Child sexual abuse

Child sexual abuse is a loaded term which today lacks any clear meaning, as the term is so broadly defined that it may include any form of sexual (or even non-sexual) activity involving a person of any age (even including a child as the "perpetrator") with another person under the age of 18.

The word "child" is not clearly defined, and could refer to the medical definition of "child" -- a human who has not yet reached puberty, or a person under the legal age of consent, or a person under the age of 18 or 21 (depending on the legal jurisdiction). Therefore, the question of whether a young person is or is not a "child" is not clearly addressed in the term "child sexual abuse".

The word "sexual" is also problematic. What kind of activity is determined to be "sexual," as opposed to simply "sensual," and what physical activities are non-sexual? Should an activity be referred to as "sexual" only when it involves the genitals? Or does the determination of "sexual" depend on the state of mind of the person, for example: If a person finds it sexually exciting to touch a woman's feet, would a clerk in a shoe store so inclined be engaging in "sexual activity" with an (unwitting) woman customer when he helps her try on a new pair of shoes?

The word "abuse" is also a problem. When does "use" cross over the line to "abuse? If "child sexual abuse exists, this implies that "child sexual use" also exist. What determines whether a person is "using" another person, as opposed to being involved in a relationship which provides benefits for both parties, not just one or the other?

Most people assume that the term "child sexual abuse" refers to non-consensual or coerced sexual activity with children. But "child sexual abuse" may not be distinguished from rape, as any sexual activity involving a "child" may, by legal definition, be "statutory rape".

"Child sexual abuse" may (or may not) involve psychological manipulation of the "child" by another, or other forms of subtle coercion ranging from emotional blackmail to bribes, and may (or may not) involve a willing child.

"Rape" of a person is generally considered to be an act involving violence (or the threat of violence) and to be a non-consensual act of forcible sex. But in the case of a "child" under the legal age of consent, "statutory rape" involves an often willing child, one who is simply presumed under the law to be unable to give valid consent.

The history of the term "child sexual abuse"

Until fairly recently in human history (until the late 17th or early 18th century) "child sexual abuse," as a concept, did not exist. Children older than about 8 or 10 years old were considered to be "little adults," and were endowed with the right to engage in whatever activities they wished with others (including sexual activities) irrespective of the age of the other partner. Children were considered to have agency -- they were presumed to have the right to independently make decisions as to the activities they engaged in.

The rape of children did exist, as did the rape of women, but these were addressed similarly under the law as being violent assaults, and were legally punished.

A legal term synonymous with "child sexual abuse" is child molestation. "Child molestation" may involve strangers or casual acquaintenances, but more typically it occurs within the immediate family household. The term is also commonly confounded with the terms physical abuse and emotional abuse.

Current Usage

Currently, the term "child sexual abuse" is usually applied to any sexual activity which a child engages in with any other person, though sexologists distinguish a normal child's "sex play" involving other children from "child sexual abuse", though this distinction is becoming more blurred as children are now often considered to be "sexual predators" who abuse other children sexually.

With the movement beginning in the late 1970s, spearheaded by victim's rights groups and certain feminist organization, the blurring of the lines between (for example) violent rape and other behaviors such as "date rape," "statutory rape," and even mere "day-after regrets," many people use the terms "child sexual abuse," "child molestation" and "rape" interchangeably. Proponents of this melding of terms claim that this lack of distinction helps the public to understand unwanted sexual acts of all types for what they really are -- acts of coercive sex -- and thereby avoid minimizing the seriousness of certain acts simply because they may not have involved overt physical violence.

Despite the definition and assumptions that literally minded speakers make about the term "abuse"), in current usage, the issue of consent or coercion relevant to the term anymore. That is to say, given the modern assumption that no child is capable of consenting to sexual activity, any instance of sex with a child is considered child sexual abuse, regardless whether or not the child consented, desired or even sought the act. As such, the term can now be used to apply to any interaction with a child that has, or can be interpreted by others to have, sexual overtones, regardless of the desires of the child. In this vein the term is used by some as interchangeable with "pedophilia."

[NOTE:Revisions by the current editor do not extend past this point in the text.]

Real Child Sexual Abuse

The fact that many people use the term to cover situations which no longer bear any reference to the consent of the child should not be used to discount the seriousness of acts of "real" child sexual abuse, that is, abuse which fulfills the first definition of the term given above: non-consensual or coerced sexual activity. Listeners and readers of the term today are often caught in the delicate position of having to decide between two conflicting assumptions: that the "child sexual abuse" wasn't really a harmful act, and risk ignoring the needs of a child who has truly been victimized, or that the abuse was a harmful coercive act, and risk ignoring the desires of a child who willingly consented in a mutually beneficial relationship. This lack of precision is a distressing consequence of the aforementioned blurring of terms.

Victims of genuine non-consentual or coercive sex acts often need counseling and suffer from serious psychological after-effects from their ordeals in exactly the same way that adult rape victims can. It is important that children in this position receive the help they need, and it is also important that the perpetrators of such acts are identified in order to prevent them from harming other children.

Unfortunately, the same lack of precision in current usage sometimes means that children who consented to mutually desired sexual acts are often treated as though they were victims and in many cases, after the fact, come to believe it. Likewise, the adults involved in such interactions are treated exactly as if they were violent rapists as well, suggesting that in the long term, the treatment of consensual acts as synonymous with non-consensual ones leads to many of the same consequences as a genuine non-consensual act, except that the consequences are now iatrogenic in origin.

Biased Terminology

An article appeared in The Journal of Sex Research Vol. 30, No.3, pp. 260-269 August 1993 describing the use of biased terminology, which seriously distorts how people think about child abuse and child sexual experiences with adults.

The article is titled: "Biased Terminology Effects and Biased Information Processing in Research on Adult-Nonadult Sexual Interactions: An Empirical Investigation, and is authored by Bruce Rind and Robert Bauserman.

Here is the abstract of the article:

Abstract

Adult-child and adult-adolescent sexual interactions have generally been described in the professional literature with value-laden negative terms. Recently, a number of researchers have criticized this state of affairs, claiming that such usage is likely to have biasing effects.

The current investigation examined empirically the biasing impact of negative terminology.

Eighty undergraduate students read a shortened journal article that used either neutral or negative terms to describe a number of cases of sexual relationships between male adolescents and male adults - the shortened article was adapted from Tindall (1978). Additionally, students were exposed either to descriptive information or descriptive plus long-term nonnegative outcome information. The purpose of this manipulation was to examine whether students would process the neutral and positive data in a biased fashion, because these data contradict strongly held assumptions of harm as a consequence of these contacts. Students' judgments were negatively biased by the negative terminology. The students also exhibited evidence for biased processing of the nonnegative outcome information.

Please see below for a link to the on-line article.

See also

The Trauma Myth by Susan Clancy

External links

• The article mentioned above may be read in full at the following link:
• https://www.ipce.info/library_3/files/rind_biased.htm