There is a misconception that sexual abuse does not happen to young children. However the research report of BTS showed at the age profile of the children whose cases were discussed in area found that the youngest was under 2 years of age.

The findings in relation to the age of the child at the time of abuse supports the findings of an earlier study done by BTS in 1997.

Of the 117 case histories collected during the awareness raising sessions, 26 have been selected as being the most authentic as well as being illustrative of the points being made during the awareness raising sessions. The data for the children in the specially selected group of case studies is as follows.

The children represented in these figures come from both rural (10) and urban (16) environments. Since the cases were detected in an urban setting, it is not surprising that the figures for urban are higher.

One of the greatest difficulties is that it is impossible to recognise a perpetrator of child sexual abuse. There is no sign that would predict such behaviour. Such people look for opportunities and even make possibilities so that they can exploit the vulnerable. The relationship of the perpetrator to the child is shown below both for the total group and for the selected group of case studies.

From the research, it was also noted that about 10% of the perpetrators are children themselves.