Chapter 6

Sexual Encounters with Older
Children, Adolescents, and Adults

In the process of growing up, it is almost inevitable that a child will have one or more encounters of a sexual nature in which the other party is either too young or too old to be regarded as a peer. Most of these encounters are accidental and incidental in the life of the child. Gagnon (1965), in reanalyzing Kinsey data on encounters of females who as girls had had encounters with an adult male, found that the first and largest group was composed of persons reporting single events of a clearly accidental nature usually with a complete stranger. A second group of accidental cases consisted of those who reported multiple accidental contacts, but with different men, in different circumstances, and with the events fairly widely separated over time.

There are many cases of someone exposing himself or herself to a child, encounters wherein the one who initiates the exposing is an older child, a preadolescent, or an adolescent. There are more occasions of this type of sexual encounter than there are encounters involving children and adults. For example, the ages of the female partners of the preadolescent boys who participated in sexual encounters in the Ramsey (1943) study were in 80 percent of the cases within one year of the same age as that of the boy; in 11 percent of the cases the girls were two or more years older; and for the remaining 9 percent the partners were two or more years younger. The girls involved were usually neighborhood friends, female relatives, girls met during family visits, females of the same family, and occasionally an older girl or woman. Since the preadolescent or adolescent who initiates a sexual encounter with a child is usually known by the child and by the child's parents, he or she dare not be too aggressive and often feels the need to be devious because of the danger of being detected, embarrassed, and perhaps punished. Sometimes the child exposes herself or himself at the instigation of the older person.

The very first sexually related experience I remember was with another girl. When I was four or five, this older neighbor girl once enticed me with an offer of money to remove my panties and pull up my skirt in her presence. This experience was purely exhibitory, as there was no bodily contact between us. The inquisitiveness on her part helped to strengthen an already growing feeling in me that the genital area was "special" in some way and should not be shown to others since she felt it necessary to get my consent. However, at this age, it did not seem inappropriate to me that another girl would be interested in my genitals.

This happened when I was about ten. Two sisters who lived next door and I [a boy] used to play in my playhouse. We'd sit and tell spook stories. One day the older sister, who was probably fifteen, made a bargain with me. She would show various parts of her body if I would show mine. I agreed. She then exposed her breasts. But when it was my turn I became too embarrassed to show a girl my penis and ran away. From then on both girls refused to play with me.

When I was seven years old my parents asked a thirteen-year-old boy to come and "sit" with me while they went out. I went to bed. He got on top of the covers next to me. After trying to sleep I turned around to tell him to quit squirming because I couldn't sleep, when I noticed his pants were unzipped and his penis was out. Being a seven-year-old, I bluntly told him that that was not nice and that he'd better get off my bed.

My first acquaintance with sex was in second and third grade when I began to talk with older boys and girls because of my early maturation. The older children told me that girls had a hole between their legs called a "cunt." They told me to look at a cunt as soon as possible. Well, curiosity had been invoked in me, so I stripped the girl next door and looked at her.

Several times when I was young it seemed as if exhibiting my body in the presence of another boy would be exciting. I remember one situation in particular with a boy three years younger than 1; 1 was about seven years old at the time. We were both wearing swimming suits, but were walking together at some distance from the beach. I openly fondled myself to the point of erection and then displayed my penis to the younger boy. Then I urged him to pull down his suit also, but for some reason he refused. Yet he was not at all subtle at looking at my erect penis.

Sexual encounters often involve an adult male exposing his genitals to one or more children, especially girls, without their being any physical contact between them. In some cases the exhibitionist also masturbates in their presence. It is not uncommon for children who grow up in urban environments to encounter such exhibitionists. A child, especially one who has had a sheltered upbringing, may find the experience upsetting.

The darkness of the theater made us [seven-year-olds] a little reticent to search for a seat until our eyes readjusted to the indistinctness. To my right sat two of my friends and next to one friend sat a man. He was no concern of ours because many times parents accompanied their children to the movies. What happened then took place so quietly and swiftly I doubt that anyone else in the theater was aware of the horrible sensation that we felt. All of a sudden I was aware that my friends were not watching the movie, but their attention and eyes were focused on the man. His raincoat was open and he had fully exposed himself and was manipulating his genitals. He seemed to be almost laughing softly, and sat there staring at us. We did not fully understand what was happening. We sat there and stared in awe with feelings of curiosity and inquisitiveness while greatly mixed with emotions of distaste and repulsiveness. Yet, we did not scream or break into hysterics, but sat as though we were hypnotized. We must have all felt as though the sight was wrong, because in unison the three of us quietly left our seats and headed towards the back of the theater.

