Mothers’ Attitude to Giving Sexuality Education as a Check to Sexual Abuse of Primary School Girls in South-East Nigeria

Abstract

In South-East Nigeria, otherwise known as Igbo land, girls are inadvertently exposed to sexual abuse. This is because of the wrong notion that ignorance of sexual issues by young people promotes chastity. Ironically, due to the same ignorance, many primary school girls are sexually abused by peers, teachers and relatives thereby exposing them to psychological trauma, unwanted pregnancies, physical injury, sexually transmitted diseases and abandonment of babies. This study sought to find out the attitude of mothers towards giving Sexuality Education as a tool to minimizing sexual abuse of primary school girls. Three research questions guided the study. A multi-stage purposive sampling technique was used to first sample 2 states, 4 Local Governments, 8 towns and 160 women in South-East Nigeria. The instrument for data collection was a Focus Group Discussion Schedule based on the purpose of study and research questions. Data collected were qualitatively analyzed.Results show that there is high prevalence of child sexual abuse, mothers do not know what constitute Sexuality Education, and there is fear that Sexuality Education promotes promiscuity. Some recommendations were made bearing in mind the findings of the study. DOI: 10.5901/jesr.2016.v6n1p133