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Many new surveys have been developed to assess the prevalence of online sexual abuse. An important type of question asked in many of these surveys is about online sexual solicitation. However, not all sexual solicitations of children necessarily qualify as sexual abuse as it has conventionally been defined. Sexual solicitations from other same age youth may be legal and nonabusive. Solicitations of youth above the age of consent by adults may also be legal. At the same time, many true online sex offenses may not be identified with questions about solicitation wanted or unwanted. This article reviewed 25 online sexual abuse survey reports. It also examined episodes and narratives from the U.S. National Technology Facilitated Abuse (TFA) survey, which asked about online solicitation and other online sexual offenses. Among the surveys reviewed, 9 of 25 elicited and counted online sexual solicitation from adults only, but the rest counted other youth solicitors as well as adults. Eight of 25 asked about only "unwanted" solicitations, but the rest had no such qualification, possibly including solicitations with positive or neutral reactions. Analysis of the TFA survey showed that in over half of solicitation episodes, the recipients did not actually know the age or identity of the solicitor. Very large differences in prevalence rates can occur depending on what types of solicitation are counted and how missing information is classified. Recommendations are made about classifying and reporting on findings about online solicitation., Competing Interests: Declaration of Conflicting InterestsThe author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

This study looked at experiences of help-seeking from websites and police following an episode of technology-facilitated abuse. It used data from a nationally representative online panel of adults aged 18 to 28, sampled from Ipsos Knowledge Panel. A total of 1,952 unique victimization episodes from childhood and adulthood were identified and used in analyses. Participants were asked about whether they experienced 11 different types of technology-facilitated abuse (TFA), whether the incident was reported to the website or police, barriers to reporting, and features of the website's or law enforcement's response. Other follow-up information included victim gender, age, relationship to the perpetrator, and negative emotional impact (NEI) associated with the incident. Results found very low rates of reporting to both websites (7.3%) and law enforcement (4.8%). Image-based offenses had higher rates of reporting. A greater NEI significantly increased the odds of reporting to each source. Participants were largely unsatisfied with response from websites and police. Only 42.2% said the website did something helpful and only 29.8% found police helpful. Our findings suggest a need for major improvements in how websites and law enforcement respond to victims of technology-facilitated offenses. They need to have more helpful information and more ways of offering support. Websites need more specifics about the types of violations that warrant reporting, clearer signposts, and encouragement about how to get help and a better publicized commitment to a rapid and serious review. Law enforcement needs more education and training to avoid dismissive and judgmental reactions and to ensure sympathetic and respectful responses.

There is a current public health emphasis on finding strategies for reducing the risks associated with children's gun violence exposure. This article examines the impact of seeing and hearing gun violence on youth of different ages and living in urban and nonurban areas. Participants were 630 youth, aged 2 to 17. Youth, ages 10 to 17, completed a self-report survey, and caregivers of young children, ages 2 to 9, completed the survey as a proxy for that child. Participants resided in Boston, MA; Philadelphia, PA; and rural areas of eastern TN. Participants were recruited through a variety of techniques including pediatric clinics, housing authorities, youth-serving agencies, festivals, word of mouth, and local e-mail lists for classified advertisements. Data were collected between October 2017 and April 2018 and analyzed in 2019. In total, 41% of youth in this study reported ever seeing or hearing gun violence; 32% had such an experience in the past year. Among exposed youth, 50% took protective action to keep themselves safe, and 58% reported being very or extremely afraid, sad, or upset as a result of the indirect gun violence. More youth living in urban compared with nonurban areas took some protective action. Females and younger children had increased odds of experiencing high fear as a result of the violence. Current gun violence prevention has typically targeted adolescents; however, current findings suggest the need to focus on younger children as well, including the distress resulting from indirect exposure to gun violence.

This study examines the lifetime prevalence and distribution of family/friend homicide exposure among children and adolescents age 2 to 17 in the United States, and assesses the impact of family/friend homicide on emotional and behavioral outcomes, while controlling for potential co-occurring factors. Data were collected by telephone about the experiences of youth in 2008, 2011, or 2014, as part of the National Surveys of Children's Exposure to Violence (NatSCEV). Analyses are based on a pooled sample ( n =11,771) from these three surveys. Approximately 8% of all children and youth ages 2 to 17 were exposed to a family/friend homicide. Older adolescents, Black youth, those living in single parent and nonparent family households, those from lower socioeconomic status households, and youth living in large cities were overrepresented among youth experiencing family or friend homicide. Exposed youth were also substantially more likely to be poly-victims, experience other major adversities, and live in neighborhoods with more community disorder. Exposure to family/friend homicide was significantly related to trauma symptoms. However, when other co-occurring factors were taken into account, only family/friend homicide that occurred within the last 2 years remained significant. With respect to delinquency, only nonfamily homicide exposure remained significant with these other factors controlled. Findings suggest that family/friend homicide represents a powerful marker for a broad level of victimization risk and adversity, demonstrating that family/friend murder is often just one relatively small part of a more complicated life of adversity. Although recent exposure is certainly distressing to youth, it is the wider, co-occurring context of poly-victimization and other types of adversity that appears most impactful in the longer term.