When I was very young, maybe seven or eight years old, I got to know an old couple who lived next door. I never really liked the man though, because he was hunched over and always seemed a little friendly, especially when his wife was gone. One day my friend and I were supposed to take something over to the neighbor lady, but the lady wasn't home and only the old man was there. He was friendly to us as usual and gave us candy. Then he told us that he had something special to show us, but we had to promise not to tell anyone what we saw. Of course we were curious, so he took us in the bathroom, unzipped his pants and showed us his pubic hairs, saying that they were about the longest ones anyone could have. We were really shocked and left immediately. I don't think that I was so scared by what happened as by what could happen if anyone found out.

Touching and fondling of a sensual and sexual nature are experiences at children can have with persons of almost any age. Some are accidental r incidental to other activity; some are pleasant to the child, others are not.

I do recall that I had pleasurable experiences connected to the rectal portion of a physical examination given me by the doctor during one illness when I was about three.

In first grade, I can remember my first actual erection. I was sitting on my teacher's lap. I was neither ashamed nor embarrassed at the little bulge in my pants.

Children seek body contact with others. In one survey, kindergarten teachers reported that children often sought to be held close, to sit on the teacher's lap, and to be kissed. In another survey, the majority of teachers ported that the major motivation of the children appeared to be to experience security, closeness to an adult, and affection; 20 percent reported that n some instances the child explored the teacher's body (as reported by Reinisch 1987). Many times the touching or fondling involves a child having contact with someone only a few years younger or older for security, but out of curiosity, or for pleasure.

When I was about seven years old, my eleven-year-old neighbor girlfriend and I would get together and play games which involved fondling and exploring each other's body. A game that we played was referred to as "upper" and "lower" and this would include choosing one of the words and the other person would stimulate that portion of the body for about ten to fifteen minutes. This we did anywhere since it did not involve taking off clothes, just placing the hand inside the clothes. By sexual contacts I had a release of strange feelings inside me and got much physical satisfaction when arms were holding me.

I [a twelve-year-old male] was curious about the little girls' genital system and I proceeded to suggest a game where I could explore this area. We turned off the fights and I played the role of monster. The other children were to run around the room and keep away from me. When I caught them I would supposedly eat them. The game went fine and I achieved what I had set out to do-to find out what a girl's penis" felt like when I squeezed it. As the children ran from me I would catch a boy and throw him down and pretend I was eating him and give him a little hit on the rump or on the leg, but when I caught a little girl I immediately grabbed her vaginal area with my whole hand and rubbed and squeezed it a couple or three times. While I did this I distracted her attention from my grip by mumbling a few monster groans and yelling "I'm going to eat you."

From my kindergarten year, there is one incident which stands out in my mind. My sixteen-year-old uncle was baby-sitting while my parents were out for the evening. After I got ready for bed he asked me if I wanted a back rub, I said yes, and I laid down on the bed. He rubbed my back and after a few minutes he pulled down my pants. He told me not to say anything and proceeded to examine and finger my genital area. He said that he just wanted to see something. I don't exactly remember my reaction although I know I was too embarrassed to tell my mother.

There was an older boy who lived on our block who initiated sexual contact with me. He was about fifteen years old and I [a girl] about ten, I believe. He used to tease us and play school with us. Whenever he'd punish me he'd take me into his little room behind the furnace and pretend to whip me. One time though he put his hand down my pants. I got scared but he convinced me it was all right to do. From then on he would put his hand in my pants whenever an opportunity presented itself. He even started putting my hand in his pants to play with his penis. Once he baby-sat with me and brought a friend. I enjoyed their attention and obliged them in sex play. They took me into my room separately and showed me their penises and had me fondle diem. I remember thinking that they were huge. This type of activity continued with these two for about four months. I was getting very upset about my relations with these boys and decided to call it all off. I was beginning to change to conform to our society's standards.

I think I found out about intercourse and conception from an older neighbor boy [probably about three years older]. He would give me pornographic books and magazines to read, and when he had a chance, would fondle my body some. This was happening when I was about in sixth grade.

The older of the two does not have to be much older to impress the younger partner and win compliance, as in the following case.

He came and sat down next to me at the party, put his arm around me and kissed me, at the same time putting his hand on my breast. Since it had been arranged that I was to be with him, and since I assumed that this was as accepted as was kissing, I did not resist. It was important to me that he was interested since he was a year older than me, and therefore would be quite a status builder. We spent this evening together, he quite fascinated with my breasts (he told me I had quite a handful), but this was the extent of the sex play. We were never together again, nor did we even ever acknowledge that we knew each other upon meeting.

