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06-01-2010

Sexual abuse in the infancy and its repercussions during adulthood.

About 23 % of the girls and 15 % of boys suffer at present sexual abuse in Spain. This are the numbers showed by the statistics by the Prof. Félix López Sánchez, Cathedratic in the Psychology of Sexuality at Salamanca University, which emphasizes the real magnitude of a problem often hidden.

To centre with rigor a topic of such importance, it is convenient that we begin for establishing what we understand for sexual abuse. For it, we will continue the words of writer Joan Muntané, author of the book When we were dead. Sexual abuses in the infancy, who defines sexual abuse as " any activity, with physical contact or without it, where the aggressor or aggressors, in general adults, look for his sexual gratification at the cost of the victim, generally minor, and in that there is not an explicit assent, well be for the age or other factors than they limit his capacity of decision, and with independence of the consequences that derive from the act ".

To the information seen previously, applicable to the diverse autonomous regions of the State, we must adds a new one, that aggraviates the situation, which is that 60 % of this minors do not receive any type of help.

This is basically motivated by two causes. Firstly, the scarcity of privet and public resources for its treatment; and, in secondly, the secrecy that it wraps sexual abuses that, still at present, are lived socially as an unspeakable taboo that leaves the victims in the most absolute defenselessness and, in not few occasions, loaded with guilt and fear.

This way, a high percentage of people that have suffered sexual abuse during infancy turn out to be exposed to an adult life stigmatized and sowed with problems that materialises in depression, anxiety, low self-steem, latineg disorders, addictions, isolation and margination, hostility towards people with the same gender as the aggressor ... and in 58 % of the cases, with attempts of suicide - information statistics by FOROGAM (Forum of Groups of Mutual Help for victims of sexual abuses in the infancy)-. In addiction, people who have endured this situation are predisposed to suffer new abuses by his/her partner or others, to being an object of sexual exploit, and to show problems related to the sexuality such as difficulty relaxing, anorgasmia or promiscuousness.

During a time it was thought that the sexual abuses happened only in marginated, low or understructured social class. Nevertheless, all the studies made up to date show this is not so. Sexual abuse take place in any social stratum, and far from what is believed it takes place within the familiar nucleus. This worseus not only a possible treatment, but a recognition to be a victim of abuses, since deciding to reveal it supposes facing a whole family circle, that in the majority of occasions, far from supporting and understanding the victim, they become the main enemy.

Xabier Bañuelos