Митове за изнасилването и сексуалната злоупотреба с деца в България: Резултати от изследване сред студенти в пет университета
Rape and child sexual abuse myths in Bulgaria: Outcomes of a survey among students at five universities

Summary/Abstract: In the social psychology and sociology, the concept of ‘rape myths’ refers to culturally grounded stereotypes of victim-blame, related to widely shared prejudices about the behavioral gender-based differences between the male and female individuals in a given society. Using the same methodological approach as the ‘rape myths’ scale, the study proposes a scale of ‘child sexual abuse myths’. Meanwhile it is introducing clearly distinguishable definitions of ‘sexual abuse’, ‘sexual harassment’ and ‘child sexual abuse’ – which are absent in the current Bulgarian legislation at the time of the field work. This article presents some survey outcomes of a quantitative study conducted in 2018 among students of five majors at five Bulgarian universities. The self-reported data show that 10.4% of the students were victims of sexual harassment or sexual violence once and another 3.1% were victims more than once. Approximately 7.4% of students identified themselves as a victim of adult to child sexual abuse, and 1.4% as a victim of older to younger child perpetrator. Females were victims in 96.7% of sexual harassment and sexual assault cases and males were perpetrators in 98.4% of these cases. Homosexual violence occurred in 3.3% of cases. About 4.2% of all students were sexually harassed or assaulted under the age of 14, while 7.7% were sexually harassed or assaulted before they reached the age of majority. Unlike sexual harassment, and sexual violence, there was no statistically significant difference in child sexual abuse victims. 5.3% of boys and 8.8% of girls were victims. The study developed an own system of indirect indicators to assess sexual abuse experienced up to the age of 18. It shows high levels of normalized gender-based violence, with a huge proportion of girls being victims of unwanted spanking, butt or breast groping, or verbal sexual aggression. Approximately 5% of women have been victims of penetrative sex when they were in a helpless condition or in unconsciousness. The normalization of violence is very well framed through the prism of rape myths and child sexual abuse myths. It appears that not just women but victims themselves tend to victimize female rape victims, showing relatively high levels of agreement with the statement ‘If a woman does not resist – it cannot be considered rape’.

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