Child Sexual Abuse and Boundary Violating Behaviors in Youth Serving Organizations: National Prevalence and Distribution by Organizational Type

Abstract

Many youth serving organizations (YSOs) implement child sexual abuse (CSA) prevention strategies. We examined the potential impact of those strategies by retrospectively estimating the prevalence of CSA and boundary violating behaviors experienced in five broad organizational settings: organized sports, religious organizations, music or arts programs, K-12 schools, and the “Big 6 settings” (i.e., 4-H, Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, Boys and Girls Clubs of America, Boy Scouts of America, Girl Scouts of the USA, and the YMCA of the USA). We compared victimization rates between nationally representative cohorts of younger adults (age 18–22; N = 3174) and slightly older adults (age 32–36, N = 3237). Across all participants and settings, 3.75% (n = 363) experienced CSA in YSOs. Among survivors, younger adults reported experiencing a lower proportion of CSA within Big 6 settings than older adults (29.1% vs. 44.5%; p