It is not unusual for a child to be touched or fondled by an older man, often a grandfatherly figure well known to the child, a man who takes the child into his lap and tells stories or reads a book. For young children there is a greater likelihood of such an encounter with an older man that they know than there is that an older stranger will expose himself to them.

"Grandpa" (my aunt's father), who was about eighty-five years old, piled the three of us on his lap to read us a story from a children's book , At age seven, I still enjoyed having older people read to me. After he finished reading he placed the book on the coffee table and just talked with us about what we had been doing. As he was talking, I felt his aged hand reach into my underpants and touch me. I was pretty young so I really didn't know what to do or say. I felt like telling what he was doing, but I was too afraid so I remained completely silent.

Our next door neighbors had their grandfather living with them, whom I had admired very much for the stories he told. One day while sitting on his lap, he started rubbing my genitals. I tried to make an excuse to leave, but he would not let me. I was scared. Finally, I broke away from the old man. This happened every time I would visit there until I refused to go into the house anymore.

Sexual encounters with someone older often prove to be a learning experience. Boys in particular, and especially those from lower socio-economic classes, receive considerable information and "help' on sex matters from older boys, or from adults, and in many cases their first heterosexual experience is with older girls who are already experienced (Kinsey et al. 1948). Rainwater (1970) found that preadolescents in the Pruitt Igo area of St. Louis, a federal slum, showed a great interest in the grown-up world. These preadolescents observed adolescents engaging in sexual activity since much adolescent sexual activity took place outside the home-in hallways, stairwells, galleries, laundry rooms, and on the project grounds. Adults in Pruitt Igo thought of preadolescence as a period of intense imitation of adults, unlike middle-class adults, who are more likely to think of their children as innocent of such knowledge and activity. 

 Children were often present during conversations about sexual behavior, a favorite topic of conversation among both adolescents and adults. They learned the words, concepts, implications, and meaning of sexual terms and could appear remarkably sophisticated even though they had not had exposure to sexual behavior directly. One of the ways that their sexual knowledge developed was through learning to master traditional stories or "toasts" of the folk culture. Actual observation of sexual activity made it possible for many preadolescents to tell stories abut such events. By preadolescence they not only knew "how to do but they also knew that sexual activity is regarded as desirable. According to Rainwater, they moved early and easily from listening to sex conversation and from passive observation to active participation. Not that they moved directly to sexual intercourse; their relationships were primarily social and were modeled after the "going steady" pattern of youth. Play activity often eventuated in playing at sexual intercourse, which may or may not involve actual penetration. The girls were ambivalent about playing sex with a boy; however, they were committed anticipatorily to the roles of sex partners as part of their developing conception of themselves as women.

The following cases of middle-class children also have an instructive element.

I remember one scene very well. He had an older sister. Now that sex was beginning to interest me, I wanted to know what his sister was like. In short, I had very little knowledge of girls. He described her very unattractively. In fact, it made me somewhat nauseated to think of a girl in respect to her genitals.

My first encounter with sex as a reality was when I was about seven or eight. A helpful older friend casually offered me a rather vague definition of coitus. I wasn't really at all sure of what he meant. It seemed like a strange thing to do with a girl as the thought had never entered my mind before. There was no desire on my part to learn anything more about it at the time.

When I was eight years old, a boy at the age of puberty fascinated me with off-color stories which I really didn't understand. Following a few nights of dirty jokes, he proceeded to demonstrate masturbation to me. When he had succeeded in reaching orgasm, he suggested that I try like stimulation. There were no results in my efforts whatsoever.

My cousin [age 13] and I [age 10] would lie on the couch, unzip each other's pants and fondle, caress and masturbate each other. We would take turns stimulating each other and then fondle each other simultaneously. I received great pleasure from this.

When I was approximately nine years old I played with a 14-year-old boy. One day when we were out in the woods he unzipped his pants and began to masturbate. I didn't really know why. He told me that it just felt good, that it was fun, and I should try it. So I did, and it was fun. I masturbated by myself following this episode. I also masturbated with the neighbor boy, not performing the act on each other but being in the same room together.

Boys sometimes engage in fellatio with older boys or men.

When I was eight years old a boy at the age of puberty enlisted my aid in forming a "club." Each meeting had to be brought to order by rubbing the blunt edge of a knife along each other's penis. Following this we engaged in fellatio, for him to orgasm, for me there was no apparent purpose.

