This study explored the current status of girl-child abused by family members and to see possible influences on their moral and marital status. The design adopted for this study is a descriptive survey research design. The population of the study comprises of 51,197 secondary school students who enrolled in 2018/2019 academic session in all the public senior secondary schools in in Cross River State. A sample of 381 respondents was selected for this study based on the Krejcie and Morgan (1970) sample table of specification. The proportionate random sampling procedure was used in selecting the students from different secondary schools to cut across relatively the population. The instrument for data collection titled: Girl Child Abuse Questionnaire (GCAQ). The GCAQ is a 30-item instrument designed along a four-point Likert scale. The questionnaire was validated by consulting experts and items that were considered to be vague and irrelevant were removed to ensure validity. To establish the reliability of the instrument, a pilot test was conducted. Using the test retest method of reliability, the two sets of scores obtained from the pilot test were correlated using Pearson Product Moment Correlation (PPMC). The reliability (r) value of 0.76 was obtained for the scores which implied the high reliability of the instrument. The data collected was analysed using descriptive statistics. The study found that girl-child in the study area is abused by family members and this in turn affects their moral and marital status. It was recommended among other that government through her agencies should ensure that girls are given adequate attention; stiffer punishment be given to the perpetrators of this ugly act.
Keywords: Abuse, Girl Child, Marital Status, moral status.
