MAP Forum

Does anyone have access to the study by the National Institute of Drug Abuse (Zicker 2002),
Childhood Sex Abuse Increases Risk for Drug Dependence in Adult Women? I cannot find even the abstract.

I'm coming from Ole Martin Moen 2015, The ethics of pedophilia, which points to this study as one of the main pieces of research showing the harms of adult-child sex:

There are several studies on the psychological effects of adult-child sex on children. One of the largest studies, funded by the US National Institute of Drug Abuse, found that in a sample of 1,400 adult women, childhood sexual abuse was significantly correlated with increased likelihood of drug dependence, alcohol dependence, major depression, and general anxiety disorder (Zickler 2002).

[...]

What should we make of Ehman’s arguments? Regarding his first argument, the appeal to an unrepresentative sample, we must concede that it is problematic that many studies are concerned only with cases that are brought to clinical or legal attention. It is worth noting, however, that not all studies suffer from this problem; the US National Institute of Drug Abuse study, for example, relies on a non-forensic and presumably representative sample, and still finds a significant correlation between adult-child sex and psychological problems.

Ole Martin Moe's article itself, which has been discussed in the past, is quite interesting and provides a sane take on consnent:

The reason why the consent argument depends on the harm argument, therefore, is that only if the harm argument is sound do we have a good explanation of why children cannot rightfully consent to sex. Had adult-child sex posed no risk of harm at all, it is unclear why children could not consent to it. Perhaps it could be suggested that children cannot consent to sex because they are not sufficiently physically and psychologically developed to know what they are consenting to. True as this might be, in the absence of any risk of harm, this does not seem to be problematic either. If my son ventured to read Hegel, it is evident that he would not know what he was doing. Still, since this would presumably not expose him to any significant risk of harm, there would be nothing wrong in letting him do so.

It dismantles the argument on psychollogical development and the rest as being dependent on the empirical evodence of harm. The appeal in Ole Marton Moe's article to mantaining the social stigma against pedophilic relationships ultimately relies on Zicker's article as far as I can tell, and so it is worth examining its methodology and conclusions.

(Side note: the author at the same time supports, for instance, providing education about pedophilia in schools, or that pedophiles engaging in AMSC are not always blameworthy even if the act is wrong)

Use the token system to request the paper from SciHub.

Thank you, I will make an account on sci-hub, which seems very useful. I haven't used crypto before, but it's probably straightforward following the instructions.

For the moment, the study appears to be based on Kendler et al, 2000, which uses a sample of 1411 twin women from the Virginia Twin Registry, and I wonder if both studies use the same data. That's a good sample in principle. However, the definition of sex abuse that they used is not any sexual activity, but only unwanted activity:

Before you were 16, did any adult, or any other person older than yourself, involve you in any unwanted incidents like (1) inviting or requesting you to do something sexual, (2) kissing or hugging you in a sexual way, (3) touching or fondling your private parts, (4) showing their sex organs to you, (5) making you touch them in a sexual way, or (6) attempting or having sexual intercourse.

And, of course, the willing participation of the minor is not a variable. It remains to see what Zicker added to it.

It was available in the Wayback Machine. Unfortunately, it's just a summary of Kendler et al.