Al-Hikmah University Journal

In recent years, the prevalence of adolescent mortality due to sexually transmitted diseases (STD), unwanted pregnancy, abortion, induced pregnancy, and related issues has been documented. These tragic events can be traced to teenagers' sexual abuse experiences. This led to an investigation on the role of gender and self-esteem as mediators between parent-child relationships and sexual assault. The study adopted correlational design. A sample of three hundred adolescents was randomly sampled from the secondary schools in Ibadan North Local Government Area of Oyo State, Nigeria. Data was collected using reliable instrument (Sexual Abuse Scale α=0.87; Parental-child Relationship Scale α =0.77; Self-esteem Scale α =0.73).Three research questions were raised and tested at 0.05 level of significance using Pearson’s product moment correlation and path analysis with Maximum likelihood estimation. It was discovered that sexual abuse positively correlated with gender (r =.681, P<0.01) but negatively correlated with parent-child relationship (r = -.449, P<0.01) and self-esteem (r = -.310, P<0.01). From the path model the goodness of fit of the model was evaluated using χ2 statistics (0.286 < 0.3) and was found a good fit. A direct effect was also found between self-esteem and sexual-abuse (β = -0.236, p<0.01), parent-child relationship and sexual abuse (β = 0.176, p<0.01).  On the other hand, an indirect effect was found between parent-child relationship and sexual abuse through gender (β = 0.603, p<0.01), which indicates that parent-child relationship increases the likelihood that a male adolescent (60.3%) will engage in sexual abuse than their female (39.7%) counterparts. Among others it was recommended that parents should build a healthy relationship with adolescents as to be able to monitor and guide them against premarital sexual behaviour, Adolescents are enjoined to avoid peers who are not willing to positive contribution to their life.