A Study on the Influence of the Experience of Family Violence and the Acceptability of Violence on the Male Adolescent's Sexual Assault

Purpose : The research about the present condition of sexual assault in Korea is increasing. But the interest on adolescent's sexual assault is much lower than the adult's one. Also, most of the research of adolescent's sexual assault handled the prevalence rate of sexual assault and the effort to identify integrated cause and process of sexual assault is very deficient. Since the family system theory or transition theory between generations proves to adequate method of explaining of adolescent's problematic behavior, it will be very meaningful to examine the influence of the negative environment of family on adolescent's sexual assault. According to some researches, the people who saw violence between parent when they were young will do violent behavior much more when they grow up. And the adolescent who were abused in childhood will do date-violence much more, especially sexual-assault. All adolescents who experienced family violence do not sexual assault. So it will be unreasonable to consider the influence of family violence as the direct and certain cause on adolescent's sexual assault. Therefore this Research examined the influences of the experiences of family violence on the male adolescent's sexual assault and explored whether the acceptability of violence has mediating effect or not.

Methods : The participants of this research are middle and high school students in the national capital region. To select the sample, random sampling is used and to decrease the preponderance of locality, we divided the national capital region into 4 areas and picked 25 schools from each area. Researcher went to the school directly and distributed the questionnaire through teacher. 581 male adolescents completed paper-pencil surveys. The actual condition of each variable is examined by frequency analysis and the relationship among main variables is identified by logistic and mutiple-regression analysis. Finally, Aroian verification is used for the mediation effect of the acceptability of violence.

Conclusions : Out of total 581 boys in the research group, 31.3% done sexual assault in the previous year. In this research, sexual assault divided by two groups, the verbal and the physical sexual assault. According to the research, 30.2% of boys done verbal sexual assault and 11.3% of boys done physical sexual assault. And 42.3% of boys have experienced the violence from father to mother. The experience of family violence was proven to be significantly influential to male adolescent's sexual assault. And the acceptability of violence was proven to be influential the relationship between the influences of the experiences of family violence and the male adolescent's sexual assault. Thus the acceptability of violence does a role as the part mediating effect between the influences of the experiences of family violence and the male adolescent's sexual assault.

Implications : Based on these findings, we can suggest 3 ways of intervention strategies. First, on the social level, adolescent's sexual assault will be recognized seriously and countermeasures about this will be developed. Second, the effort of protecting adolescents from domestic violence will be needed. Finally, the effort to lower adolescent's acceptability of violence will be needed.