Edited sentence: (1996), this may be due in part to the stigma attached to child sexual abuse.38% of the 53 men studied by Urquiza (1987) said that they viewed their experience as positive at the time, but only 15% retained this attitude.According to Coffey et al.Children may also report positive experiences even if their abuse was accompanied by negative emotions: in Okami (1991), for example, 41% of the 63 'positive' subjects recalled feelings of guilt, 35% said they were frightened at the time, and 29% reported feelings of shame.Russell (1986) speculated that the perception of a sexually abusive event as 'positive' could stem from a mechanism for coping with traumatic experiences.There is evidence that children who initially report positive feelings will sometimes go on to reassess their abuse in a negative light