Abused to abuser: antecedents of socially deviant behaviors

Abstract

The authors interviewed 34 young people who had been sexually abused as children 6 or 8 years after the abuse had occurred and compared them with 34 control subjects who had not been abused. They also compared subjects who had been abused for less than 1 year with those who had been abused for more than 1 year. The findings suggest a link between childhood sexual abuse and later drug abuse juvenile delinquency, and criminal behavior. The authors explore the effects of pretrauma factors of previous childhood physical abuse and parental modeling of aggression and the postdisclosure factors of social and family blaming.