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The Risky Business of Back to School
Kids are getting the 3 R’s but are they getting sex ed that’s sensitive and relevant to them?
Up until the early 1980’s, child sexual abuse was thought of as rare. Like domestic violence, child sexual abuse was not seen as the public health issue it is today. The common thinking was what happens in a family stays in a family. Yet in 1987, the psychiatrist named Penelope Trickett and a psychologist, Frank Putnam, began what was to become a 30+ year study. Both suspected that child sexual abuse was more common than anyone thought. They knew that there was not a lot of research about how sexual abuse affects children long-term. Trickett and Putnam decided to work together to consider how child sexual abuse affects health over a lifetime. Their work became known as The Family Growth and Development Study (FGDS).
With the FGDS, Trickett & Putnam were nearly 10 years ahead of the ACE study, the landmark study on how child maltreatment and neglect affects health and wellness.
The FGDS researchers took an interesting approach. They worked with child protective services to identify girls who were sexually abused but they also recruited a comparison group. The comparison girls were identical to the sexually abused girls in statistically significant ways (race, age range, SES…
