schools could be a potential solution for preventing encounters with strangers to and from school.
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