Drug-using street youth show high rates of childhood abuse

published on August 16, 2007

(Vancouver) – A new study authored by the Centre highlights an association between emotional and sexual abuse and sex trade work among street-involved drug-using youth.

The study, recently published electronically in Social Science & Medicine, examined questionnaire results from a cohort of 341 drug-using street youth in downtown Vancouver to find how different types of childhood maltreatment may be associated with subsequent engagement in the sex trade.

Prevalence rates of different types of abuse ranged within the group: 32 per cent reported childhood sexual abuse, 73 per cent indicated having experienced physical abuse and nearly 87 per cent reported emotional abuse. Almost 85 per cent reported physical neglect and 93 per cent cited emotional neglect. Only six of the 341 youth reported no abuse at all.

The study also identified another highly at-risk sub-group; 23 per cent of participants indicated having traded sex for money or gifts at least once in their lives. There exists warranted concern over this particularly vulnerable group due to well-known risks associated with sex work among drug-using populations, including sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV and potential victimization and violence.

This is the first study of its kind to show an independent relationship between childhood emotional abuse and youth involvement in sex work.

“Youth who are involved in sex work represent an especially vulnerable population,” writes principal study author Dr. Jo-Anne Stoltz. “Not only do interventions need to address childhood sexual abuse as a risk factor – for which there has been evidence for some time – but attention also needs to be paid to experiences of emotional abuse as a potential determinant of high-risk behaviour.”

These findings have important implications for intervention efforts with high-risk youth, says study co-author Dr. Evan Wood.

“In addition to helping them transition out of the sex trade, youth need to be protected against such abuse and violence,” says Wood. “And in order to prevent HIV and other harms, we need to start looking earlier in the natural history of drug use amongst these people and intervening earlier.”

BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS

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Drug-using street youth show high rates of childhood abuse

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