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Sexually Abused Boys Have Persistent Somatic, Psychological Problems

Originally published by Reuters Health, March 25, 2002

LONDON (Reuters Health) — Boys who were victims of sexual abuse at a school in the UK did not seem to experience an excess of health problems, but those they did have were likely to continue for longer than a year after the abuse was stopped and the perpetrator jailed.

Dr. Alison Maddocks, from the Swansea NHS Trust, UK, and colleagues collected data on 93 boys who were molested by a primary school teacher and 93 matched controls. The researchers reviewed the medical records of the abused boys 6 years after they were abused, according to the report in the Archives of Disease in Childhood for March.

Most of the boy were aged 8 to 10 years at the time of the abuse. Although both groups of subjects had a similar number and frequency of psychological and somatic problems, the sexually abused boys were more likely to have symptoms that lasted for more than a year (31 cases versus 10 controls), Dr. Maddocks’s team found.

Dr. Maddocks and colleagues note that this pattern “has persisted since our initial study was undertaken.”