One day the adolescent boy who taught me how to masturbate told me what a "blow job" was and wanted me to give him one. I made a feeble attempt at it but I thought it tasted awful.

Among the Siwams of Africa, all men and boys engage in anal intercourse. Males are singled out as peculiar if they do not indulge in these same-sex activities. Prominent Siwam men lend their sons to each other, and they talk about their masculine love affairs as openly as they discuss their love of women. Both married and unmarried males are expected to have both same- and opposite-sex affairs. Among Aborigines of Australia, this type of coitus is also a recognized custom between unmarried and uninitiated boys (Ford and Beach 195 1). Among the Aranda of Australia, pederasty is a recognized custom. Commonly a man who is fully initiated but not yet married takes a boy ten or twelve years old who lives with him as a wife for several years, until the older man marries. The boy must belong to the proper marriage class from which the man might take a wife. 

Anal intercourse is not a common children's activity in America, but it does enter into the sexual practice of some. In the following case, a boy of five or six is introduced to both oral and anal sex, as well as to mutual masturbation.

My first sexual experience with another boy came at the age of five or six, when I would play with this boy who was about sixteen. He would ask me if I wanted to go into his house for something to eat, like some cookies or something. Of course I would go. Next he would ask me if I would go into the bedroom with him. Upon entering the bedroom, he would undress and ask me to do the same. I would, probably out of fright. After undressing, he would tell me to bend over and then he would insert his erect penis into my anus and start thrusting back and forth. He would then stimulate my penis and want me to do the same to him. We also masturbated each other, with him reaching orgasm and myself only being stimulated. I also spent some time in oral-genital contact. I did find the whole experience quite pleasing and continued to engage in these activities for a week or two. Then, and I don't recall why, we suddenly stopped doing it completely.

I [eleven years old] had become friendly with a boy five years younger than myself and soon started thinking of sex. We began by fondling each other's genitals and soon proceeded to playing games involving our sex organs. This relationship went on for a month; we attempted to engage in penile-anal intercourse.

Sexual intercourse is not a common form of sex play in which children in U.S. society engage, while it is established practice in some societies. Among the Lepcha of India, older men occasionally copulate with girls as young as eight years of age (Ford and Beach 195 1). This is not regarded as a criminal offense. Girls in Basutoland, South Africa, are expected to attire themselves with rings or braided grass and cowhide, and white clay is rubbed on their bodies and legs. These young girls are first instructed for a period of some weeks in the details of sexual intercourse, after which they are circumcised (that is, the clitoris is amputated). This is done to prevent them from engaging in promiscuous sexual activity when they are married. As part of this rite, they act out coital positions with each other (Sexology XXX, 1964).

Among preadolescents in other societies-the Moari of New Zealand, the Trobrianders of Melanesia, the Chewa of Africa, and the Lepcha of India-it is common for girls and boys to be active participants in full sex relations several years before puberty and in some cases much earlier. In permissive societies, there may be active instruction in sex matters by older members of the group (Ford and Beach 1951).

In most societies, adults are active in trying to prevent children and pre-adolesceitts from having sexual encounters rather than initiating them into such encounters. In some societies, adults attempt to deny young children any form of sexual experience or sex education. In the past this was the prevailing practice in many homes in the United States. Many adults avoid mentioning matters of sexual significance in the presence of children. Among the natives of the western Carolines, sex is never discussed in the presence of children, especially girls. Cuna children of Panama remain ignorant of sexual matters, as far as adult instruction is concerned, until the last stages of the marriage ceremony. Chagga of Tanganyika children are told that babies come out of the forest (Ford and Beach 195 1). In a number of these societies, particular pains are taken to prevent offspring from accidentally observing sexual behavior.

One method of controlling the sexual activity of children is to separate the sexes and keep them under surveillance. Among the Murgen of Australia, boys are removed from the family dwelling to the boys' house or bachelors' house when they are four or five years old; this is done for the specific purpose of preventing them from witnessing sexual behavior at home. The Panamanian Cuna children are not even allowed to watch animals give birth (Ford and Beach 1951).

Among the Abipone of South America, boys and girls are strictly segregated at all times and premarital chastity is said to be universal. A similar situation exists among the Arapaho, Cheyenne, and Papago of North America, and Wapisiana of British Guiana, all of whom keep the sexes strictly apart from childhood. Boys and girls never associate in the absence of chaperones (Ford and Beach 1951).

In the United States, parents, the church, the school, courts, and other agencies are influential in defining and controlling sexual behavior. For example, the school-grade school, junior high school, high school-is permissive in that it plans dances and parties for boys and girls, but chaperonage is commonly provided and erotic behavior is proscribed. The schools take a proprietary interest in the total life of the students and are sometimes more restrictive than are parents.

