BRIEF REPORT Sexual and Non-Sexual Violence Against Children and Youth: Current Issues in Gender, Trauma and Resilience Christine Wekerle 1 & Patricia K. Kerig 2 # Springer International Publishing 2017 Sexual and Non-Sexual Violence Against Children and Youth BNot everybody has a friend. I don’t want to become like those grown-ups who only care about numbers…^ The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry BSexual violence is one of the most unsettling of chil- dren’s rights violations. Yet under-reporting and lack of comparable data limit understanding of the full extent of this problem.^ (http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc. asp?symbol=E/2016/75&Lang=E) Sexual violence is different from non-sexual violence. Sexual violence (SV) taps a broad range of behaviors, from cyber-bullying to commercialized sexual exploitation, and carries with it a high stigma burden that contributes to signif- icant under-reporting (Collin-Vézina et al. 2015). Sexual vio- lence occurs across all formative years, from infancy to young adulthood. With half of the world’s population under 25 years of age, SV is a priority issue to prevent. Currently, there is a re- visiting of the known scope and parameters of SV, broadly defined in terms of intra- and extra-familial. There is an in- creased call to monitor youth reports on maltreatment in pop- ulation surveys to provide one piece of the data puzzle for how service systems are working to prevent violence and related impairment (Jud et al. 2016). SV is a priority area given its lifespan impact on physical and mental health (e.g., Afifi et al. 2014; Fergusson et al. 2013; Trickett et al. 2011), and its unique contribution beyond other forms of maltreatment (Grasso et al. 2013; Herrera and McCloskey 2003; Walsh et al. 2012). In asking seniors about their life experience, where most of the sample was under 70 years of age, a single SV occurrence nearly tripled the likelihood of depressive symptoms; when controlling for types of abuse, repeated SV (and repeated physical abuse) remained significant. Sexual and Non-Sexual Violence: The Risk of Youth Polyvictimization Sexual violence while growing up changes much more than the childhood time within which it occurred (Ege et al. 2014). However, in terms of formal authority recognition, it seems that sexual abuse, when also accompanied by physical and emotional abuse, dramatically raises the likelihood of child welfare or child protection system involvement (Afifi et al. 2015). The overlap of SV with other forms is echoed in profile analyses of youth victimization, finding polyvictims (17.8%) to experience violence in multiple setting and multiple perpe- trators (Turner et al. 2016). Further, it was also noted for polyvictim youth, that several other impairment features de- scribed their profiles (e.g., higher trauma symptoms scores,lower levels of feeling able to talk with family about problems, witnessing more community violence). From the National Household Survey of Children and Youth, Finkelhor et al. (2015) report that 3.2% had been sexually harassed and .4% sexually assaulted at school. Sexual vio- lence information that relies on self-report may be subject to under-reporting. Understanding the broader violence context would seem an important co-query where there is SV risk, so that a fulsome picture of youth protection needs emerge. Downturns in familial economic well-being is linked with * Christine Wekerle wekerc@mcmaster.ca; chris.wekerle@gmail.com 1 McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada 2 University of Utah, Salt Lake City, USA Journ Child Adol Trauma DOI 10.1007/s40653-017-0130-7