[caption id="attachment_4075" align="alignleft" width="225"] tiffany terry (CC BY 2.0)[/caption]

Experts had hoped that the numbers would drop, but a recent representative study conducted by the department of child and adolescent psychiatry at the University of Ulm in southern Germany reveals the opposite. In 2011, about 12 percent of interviewees reported experiences of sexual abuse during childhood. An increase from 15.2 to 18 percent was documented for women. The 9.5 percent for men did not change compared to 2011. Researchers spoke to 2,500 representative German interviewees ages 14 to 94. In an interview with DW, the independent commissioner responsible for questions relating to child sexual abuse, Johannes-Wilhelm Rörig, said that political decision makers have not yet realized how urgent the matter is.