But communities in the United States vary greatly. Kinsey et al. (1948) found that interest in coitus and knowledge and acceptance of premarital coitus were well established among boys age seven in some American communities, and in some instances as early as four years of age. Especially in some urban communities, by age seven boys knew that coitus was one of the activities that most of their older acquaintances were engaging in; and they had already learned that coitus was one of the things considered highly desirable. Much of the sexual sophistication came from associating with older companions. Children overhear adolescent boys talking to one another about naked women and couples who have had sex relations. The size and shape of a woman's vagina are topics of conversation among boys and men, and younger boys learn from older males that women are objects of sexual gratification. As a consequence, they orient their thoughts and behavior in accordance with what other males expect of them as young, on-the-make machos. 

Kinsey et al. (1948) found that boys from comparatively sheltered upper socio-economic level homes were not exposed to such experiences and were likely to confine their sex play to exhibition and manual manipulation of the genitals. These boys did not attempt coitus because, in many instances, they had not learned that there is such a possibility. In spite of their limited contact with coitus or information about coitus, children raised in homes of educated parents have often seen adult genitalia at an early age, primarily because of the greater acceptance of nudity in their homes when compared to the homes of others.

The following cases show some of the naivety present in sexual encounters between children and someone older.

My [a girl] earliest experience with sex occurred when I was approximately five years old. One day a buddy of my brother's came over who was eleven years old. My brother was not home at the time so he asked if I would play with him. I said I would. Somehow we ended up in the haymow sliding around in the hay. Later, resting on top of the hay, he asked me if I wanted to play doctor. Thinking it was all in fun, I said yes. He informed me that he was the doctor and I the patient. I was about to have a baby and he was going to operate. He unzipped my pants, took them off, and proceeded to do the same with his. He tried to have intercourse but did not succeed. Thinking it all was a game, and of course knowing nothing about sex at that time, I thought it was perfectly all right.

In the following case a girl eight years old and "not very mature" was with her cousin, age sixteen, who was "sort of left with the responsibility of baby-sitting."

He had me undress in his room and he began to fondle me and investigate the various unfamiliar parts of my body. Then he laid me on the bed and he also took off his clothes before lying down on the bed with me. He continued to caress me and soon became quite excited and then he attempted to have intercourse with me, but the pain was too great for me and I began to cry, and there was also some bleeding in the vaginal area. I ran to the bathroom and stayed there crying until my parents returned a short time later. When my parents returned my cousin was hysterical and running around gathering clothes and food in preparation for running away from home. The calm and reasonableness shown by my parents saved the day for both of us.

In the following case involving urethral damage, the sexual naiveté of the two middle-class boys is apparent.

We two boys, I age seven and my friend twelve years old, came from middle-class families having many interests in common, such as baseball and hiking. Sex, however, was not one of these interests for me as it was for him. I cannot exactly remember how it all started, but I think it was in the form of the "doctor" game. He fondled my genitals and encouraged me to do the same to him. It was a new experience for me, but I cannot recall if it was pleasurable or not. His erect penis was quite a mystery to me, and I had no idea of why it got that way. At one time he was quite rough with my penis and as a consequence there was some blood in my urine. This frightened me, but it seemed to frighten him more when I told him that I was going to tell my mother. Since he was older than I was and one of the few playmates that I had, I did not tell.

It is widely held that children would be better able to deal with or avoid sexual encounters of the kind discussed in this chapter if age-appropriate sexuality education was generally available to them. We discuss the issue of sexuality education in Chapter 7.

Most of the studies of child sexual activity wherein the participants have been of markedly different ages have dealt only with clinical or offender populations, and few studies have sought any but the negative reactions of children to these sexual experiences-thus giving a distorted view of reality (Kilpatrick 1992). 

The clinical samples consist almost exclusively of those suffering relatively serious negative consequences with 20 to 25 percent of the cases of suspected child-adult sexual abuse showing signs of physical trauma or injury.

 The recent study by Kilpatrick (1992) differs from other studies in that it includes no clinical or offender population and allows for respondents to give positive and neutral, as well as negative, responses to their childhood sexual experiences. The sample population was 501 Southern adult women who were asked to recall their childhood sexual experiences. Sixty-seven percent of the white respondents and 36 percent of the black respondents reported having sexual experiences as children. Kilpatrick found that the larger proportion of women (67%) remembered having participated voluntarily rather than involuntarily in sexual activity, and most reported having been active in initiating such activity, while a smaller proportion (33%) felt that they had in some way been pressured or forced. Thirty-eight percent of the women found their experiences to be pleasant, 37 percent neither pleasant nor unpleasant, and 25 percent found the experiences to be unpleasant. Sixty-eight percent reported having had overall positive responses to their sexual experiences, while negative reactions of anger, fear, or shock were reported by 32 percent. 

