Many different risk factors can lead to an increased chance of being abused. These are usually described as factors relating to the individual, such as one’s age, identity, needs, or family experience. Abuse may also be more likely to occur in risky situations or environments, such as a party where alcohol or other substances are being consumed. 

All youth experience some level of risk. Experiencing one or more risk factors does not mean there is something wrong with you, or that you have done anything wrong. People who are sexually abused have no role in creating their own abuse.

People who are sexually abused have no role in creating their own abuse.

Risk factors are aspects of one’s life or environment that perpetrators exploit to abuse another person, and perpetrators are solely and absolutely responsible for the abuse. Being aware of risks for sexual abuse, and recognizing them in your life, can help you assess your risk of being abused in different situations. Recognizing risk can also help protect you from abuse by enabling you to take steps to manage vulnerability (see How can I protect myself from sexual abuse?). 

Recognizing risk can help protect you from abuse by enabling you to take steps to manage vulnerability.

Risk factors

• Being young. Some people sexualize youth because of their age, developing bodies, or other physical characteristics. Young people may not have the same ability as an older person to recognize abuse situations or to get out of them.
• Being an adolescent. Many young people are exploring the world, are excited about increased freedom from caregivers, and have limited experience with people who want to use or abuse them, or are generally trusting.
• Being LGBTQ. For reasons that are unclear gender and sexual minority youth are at a significantly increased risk for sexual abuse (see CSA Prevalence in Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Youth). 
• Having physical or emotional needs. Some people will notice, respond to, and exploit a youth’s emotional or physical need to gain sexual access to them.
• Having disabilities. Some research has suggested that youth with disabilities are at increased risk, especially if those disabilities are significant, make communicating what happened to you difficult, or increase the emotional or physical needs that perpetrators may exploit as part of the grooming process.
• Prior victimization. Being victimized once increases the risk for a second victimization. The reasons for this are unclear, but sexual offenders may have a unique ability to know or sense when someone has been previously abused.
• Family problems. Caregivers who experience substance abuse, psychiatric or mental health issues, intimate partner violence, or financial or other problems may have a reduced ability to observe and protect youth as much as they would like to. Experiencing prior or ongoing victimization (either sexual or other forms of abuse) within one’s own family, or having family members who have been victimized, also increases one’s chance of being sexually abused.
• Blended families. While most blended families that form after a divorce or in the absence of one biological parent can be safe places for youth, there is an increased risk for sexual abuse from non-biological parents or siblings.
• Poverty. Poverty may increase unmet physical and emotional needs, risks that perpetrators may exploit to gain access to and abuse youth.
• Social and physical isolation. Social and physical isolation from caregivers increases one’s risk for abuse and can result from the common experience of spending one or more nights away from home. This may include participation in various kinds of tournaments, sports events, camps, religious or educational youth groups, or other experiences involving spending nights away from home in hotels, motels, campgrounds, the family homes of others, and other locations. Social isolation from peers, such as having few good friends or being dissatisfied with one’s social life, may also make one more vulnerable to abuse.

Risky situations

To many youth, one positive aspect of getting older is the independence and expanding social world that comes from leaving childhood and becoming an adolescent. But leaving closer supervision and control of caregiver/s also brings exposure to increased risk from being in new situations and around new people, not all of whom can be trusted. 

Leaving closer supervision and control of caregiver/s increases risk by exposure to new people and situations. 

Risky situations:

• Consuming alcohol or drugs, which may increase someone’s likelihood of being sexually violent as well as blur your capacity to protect yourself
• Going to parties, or other places with people you don’t know where substances are used
• Not having a buddy, escape plan, or means to escape (such as a charged phone) when out with groups
• Being in secluded environments or situations where help is unavailable
• Not having or maintaining boundaries from the start of contact with other people
• Not being alert to any relationship that becomes more touchy or personal than you want
• Not identifying grooming behavior soon after it starts
• Communicating online or on apps with people you do not know, who may actually aim to manipulate you into sexual behaviors
  • For more information on cyber safety, see Staying Safe While Staying Connected: Facts and Tips for Teens
• Not trusting your instincts (if you sense something is not right, you are right!)

Be aware of the risks of alcohol:

• It reduces awareness of social cues and responses from others, such as lack of consent
• It reduces self-control and internal resistance to acting out on impulse so that people who are drunk will do things they never would do sober
• It creates heightened sexual arousal
• It reduces the capacity to effectively communicate, especially about internal thoughts and feelings, making communicating a “no” more difficult while drunk than when sober
• For males specifically, it reduces the likelihood of acting as a bystander for a peer in a risky situation