The 2016 Optimus study was the first national prevalence survey on the sexual victimisation of children in South Africa. The different methods of data collection used in the study provided a range of estimates of the prevalence of sexual victimisation nationally: more than a quarter (26%) of adolescents aged 15 - 17 years in the household survey reported experiencing some form of sexual victimisation in their lifetime, while 35.4% of young people interviewed at schools reported some form of sexual abuse.
Previous community-based studies have tended to note gender differences in the prevalence of sexual victimisation. For example, a retrospective community-based survey in the Eastern Cape asked young adults about their experience of sexual violence before the age of 18 and found that 38% of young women and 17% of young men reported sexual abuse.1 A recent community-based study in Mpumalanga and the Western Cape also found that girls were more likely than boys to report sexual harassment, contact sexual abuse and rape.2 The 2016 Optimus study did not find marked differences in the overall reporting of sexual abuse amongst adolescents (as shown in the table above), but the researchers argue that "the findings from this national prevalence study indicate that boys and girls are equally vulnerable to some form of sexual abuse over the course of their lifetimes, although those forms of sexual abuse tend to be different for boys and girls, with girls more likely to experience 'contact sexual abuse' than boys, who report higher levels of 'exposure' and non-contact forms of sexual abuse".2 They also found that boys are particularly unlikely to confide in others or report incidents of sexual victimisation, and they argue for the inclusion of boys in both prevention and intervention.
Comparisons of prevalence rates of sexual abuse across contexts are notoriously difficult given the variations in definitions and measurement. A point to note about the broad definition adopted in the Optimus study is that it includes sexual experiences with someone aged 18 years or older in the definition of sexual abuse. However in some cases this may be consensual and where the age gap is minimal, it can be argued that such instances do not constitute victimisation.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________
1 Jewkes R, Dunkle K, Nduna M, Jama N, Puren A (2010) Associations between childhood adversity and depression, substance abuse and HIV and HSV2 incident infections in rural South African youth. Child Abuse & Neglect, 34(11): 833-841.
2 Meinck F, Cluver LD, Boyes ME & Loening-Voysey H (2016) Physical, emotional and sexual adolescent abuse victimisation in South Africa: prevalence, incidence, perpetrators and locations. J Epidemiol Community Health, 70:910-916.