More than 1 in 10 children globally report experiencing sexual harassment, violence
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Key takeaways:
- Attempted or completed sexual intercourse was reported by 7.8% of children in the United States.
- More studies are needed on sexual violence against boys and in digital spaces, researchers argued.
More than one in 10 children worldwide reported experiencing sexual violence, according to a large meta-analysis published in JAMA Pediatrics.
“Despite the importance of accurate estimates, current global figures on sexual violence against children are limited,” Antonio Piolanti, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Klagenfurt’s Institute of Psychology in Klagenfurt, Austria, and colleagues wrote. “The aim of this study was to conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis of national population-based studies to estimate the global and regional prevalence rates of lifetime and past-year sexual violence against children.”
Piolanti and colleagues analyzed 164 studies that included 958,182 children (58.2% girls; mean ages, 10.5-19.4 years) in 80 countries. Most of the studies (68.5%) were published after 2013. Nearly half of them (49.7%) reported data from Africa, 17% from North America, 17% from Asia and 10.9% from Europe. Nine studies (5.4%) reported data from South America, and one (0.6%) reported data from Oceania. There were 21 studies (12.7%) from the United States.
Globally, 11.4% (95% CI, 8.5%-15.1%) of children reported experiencing sexual harassment, 8.7% (95% CI, 4.7%-15.5%) reported contact sexual violence, which involved being touched or being forced to touch the perpetrator, and 6.1% (95% CI, 5.1%-7.3%) reported experiencing forced sexual intercourse, according to Piolanti and colleagues.
Compared with boys, girls reported higher rates of sexual harassment (8%; 95% CI, 5.9%-10.8%; vs. 14.1%; 10.4%-18.8%) and forced sexual intercourse over their lifetime (3.3%; 95% CI, 2.5%-4.3%; vs. 6.8%; 95% CI, 6.1%-7.6%). In contrast, boys reported higher rates of contact sexual violence than girls (6.3%; 95% CI, 4.1%-9.6%; vs. 5.3%; 95% CI, 1.3%-19%).
The Democratic Republic of the Congo had the highest rates of completed or attempted forced sexual intercourse among girls (18.2%; 95% CI, 14.3%-22.8%), the researchers noted. The highest prevalence among boys was reported in China (9.4%; 95% CI, 0.7%-61.6%). The country with the highest rates of completed or attempted sexual intercourse among girls and boys was Uganda (11.5%; 95% CI, 8%-16.3%), according to Piolanti and colleagues.
In the U.S., 7.8% (95% CI, 7.4%-8.3%) of children experienced attempted or completed forced sexual intercourse, the authors reported. The prevalence among girls was more than double the rate among boys (10.6%; 95% CI, 9.7%-11.5% vs. 4.2%; 95% CI, 3.7%-4.7%, respectively).
According to the researchers, study design affected prevalence rates. School-based surveys and self-completed questionnaires were associated with higher prevalence compared with household surveys and interviews. Additionally, sexual violence prevalence was higher in studies focusing on children aged 16 years and older vs. studies that included younger children.
“The problem is clearly not just a U.S. problem or a high-income country problem, but manifests in most of the populations studied,” David Finkelhor, PhD, director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center at University of New Hampshire, wrote in a related editorial. “It does not appear that there is a simple association between country rates and their levels of education or affluence.”
Finkelhor offered a list of recommendations for next steps in this research, including evaluating how questionnaire design affects disclosure rates, more studies about sexual violence against boys, and adding questions about sexual violence in digital spaces.
He also pointed out that more research should investigate the perpetrators of sexual violence.
“Perpetrators implied in these statistics are much too often typified as primarily adult predators harming children,” Finkelhor wrote. He quoted a study from 2023 that reported that 60% of perpetrators of sexual violence against children are other youth, not adults.
“We need meta-analyses to aggregate and report the findings on rates of youth perpetrators compared with adult perpetrators, as well as disaggregation of other perpetrator categories, like dating partners or family members,” he wrote.
References:
- Piolanti A, et al. JAMA Pediatr. 2025;doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2024.5326.
- Finkelhor D. JAMA Pediatr. 2025;doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2024.5333.
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