How Children Stop Adult Perpetrators From Unwanted Touching Within an Institutional Setting: Termination Patterns During Sexual Contact Stage.

Abstract

This qualitative study analyzes victims' narratives of male-on-male child molestation within the Boy Scouts of America. The focus of previous literature on sex crime victims mostly centered on how to avoid sex offenders based on the offenders' behaviors and effective victims' treatment plans to alleviate their posttrauma as a result of sexual abuse. Yet studies have not provided detailed descriptions of when and how to resist sexual advances to children when such incidents are in progress within youth-oriented institutions. Few have examined victim narratives to discover the dynamics of child molestation, such as physical and verbal interactions between the two parties while sexual touching is occurring. The author used victims' narratives to identify how boy victims responded to unwanted sexual advances by scout leaders within the Boy Scouts of America. Based on qualitative-oriented analysis, this study presents verbal and physical resisting patterns of male victims and the effectiveness of such actions in terminating sexual advances. The findings suggest practical and potential intervention strategies so children know how to stop adult perpetrators from developing unwanted touching within youth-centric institutions.