Knowledge and perception of female students towards sexual violence in Lagos state, Nigeria

Abstract

Sexual violence is a serious offense, yet discussion on the topic is often avoided and the type of sexual abuse that is rarely discussed is sexual exploitation of children and youth. Hence the study focused to examine the knowledge and perception of adolescents towards sexual violence. The study adopted descriptive research survey method. The population of the study is female students in three secondary schools in Lagos state. The sample size was 257 and simple random sampling was adopted as sampling techniques. From the study it was found that adolescents had negative perception towards sexual violence, because respondents’ response on sexual violence is an occurrence which most ladies will experience at least once in their life time before marriage it was observed that 35.0% strongly agreed while 49.0% agreed, 4.7% disagreed, and 5.8% strongly disagreed while 5.4% choose undecided option. Knowledge on the pattern of sexual violence prevailing in the society, results showed that 32.3% response was slapping or battering/beating (no injury), 31.9% response was forcing or brutalizing partner before sex, 20.2% response was abusing/ cursing partner verbally, 13.6% mention other forms of violence while least response was boyfriend raping girlfriend 1.9%. Therefore its concluded that majority of respondents had knowledge on the pattern of sexual violence prevailing in the society. The study recommended that Parents and teachers should be sensitized about the whole question of adolescents‟ sexuality so that they can be more involved in teaching them the same and the community should work hand in hand with community-based organization and NGOs to educate the adolescents on responsible sex behavior.

Keywords: Knowledge, Perception, Sexual violence, Female students