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These questions are not academic. What people think sexual abuse is and how seriously the take it affects how they behave. [...]
[...] One thing that was interesting was that they tended to see most of the vignettes we gave them as very sexually abusive. Sixty percent of all ratings were either 8, 9, or 10. The mean score for all vignettes was 7.5. Also interestingly, men and women did not rate vignettes the same way. Women consistently gave higher ratings to vignettes than men did. The mean for women was 7.66 while for men it was 7.29. [...]
The first thing we wanted to know was which of the various variables was most important to people in determining the seriousness of sexual abuse. [...]
Clearly the two most important variables in determining a respondents' judgment of abusiveness were the ages of the perpetrator and the type of act committed. While other variables contributed to people's definitions of sexual abuse, their influence was considerably smaller. [...] This means that once people knew that the perpetrator was an adult, they were pretty certain to rate is as "definitely sexual abuse," no matter what the other variables were. I also means that once they knew the act involved was intercourse or attempted intercourse the same held true. On the other hand, if the perpetrator was another child, or if the act was "calling a child a whore" they were almost just as certain to rate a vignette less abusive.
Let us look specifically at all the categories in each variable.
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[...] It is quite evident that people take a child's behavior into account in assessing the degree af abuse. When a child objects strenuously, respondents rated the vignette significantly higher than even in a situation where the child acts in passive compliance. When a child collaborates to any extend, respondents rate the situation as less abusive. Respondents did not accept the notion that all sexual exploitation of a child is equally abusive regardless of the child's role.
[...] We can see that consent conditions are taken into account by respondents for even the youngest, the most naive, and presumably least able to consent group. That is, for even the children 0-6, a situation where a child reacts passively is rated as less abusive than a situation where a child "objects strenuously". [...] Consent conditions make more of a difference for the older group than for the younger group [...]. This result suggests that people feel that younger children are somewhat less capable of true consent than older ones.
Figure 8-3 shows an interesting public perception about sexual abuse at different ages. People considered vignettes less abusive when they involved either very young victims or adolescent victims. In the case of very young victims, people probably saw them as anive about sex and therefore less tainted and abused by being involved in sexual activity with an older person. In the case of adolescents, they were probably viewed as quasi-adults and therefore less abused by sexual activity with adults.
People were most willing to apply the term abuse to children in preadolescence and early adolescence, because this is an age where children are old enough to be aware of sexual meanings but too young, in respondents' judgment, to be sexually involved. [...]