Caring for the sexually assaulted child: Follow-up matters
In 2024, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) reported that 1 in 8 women (370 million) experienced sexual assault before the age of 18, and 8% of these are from East and Southeast Asia.1 In Singapore, 38.6% of 11,868 sexual assault cases from 2018 to 2022 involved children aged under 16...
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| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Academy of Medicine Singapore
2025-07-01
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| Series: | Annals, Academy of Medicine, Singapore |
| Online Access: | https://annals.edu.sg/caring-for-the-sexually-assaulted-child-follow-up-matters/ |
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| Summary: | In 2024, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) reported that 1 in 8 women (370 million) experienced sexual assault before the age of 18, and 8% of these are from East and Southeast Asia.1 In Singapore, 38.6% of 11,868 sexual assault cases from 2018 to 2022 involved children aged under 16 years.2 These children are at risk of pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and post-assault trauma in the short term, and face wide-ranging long-term psychosocial and health consequences, including psychiatric disorders and infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).3 A systematic review of children and adolescents exposed to sexual abuse found that STI detection varied from less than 1 percent to 61 percent in different settings and by type of STI.4 In a Singapore review of 790 patients aged 0 to 16 years who presented to a paediatric emergency department (ED) for sexual abuse/assault from 2016 to 2020, 6.2% had an STI, with the majority having chlamydia followed by gonorrhoea.5 |
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| ISSN: | 2972-4066 |