Female Child and Adolescent Sexual Abuse Cases Reported at the Geneva University Hospitals Between 2006 and 2014: A Retrospective Study

Study Objective: To provide an objective quantification of the demographic characteristics and clinical findings related to female child and adolescent sexual abuse cases reported at the Geneva University Hospitals. Design: Retrospective study. Setting: Obstetrics and gynecology emergency unit. Participants: Female children (0-12 years old) and adolescents (13-20 years old) seeking primary care after sexual assault. Interventions: None, observational study. Main Outcome Measures: Delay from assault to time of presentation to primary care presentation, type of perpetrators, and the presence gynecological and bodily lesions. Results: Compared with children, a significantly higher proportion of adolescents presented to the hospital within 24 hours (134/289 (46.4%) vs 7/33 (21.2%); P = .006). Perpetrators were family members in 15/36 (41.7%) of children and in only 14/304 (4.6%) of adolescent patients (P < .00001); perpetrators were unfamiliar/nonrelated people in 8/36 (22.2%) of children and in 166/304 (54.6%) of adolescent patients (P < .0003). We did not find a significant difference between the 2 age groups with regard to the presence of gynecological lesions (15/35 (42.9%) of children and 91/298 (30.5%) of adolescent patients). However, we found a significant difference in the proportion of patients with bodily lesions such that 11/36 (30.6%) of children and 175/300 (58.3%) of adolescents (P = .002) were afflicted with bodily lesions. Conclusion: To our knowledge this is the first study to evaluate child and adolescent sexual abuse cases on the basis of real-life data collected in Switzerland. Our results highlight important differences in child and adolescent sexual assault in terms of delay in presentation to primary care, perpetrator's relation to the victim, and presence of bodily lesions. This study confirms that gynecological findings alone are not consistently present in the patients who seek primary care after sexual assault.