Abstract
Defining sexual contact between adults and children as child abuse has been a relatively recent phenomenon. Historically, such acts have been seen as sins (when defined by the churches of the world), criminal acts (when defined by legal-judicial systems), and sexual deviance (when defined by mental health professionals whose primary focus has been on the adult perpetrators of the acts). To conceptualize adult-child sexual contact as different from, and as more than a sin, a crime, and a sexual deviance requires a reframing of the problem. The impetus for this change, that is, viewing adult-child sexual contact as child abuse, has come from three areas of clinical study: physical child abuse, rape of adult women, and the field of victimology. The leading pediatricians working with battered children were slow to recognize the seriousness and scope of child sexual abuse. This is understandable because usually there are no physical findings of trauma following sexual assault of children. Had it not been for the women’s movement and the establishment of clinics for victims of rape, the recognition of child sexual abuse might have been slower in developing. Even so, it was not until the mid-to-late 1970s that there was significant awareness in the United States of this social problem.
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© 1983 Plenum Press, New York
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Mrazek, P.J. (1983). Sexual Abuse of Children. In: Lahey, B.B., Kazdin, A.E. (eds) Advances in Clinical Child Psychology. Advances in Clinical Child Psychology, vol 6. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-9814-1_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-9814-1_6
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