An NSPCC study (Radford et al, 2011) found that nearly a quarter of young adults (24.1%) had experienced sexual abuse (contact and non-contact), by an adult or by a peer during childhood.
Around 11% of young adults said that they had experienced contact sexual abuse during their childhood.
Perpetrators of sexual abuse are more likely to be a family friend or to be acquainted with the child rather than being a parent or stranger.
Girls are at a greater risk than boys of being abused by a family member.
Boys are at a higher risk than girls of being abused by a stranger (Maikovich-Fong and Jafee, 2010).
The majority of reported abuse is carried out by male abusers but there is some discussion as to whether abuse by female abusers is underreported.
An analysis of the calls to ChildLine where children talked about being sexually abused found that 17% of the calls concerned a female abuser.
Where the victim of the abuse was a boy then the proportion of male and female abusers was roughly the same (34% and 36% respectively, 30% gender unspecified).
For girls, over two thirds (67%) of the perpetrators were male and only 6% were female (Mariathasan, 2009).