This article aims to better understand the complex role of technology in peer victimization events with recent depressive symptomatology and suicide ideation (SI). Telephone interviews were conducted with a national sample of 791 youth in the United States, aged 10 to 20 years, collected from December 2013 to March 2014. Rates of any peer harassment victimization varied by past month depressive symptomatology and SI -28% of youth with no/low depressive symptomatology reported past year peer harassment as did 43% of youth with high depressive symptomatology without SI, and 66% of youth with SI. When examining the role of technology in peer harassment, youth experiencing any mixed harassment (i.e., those incidents that occurred both in-person and through technology) were almost 4 times more likely to report past month depressive symptoms without SI (RR adj = 3.9, 95% confidence interval [CI] = [1.5, 10.0], p ≤ .01) and 7.5 times (95% CI = [1.9, 28.9], p ≤ .01) more likely to report past month SI compared with youth who had no past year peer harassment. Given the multilayered relationships among these variables, schools, medical, and mental health professionals might screen youth who are involved in higher risk peer victimization situations, for depressive symptoms and SI to improve their access to appropriate mental health services.

Past research has demonstrated the particularly damaging effects of exposure to multiple forms of victimization, or "poly-victimization," on youth mental health. The primary objective of the present study is to begin to identify the mechanisms that help explain its powerful impact. Analyses are based on two waves of longitudinal data from the National Survey of Children's Exposure to Violence (NatSCEV), conducted in 2008 and 2010, that comprised a telephone sample of 1,186 youth ages 10 to 17. Using structural equation modeling, we examine direct and indirect effects on distress symptoms of increased, decreased, and stable high poly-victimization between Waves 1 and 2 compared to no or low victimization in both waves. Specifically, we consider the extent to which reductions in core psychosocial resources, including family support, peer support, self-esteem, and mastery, mediate the relationship between these poly-victimization conditions and distress. Relative to stable low victimization, both increased poly-victimization and stable high poly-victimization were associated with declines in all four resources. However, only self-esteem and mastery significantly mediated the association between poly-victimization and distress, with mastery showing the strongest effect. Although significant indirect effects were evident, poly-victimization still had a strong direct effect on distress with resource factors controlled. Findings support the hypothesis that the potent effect of poly-victimization on youth mental health is, in part, due to its damaging influence on core psychosocial resources.

This article examines developmental trends in the rates of different kinds of victimization across the span of childhood. The Developmental Victimization Survey was a national telephone survey of the victimization experiences of 2,030 children from ages 2 to 17. The overall mean number of victimizations during a single year increased with age, as did the percentage of children with polyvictimizations (4 or more different kinds of victimization). However, some specific types of victimization, physical bullying and sibling assaults, were highest prior to adolescence and then declined. Other types had different developmental patterns by gender. Peer assaults increased in adolescence for boys but not for girls. Child maltreatment and sexual victimization increased in adolescence for girls but not for boys. The complex and diverse patterns of developmental vulnerability to different kinds of victimization at different ages need more exploration and explanation in order to better target prevention and intervention policies.

Research examining childhood abuse has shown an association between victimization and psychiatric diagnoses (e.g., posttraumatic stress disorder, depression). Historically, psychiatric diagnoses have been emphasized as a consequence of victimization, with less research examining if it also functions as a risk factor for further victimization, perhaps making diagnoses a general victimization risk marker. In addition, much of this research has emphasized particular types of victimization such as childhood physical or sexual abuse. Researchers have given less attention to other forms of victimization (e.g., peer victimization, witnessed violence) or a diverse victimization history. Using the Juvenile Victimization Questionnaire (JVQ) we surveyed parents and children between the ages of 2 and 17 using a random digit dial (RDD) methodology. We examined the relationship between a number of different forms of victimization (termed poly-victimization ) in the preceding year and parent-reported lifetime psychiatric diagnosis. Results show that children with a psychiatric diagnosis have significantly higher rates of victimization than children without a psychiatric diagnosis. In addition, using logistic regression models, we find that psychiatric diagnosis was associated with increased risk for poly-victimization, conventional crime victimization, maltreatment, peer or sibling victimization, and witnessing violence, but not sexual abuse. The results highlight the need to consider psychiatric diagnoses as a risk marker for past and possible future victimization. In addition, the importance of obtaining a comprehensive and more diverse victimization history when working with children is highlighted.

Although exposure to stress is a central component of the stress process paradigm, little research has explicitly sought to identify antecedents of stress exposure. Based on a probability sample of 1393 adults aged 18-55 residing in Toronto, Canada, this research examines the effects of social status, past adversity, social and personal resources and history of mental disorder on recent exposure to stress. Consistent with earlier findings, results indicate that younger adults, divorced individuals and those with lower socioeconomic status, experience greater levels of social stress. Although respondent's history of major depressive disorder was related to all types of stress exposure, past cumulative adversity was the most powerful predictor of both total current stress (operant burden) and the subsequent onset of life events, independent of other antecedents. Findings suggest that the onset of chronic stress is more affected by personal characteristics, such as emotional reliance and disorder history, than is onset of life events. Implications of these findings are discussed.