That's because you've been sheltered from most of it; and most of the time it's "kept within the family," never made public, and simply swept under the rug -- so as to not "break apart the family" (at the cost of one victim).

People will allow all sorts of horrendous things to happen, if it serves their interests.

Father rapes his daughter? The mother refuses to believe it: thinks her daughter is only doing it for attention; doesn't want her "perfect" family image to get shattered (plus, daddy dearest pays the bills and funds her lifestyle). Same goes for extended family.

"It couldn't happen in our family." "You know how teenage girls are." "He would never do something like that. I've known him for decades."

Cognitively checking-out, because it's not their "problem." And other forms of dissonance.

Those are only the stats for pregnancy, though. I'm sure the incidence of sexual abuse without pregnancy is higher.

I’m 64 years old, so I’ve been around a while. Essentially every woman I have ever been close enough with to discuss these issues has reported either being sexually abused as a child or raped as an adult. As a young man I never realized how widespread this is.

I get what you're getting at, that we should trust the experts who have professional experience with a problem, but on the other hand, he didn't say how he arrived at that 10% number, and we don't know if his opinion is an outlier among medical doctors. And we do know, because we're witnessing it, that his statement is being amplified by non-medical professionals for the precise reason that it would be urgent and shocking if true. A lot of questionable information about Covid was amplified this way, because "a doctor" said it.

Before we take the information at face value, we would expect some kind of support for his statement from other professionals. There are scientists who study the factors relating teenage pregnancy, as well as advocates for sexual abuse victims who uncover and publicize facts like these. If the information is something that has never been formally studied but is something that doctors "just know," there are tens of thousands (at least) of medical professionals who have regular contact with different populations of pregnant teenagers in the United States alone. If there's a widespread suspicion that the number might be 10% or more, that would mean a lot more than one doctor making an off-the-cuff remark in the audience of a law lecture.

> he didn't say how he arrived at that 10% number

With the recent popularity of genetic testing services for health and ancestry tracing, I would think this would be easy to tease out of the data. Of course not many people will expect to see as part of the report that their father is also their grandfather or uncle; I wonder how these services handle that?

I know it is probably shocking and supremely disgusting to realize but it is important to validate when people are victims of abuse, because they’re already traumatized. It’s even worse when people try to pretend it doesn’t happen or refuse to believe it happens to the extent it does because it’s like being victimized a second time: not only is your body taken from you but your experiences are denied from you too.

Well, it is his expertise. Have you read “the body keeps the score”? Really enlightening.