A question of resilience

In 1998, Bruce Rind, Robert Bauserman and Philip Tromovitch published an article in Psychological Bulletin, a journal of the American Psychological Association, analyzing 59 studies of the long-term effects of sexual abuse and adult-child sexual contact on college students.

"At the time, the starting hypothesis in the field was that child sexual abuse, broadly defined, was extremely harmful in all cases," Rind says. "Our idea was to take this very strong statement and to be statistically and methodologically rigorous about testing it." The Rind paper found only a marginal difference between the psychological well-being of college students who'd been "sexually abused" and those who hadn't. But there was a catch: Some of the studies being analyzed defined sexual abuse broadly to include exhibitionism and consensual contact between teenagers and adults. When abuse was limited to lack of consent, force or incest, its deleterious effects were more pronounced. So Rind and his co-authors recommended narrowing the definition of abuse.

source: Article 'A Question of Resilience' by Emily Bazelon; shedit.us.publicus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060430/ZNYT04/604300891/-1/HEALTHMATTERS; HerardTribune.com; 30 April 2006