 Despite the negative responses, 72 percent felt that their child sexuality was not harmful, and 83 percent felt it was not abusive. The women had had partners in their sexual experiences as children who were relatives and non-relatives, as well as older and younger. Most women had had their sexual experiences with other children; only 17 percent of the white sample and 5 percent of the black sample reported having had partners who were at least five years older than they were. Like Kilpatrick Goldman and Goldman (1988) found in a retrospective study of 1,000 Australian youth that most had either positive or neutral feelings regarding their childhood sexual experiences, and most of their experiences had been with children their own age. 

The type or age of partners did not appear to be significantly related to the women's functioning as adults, which challenges a linear assumption that all children are victimized by any type of sexual experience with a person who is five or more years older (see also Constantine 198 lb).
The sexual activity engaged in was "kissing and hugging in a sexual way" (37%) followed by exposing of the genitals. The only other activity that 5 percent or more had participated in was masturbation. Only 2 percent had engaged in intercourse by age fourteen or younger. 

Despite these findings of little reported harm or abuse from their childhood sexual experiences, Kilpatrick (1992) warned that under no circumstance should her findings be used to sanction child-adult sexual relations. Kilpatrick agreed with Finkelhor (1979) that a child is not in a position to give informed consent, and such relationships involve unequal power on the part of the participants. Kilpatrick concluded that in child-adult sexual activity there is psychological, if not physical, coercion and it should be treated as such. 

The question of child sexual activity being abusive remains a moot question in U.S. society. There is no universally accepted definition of child sexual abuse and no general agreement about the effect on children of sexual experiences with persons somewhat older. Evaluations of child sexual experiences vary. Some use sex abuse as a catchall term for almost any type of child-adult contact. Others see any experience as abusive if the older participant is at least five years older than the child (Finkelhor 1979).

Furthermore, there is to date no consensus on the scope of child-adult sexual activity or the emotional and behavioral consequences for the child (Konker 1992). Even the professional groups involved in dealing with individual cases of child sexual abuse differ in their definitions. Each tends to use definitional criteria that are most in line with the goals of their profession (Haugaard and Reppucci 1988). There is increasing agreement among social workers and other helping professions that sexual abuse of children does involve coercion or nonconsensual sexual acts (Kilpatrick 1992).

The term child abuse was not used before the 1960s, and its definitional reach has expanded in the years since. Broadening the definition of the terms child abuse and especially child sexual abuse, after the initial paper by Kempe and associates (1962) on the "battered child syndrome" and the widespread attention it received in the media, was due to several factors. 

First was concern for the well-being of children, though there is to date no consensus on what constitutes sexual well-being for children. Second, child advocates felt that it was important to alter and broaden the consciousness of children about what constitutes abuse. 

The child, or the adult whom the therapist suspects may have been abused as a child, often has a definition of sexual abuse that does not include what was done to him or her, as was true in many of the cases in which children talk about their experiences; therefore the therapist feels it is incumbent to ask about specific behaviors and feelings that the therapist regards as indicative of abuse (Hunter 1990). It stands to reason that the broader the therapist's definition of what constitutes sexual abuse, the more abuse the therapist will find. 

According to Gilbert (1991), another reason for broadening the definition of the term child sexual abuse was to persuade the public that the problem is vastly larger than was commonly recognized. And it has worked; a broader definition has alerted both professionals and the public to the prevalence of child sexual experiences that should be defined as abusive. Only one in ten Americans thought that child abuse was a serious problem in 1978, in contrast to nine out of ten by 1982 (Gelles and Straus 1988). 

A recent poll of mental health and legal professionals in Virginia shows that 20 percent of them believe that frequent hugging of a ten- or fifteen-year-old child by his or her parents requires intervention. Most of the professionals felt that no intervention was necessary if a parent often kissed a five-year-old on the lips, but from 44 to 67 percent felt some intervention should be undertaken recently felt some intervention should be undertaken if ten- or fifteen-year-old children were kissed. Similarly, 90 percent felt that some type of intervention was called for if a parent often appeared nude in front of a ten- or fifteen-year-old child, and 75 percent if the child was five years old (Haugaard and Reppucci 1988).

