A study of sexually abusive tendency: the role of childhood sexual abuse experiences and religiosity

• Main Authors: Lee, Kezee, Ng, Yee Fong
• Format: Final Year Project / Dissertation / Thesis
• Published: 2019
• Subjects: BF Psychology
• Online Access: http://eprints.utar.edu.my/3225/1/fyp_PY_2019_LK_%2D_1602139.pdf; http://eprints.utar.edu.my/3225/

One of the global issues that has yet to be overcome is child sexual abuse (CSA), a sensitive subject to be discussed in Malaysia that would bring several negative impacts to the child. Victims might become sexual abuser by developing cognitive distortions after being sexually abused. In another side, religious always provides people with a sense of forgiveness, love and altruism, hence, the interacting effect of intrinsic religiosity and sexual abuse experiences in child abuser’s cognitive distortion were worth to discuss. This quantitative research aims to investigate the sexual abuse experiences (sexual contact, coercion, attempted rape, and rape) in child abuser’s cognitive distortion and how religiosity plays a role of moderator on these two variables by using self-administered survey questionnaire. By using stratification double sampling, a total of 224 incarcerated adolescents participated in the study and 43.7% reported with child sexual abuse experiences were used for further analysis. The results of one-way ANOVA indicated that no significant difference in cognitive distortion for the sexual abuse experiences groups. Meanwhile, the finding of the two-way ANOVA revealed insignificant interacting effect of religiosity and sexual abuse experiences in child abuser’s cognitive distortion. Overall, this study allows people to promote awareness regarding CSA. Information and knowledge should be delivered to adults and children in case they face these issues and knowing how to response and react. Related programmes could put an effort in the other factors rather than religiosity without categorizing victims into groups to diminish or prevent the negative impacts of traumatic experiences.