Psycho-social sufferings and sexual difficulties among female survivors of child sexual abuse in Pakistan.

Background: Child sexual abuse is a universal social challenge and the victims of childhood sexual abuse suffer a range of short and long term psychological, social, behavioral and physical problems that vary in different cultures. The study was carried out to explore the perceived impacts of childhood sexual abuse in Pakistan, because no such study was conducted in Pakistan earlier.

Methods: Interpretative phenomenological analysis was used to analyze the data. A snowball sampling technique was used to approach the sample of current study. The sample of the study comprised ten female survivors of childhood sexual abuse of age ranged between 18 and 22 years (M_age= 20.10 years) with the education ranging from matric to BSc. Out of these participants, four were married and six were unmarried and belonged to different cities of Punjab, Pakistan. Data were collected via a semi-structured interview schedule and all interviews were verbatim transcribed.

Results: A rigorous iterative process of data analysis resulted in three super-ordinate themes and ten sub-ordinate themes: Experiencing Abuse (emotional trauma, and physical distress), Psycho-social Distress (low self-esteem, negative self-concept, psychological pain, social suffering, and retaliation vs. forgiveness), and Sexual Difficulties (passive role, emotionally aloof, aversion from hetero-sexuality and avoidance).

Conclusion: It was concluded that childhood sexual abuse is an intense experience that has short- and long-term negative impacts on the lives of female survivors and engulfs their lives as a whole. The study has implications for psychiatrists, psychologists, family counselors, social scientists, educationists, and parents.