Abstract
Background: No community is safe from child sexual abuse (CSA) even conservative ones.
Objective: The objective of this study was to find outparental knowledge and understanding about preventing child sexual abuse in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
Methodology: A cross-sectional study on parents attending primary health care centers in Jeddah city were selected randomly (n=400). They were requested to fill the questionnaire. The data was entered and analyzed in IBM SPSS ver. 20. P value <0.05 was interpreted as an indication for significance.
Results: The response rate was 100%, the overall mean score reflecting knowledge of parents about CSA was 5.0+1.6 out of 10. The mean score of knowledge about CSA was relatively higher among female parents (5.1+1.6) than males (4.9+1.7). Majority of parents (93.8%) knew that CSA is a common problem worldwide. Parents with higher monthly income were less afraid to introduce CSA prevention education to their children and more likely to provide them with audiovisuals materials about CSA prevention; the difference was statistically significant p<0.05.
Conclusion: Most of the parents have considerable level of knowledge about child sexual abuse. The majority of participants agreed to protect their children from sexual abuse, mostly showing their willingness to educate their children in schools about prevention of CSA.