Although the heinous act of child sexual abuse (CSA) does not carry a universal definition, the characteristics that generally constitute such abuse are the presence of a dominant adult who can force or coerce a child into any form of physical or non-physical sexual exploitation. Attempts have been made to categorize the different levels of abuse that can occur, including: non-contact, genital touching, attempted penetration, and the act of penetration (Martin and Silverstone, 2013). Despite specific attempts to categorize abuse, these same attempts have been produced alongside the argument that the majority of child sexual abuse occurs "below the surface" and echo a widely held misconception that child sexual abuse sexual abuse against children remains an invisible crime. Social attitudes and the lack of a collective definition of child sexual abuse can help mask the true scale of the problem; because no universally accepted understanding keeps the nature of the question ambiguous (Crooks & Baur, 1996). The idea that child abuse is one of the most hidden and invisible crimes in contemporary civilized society; has slowly become obsolete (D. Nanjunda, 2008). Many academic studies have difficulty determining the true prevalence of CSA, due to the contrasting methodological techniques adopted by different researchers; such as the analytical model of Summit (1983) and the work of Budin and Johnsons (1989), all informed by contrasting data sets (Gilbert et al 2009). With such difficulties, it would be detrimental to the field of study to make bold claims that 95% of CSA activities are never disclosed or occur “below the surface,” as Martin and Silverstone (2013) argued in their research. This is detrimental as previously stated; claims from conflicting research will report false...... middle of paper ...... thin research on CSA and rape (Bell et al, 2006), fictional vignettes. However, due to the contemporary nature of the issue being explored, limitations of previous work such as unrealistic scenarios that do not represent the actual nature of the issues; will therefore be avoided to ensure that strong methodological validity is maintained. Attempts to explore perceptions and attitudes regarding maltreatment using small sample qualitative work such as that of Budin and Johnson (1989) will not provide sufficient numbers of participants or the appropriate procedure needed. The main limitation observed in previous studies lies in non-representative methods that adopt unrealistic scenarios or constructed from small samples incapable of measuring valid public perception. The originality and contemporary objectives of the study will be measured using the most appropriate methods to explore the issues addressed...