Adult men who were sexually abused as children are three times more likely to be sick or have disabilities compared to their male peers who were not abused, new Irish research has found.

The research by the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) and Trinity College Dublin focused on the long-term economic consequences for adults who had suffered sexual abuse as children.

The findings were based on data from the Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA), a national study of over 8,500 people aged 50 and older. They showed that 5% of men and 6% of women had experienced sexual abuse as a child.

When the researchers focused on people aged between 50 and 64, they found that 17% of male abuse survivors and 14% of female survivors were not working as a result of being sick or permanently disabled. This compared to 8% of males and 6% of females in this age group who had not been abused as children.

When factors such as education and age were taken into account, there appeared to be a particularly big gap between men who had been abused and those who had not. Male survivors were three times more likely than other men to be sick or disabled and were twice as likely to be living alone.

Males survivors of abuse were also found to be living in households where the income was estimated to be around 34% lower.

"Studies on the impact of CSA have tended to be undertaken by researchers in the fields of health and psychology. This study is somewhat unique both nationally and internationally because we look at the lifelong economic impact these experiences have had on survivors. We find significant impacts even though we are looking at people aged between 50 and 64 who experienced abuse over 30 years earlier as children," commented the report's author, Alan Barrett.

He added that the findings are important to help people to understand the ‘life-long impacts' of child sexual abuse.

"They also have relevance to the question of appropriate levels of compensation. The results put a figure on the scale of lost income and this could be used when calculating compensation for survivors."