In a detailed review of nineteen studies concerned with the prevalence of child sexual abuse among females, the results ranged from a low of 6 percent to a high of 62 percent of all females reporting abuse (Peters, Wyatt, and Finkelhor 1986). Such statistics reflect differences in definitions of child sexual abuse used in various studies, different populations surveyed, and differences in questions asked of the sample population.

The field of child sexuality is in its infancy as far as defining what is abusive and in identifying, preventing, and treating sexual activity that is abusive. The efforts that are being made by institutions and professionals need to be supported, while at the same time efforts to increase our knowledge base and efforts to address the need for uniform standards of training, supervision, intervention, protocols, counseling and therapy, evidence collecting, and civil and criminal court testimony need to be pressed forward (Konker 1992).

A family needs to be close. An infant especially, needs to feel accepted and attended to by its parents and to feel closely identified with them (Bowlby 1965). Giovacchini (1986) referred to this primitive form of erotic need and preoccupation embracing the need to be cared for, fed, nurtured, and comforted as pre-genital. Freud also ascribed sexual feelings to young children, referring to these early sexual feeling as pre-genital in contrast to genital sexual feelings that occur with gonadal maturation (Brill 1948). 

Meeting the infant's attachment needs does not need to include fondling and stroking the stomach, stimulating the child's genitals, passionately kissing on the lips, or performing fellatio on a male infant. These and other practices have been found to occur among incestuous mothers (Chasnoff 1986; Stroufe and Ward 1980). Such behaviors are seductive. They are insensitive and unresponsive to the real needs of the child and draw the child into patterns of interaction that may be over-stimulating and inappropriate; the infant primarily needs affectionate care and nurturance (Sroufe and Ward 1980). On the other hand, it is important that overt erotic attraction and gratification occur in the parent-child relationship, but it is important that it be regulated by the family (Parsons 1954).Dysfunctional families are often dysfunctional in that they evince too much interconnectedness and enmeshment, or homeostasis (Alexander 1985). 

Genital eroticism is both permitted and expected of the marital pair and, in a well-regulated home, they are considered to have a monopoly on the right to genital eroticism. Pre-genital eroticism, on the other hand, is approved in the early mother-child relationship and also in the father-child relationship. Strong motivation is built up in the child through the enjoyable erotic relationships. The extent of the erotic involvement and its control is the parent's responsibility. Without such control the parent-child relationship, in fact the family sexual culture, will become incestuous. 

Finkelhor (1978) distinguished three dimensions of family sexuality that are determinative. First, families may prompt positive or negative attitudes in their children toward sexuality. In sex-positive families, children receive accurate information about sex and are given positive attitudes about their bodies and shown physical affection, while in sex-negative families sex is fraught with anxiety and taboos. The second dimension concerns how sexualized the family interaction becomes. In highly sexualized families, members use one another as sexual objects, while low sexualized families discourage sexual activity inside the family. The third dimension involves personal boundaries. Clear boundaries imply respect for the privacy of each member of the family, with a clear differentiation of sex roles between adults and children. With poor personal boundaries, family members intrude on one another, and adult sexual behavior is not clearly distinguished from child sexual behavior. 

The 1986 World Health Organization report on child sexual abuse describes what it calls an incestogenic family as a family that is socially isolated; the father is often depressive and possessive and tends to sexualize his own problems and his relations with the child or children; the mother often appears to be psychologically submissive and unable to protect the children.
In families wherein a parent becomes sexually involved with a child, it is most often an experience involving father and daughter. Summit and Kryso (1978) asserted that a father should be harmless for his daughter to flirt with. He should approve, admire, and respond to her growing sexual attraction and should provide a controlled, self-limited prototype of the sensual experiences she will develop with other men later on. Both father and mother should share this sense of appropriateness of the father-daughter prototype romance, and both should be comfortable in recognizing and defining appropriate limits. (Summit and Kryso 1978:123)

In such a relationship incestuous activity begins only if and when the father bends these limits and the mother does not interfere. When a father interacts with his daughter, he may at first have no intention that it shall be sexual, but there is a body of clinical evidence that shows that incestuous desires are regularly engendered within the nuclear family and are kept in restraint only through persistent individual repression and social pressure. There does not appear to be any natural revulsion against incest in young children. 

The impression is gained that fathers are often "careful seducers," cunning in their attempts to persuade a child of theirs and able to break down any resistance with a high degree of success (Frude 1982). Sexual behavior between father and daughter is often marked by a gradual escalation from fondling and petting to more specifically genital behavior. One daughter reported that she en oyed it and was fully orgasmic in the relationship (Frude 1982); Renshaw (1977) reported that twenty-two of thirty-two male and female sons and daughters climaxed in such father-child sexual relationships. 

