Perception and Help Seeking Behaviour of In-School Adolescents on Sexual Abuse in Ife Central Local Government, Ile-Ife, Osun State

Background: Sexual abuse towards the adolescents is now on the increase across the world. The impact which calls for global efforts of intervention resonates in all areas of health: physical, psychological and negative sexual outcomes.

Objective: The study assessed the perception of In-school adolescents about sexual abuse and identified factors that influenced help-seeking behaviour of adolescents who have experienced sexual abuse. These were with the view to designing intervention programmes for identifying and managing victims of sexual abuse in Ife Central Local Government, Osun State, Nigeria.

Methods: Data were collected from 420 in-school adolescents who were selected through multistage sampling technique from three public and three private secondary schools in the study area using a semi-structured questionnaire. The data was analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 20.0 software and this was carried out in three stages; univariate, bivariate and multivariate analysis. The level of significance was determined at p value less than 0.05.

Results: The study showed that 50% of the In-school adolescents had experienced sexual abuse and 15.7% has sought help after the incident. Factors associated with sexual abuse were parents’ level of education , age and class. The odds of respondents who had ever experienced sexual abuse in the school premises was eleven times more than the odds of respondents who had not experienced sexual abuse in the school premises (OR=11.0, 95% CI 2.307-52.729, p=0.003). The odds of respondents who had ever experienced sexual abuse by neighbours was twenty-two times more than the odds of respondents who had never experienced sexual abuse by neighbours (OR=22.18, 95% CI 0.082-10.239, p=0.001).

Conclusion: The study concluded that the prevalence of sexual abuse amongst in-school adolescents is 50% and 15.7% has sought help after the incident. Factors that influenced help-seeking behaviour of in-school adolescents were place of abuse and type of perpetrators.