Harvard Graduate School of Education (MEd, 1971) University of New Hampshire (PhD, 1978) David Finkelhor (born 1947) is an American sociologist known for his research into child sexual abuse and related topics.
Finkelhor graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy in 1964, then attended Harvard College, where he earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Social Relations in 1968.
In 2005 he and his colleagues received the Child Maltreatment Article of the Year award, and in 2007 he was elected as a Fellow of the American Society of Criminology.
[3] Mary de Young, a sociologist who has written about the moral panic that occurred along with the McMartin preschool trial, criticized the work for a lack of verifiable evidence and incorrect conclusions.
[8]: 101–106 It was also cited by Bruce Rind[9] in his controversial work that concluded that the harm caused by child sexual abuse was not necessarily intense or pervasive.