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., an American problem), and so on. On the whole, people tend to think of child sexual abuse as happening to people who are not like them.

But while child sexual abuse occurs across race, class and region lines, this does not mean that race, class and region are irrelevant to understanding child sexual abuse. Homophobia, racism, and sexism perpetuate the problem of child sexual abuse, making it difficult for children under the double and triple burden of those stereotypes to tell about what is happening to them. If disclosure is paired with racist or classist stereotyping, both children and adults are less likely to seek help, or in fact to have relevant help available to them. Offenders can deliberately target children who do not have access to resources, or are perceived as less likely to tell. Children with disabilities are, for example, twice as likely to experience sexual abuse than children without disabilities, and children from lower income backgrounds are more likely to experience sexual exploitation in addition to sexual abuse.

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