What is Child Sexual Abuse?

Child Sexual Abuse (CSA) is one of the worst forms of violence against children and adolescents.

“CSA occurs when children are involved in sexual activities that they do not fully understand, to which they are not in a position to give informed consent, or for which they are evolutionarily immature and cannot consent to, or in sexual activities that transgress laws or social restrictions.”

CSA appears in activities between a child and an adult or between a child and another person who, “because of his/her age or his/her development, is in a position of responsibility, trust or power.”

It is also often considered abuse when the child is used for sexual stimulation of the aggressor or in sexual activities, for example, in exhibitionism or when an adult makes a child pose nude and forces him/her to watch pornography or have sex with other children, besides other possibilities. Touching, rubbing and physical contact are also abusive interactions.

Any Child and Adolescent (C&A) can be a victim of sexual abuse, regardless of their age, gender, ethnicity and sociocultural level.

In most detected cases, there are usually neither physical injuries that allow determining the aggressor, nor specific behaviors that the victim children show.

Nor are there any witnesses, given that sexual abuse is often done secretly. The majority of abuses are usually perpetrated by well-known adults, that is, reliable adults for the family or respected members in a community that live or are close to children and adolescents (C&A).

After suffering an abusive situation, C&A are abruptly expelled from the world of children and subjected to a situation highly harmful to their development, which produces irreparable damage to physical, mental and moral integrity.

It is important to keep in mind that C&A are always victims with respect to the aggressor. They are deceived, confused, seduced with special attentions, gifts, games or demonstrations of affection to achieve confidence progressively.

Child sexual abuse is kept silent because the children are threatened by the aggressor in relation to the loss of the family, they receive messages of threat of physical harm or death, and feelings of guilt and shame increase due to not being able to stop the abuse: they remain silent because they do not want to be accused of complicity and complacency with the sexual abuse they suffered, and they do not want to be stigmatized and rejected.