Doesn child sexual abuse happen more in some communities than in others?
Mainstream stereotypes tend to link race, class, and region to child sexual abuse. These stereotypes claim that sexual abuse happens mostly in poorly educated rural communities, low-income urban communities, or in communities of color or immigrant communities. These stereotypes are untrue. In addition, the media tends to focus on sensationalized cases of child abduction, which are statistically rare compared to child sexual abuse by someone close to the victim, and to minimize stories on child sexual abuse in stereotypically “normal” homes. But each community also maintains its own stereotypes about child sexual abuse, almost invariably projecting the problem into a community that is different from their own. For example, white communities may perceive child sexual abuse to be a problem for people of color, communities of color may perceive child sexual abuse to be a problem for white people, immigrant communities may perceive child sexual abuse to be a problem for local nationals (i.e
