Letters
Everybody's doing it
Sir: From a confidential survey of over 3,000 women conducted this year in England by Dr Tony Baker, a member of the British Association for the Study of Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect, the estimate of the number of girls who suffer sexual abuse by a man in a position of trust and authority over her, e.g. father, grandfather, stepfather, teacher etc., is 20 per cent (Andrew Brown, 23 July). Other recent surveys here and in other countries give the same figure, as do Rape Crisis Centres who receive calls from women in their thirties, forties and fifties who suffered incestuous abuse as children and never before told anyone. And clearly many women never have and never will tell anyone even in a confidential survey. It's not something to brag about.
The BASPCAN survey gives the average age of girls when first abused as ten years, though six years old, five, even ten months, is not unknown. The abuse often continues for years. It occurs in all socio-economic groups. Not long ago, in the 1950s, it was firmly held by the medical profession that there was a strain of VD peculiar to children which they really did pick up from towels or lavatory seats. This is now recognised to have been wishful thinking. The children were, and are, infected by their nearest and dearest.
R. V. St John
24 Blackheath Rise, London SEI3
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