It has been said that children are easy to seduce because they want to be seduced. This is true if by that we mean that infants and small children want to be held and caressed, or as Bowlby (1965) has said, the drive of the organism toward achieving good personal relations is real and persistent. And if they have learned that sexual behavior is a way to gain attention of a parent, such behavior may become pronounced as they curry attention. This does not imply that the child recognizes the sexual meaning of his or her behavior in any adult sense, nor does it attribute culpability to the child in any ensuing incestuous activity that an adult may initiate. The child uses it instead to obtain nurturance (Rosenfeld 1979). 

Some families claim to practice family sexual expression in a highly educated, sophisticated, and carefully responsible manner with benefit to their children (Nelson 1979). There are those among them who have been influenced by Wilhelm Reich, Ren6 Guyon, and others, and they are convinced that they have a responsibility to help their children express their infantile sexuality in a genital way (Miller 1984). Such behavior leaves many questions, however. Are not nurturing and affectionate intimacy sufficient to socialize children into this later sensual aspect of life? Will children from such families continue to feel that sexual intimacy in the family was right and good for them? Will they subsequently be able to establish satisfying sexual relationships with others beyond the home? For now at least, a more conservative course of action appears to be more prudent for the family.

Father-daughter incest receives a great deal of attention in the media and is by far more frequently recorded both clinically and in court records, but sibling sexual activity is thought to be much more common. Siblings, especially those who are close in age, spend much time interacting with each other during the growing-up years. They live in the same household, are constantly present, and share space, toys, clothes, and the attention of their parents and of each other. 

The emphasis in the literature on sibling interaction has been largely limited to consideration of only one dimension, namely, sibling rivalry. But sibling interaction includes much more than just rivalry. Abramovitch et al. (1982) observed children from two-child, middle-class, suburban families, following them from approximately one and a half years old until the older sibling was approximately five or six years old. They found that for intervals as long as three years, siblings spent a great deal of time interacting with each other. They were deeply involved with each other, regardless of the age intervals between them or the sex composition of the pair. They treated each other in aggressive ways, but they also cooperated, helped, and acted affectionately to each other. In other words, they demonstrated a full range of social interaction. 

The authors concluded that sibling relationships have something in common that is different from other relationships, "perhaps closer, deeper, more automatic and spontaneous" (Abramovitch et al. 1982:84-85). 

Tsukada (1979), in a review of the literature on sibling interaction, found as well that concentrating on rivalry hides the richness and variety of experience that is sibling interaction. Tsukada concluded that sibling relationships "provide a child in most families with companionship, affection, and understanding, and fulfill needs for peer group association. Furthermore, sibling associations are lifelong, and in many cases provide significant relationships in adult life" (Tsukada 1979:232). It has been said that the degree of affection between siblings as adolescents is second only to the mother-child tie.

Given the constant, close, intimate interaction of siblings, it is understandable that a certain amount of sex play occurs between them. Some of it grows out of their great liking for each other, as the following cases illustrate.

I was 8 or 9 and my brother was 10. We were playing in a relatively secluded place, the sun was shining, and we undressed almost completely. He suggested that we lie down. Without objection (I always used to obey him), I did. He had something in mind; he was sexually excited. I did not feel anything sexual, but I was flattered that he wanted to play with me and excited that he wanted to be intimate with me. He performed sexual intercourse with me, but stopped after some minutes. Then we got up and went on as usual.

My brother is a year older than I am. We were very fond of each other. When I was in seventh grade we got very sexually involved. He told me all about sexual intercourse. Every day after school we would go to his room and talk and fondle one another. He had some rubbers and asked if he could have sexual intercourse with me. I almost let him do it, but it was painful. He was very gentle and he said he wouldn't do it. Sometimes we would play rape and I would be in his room and he'd run in. We would fight and finally he'd rip my clothes off. This was one of our favorite games.

My first erection having to do with sexual activity occurred around age 7. 1 was sitting on the floor in the living room next to my sister, four years older, who was lying face down. The next thing I did was to mount myself on her buttocks and do what would now be called "humping." Our parents were in the room also, but all I cared about was deriving pleasure for myself. My sister complained that I was hurting her, and my parents scolded me a little. I remember being upset at their anger and their embarrassment and confusion when I asked what I did wrong. I didn't do it again when my parents were around but when my sister and I were alone, I would try "feeling good." In such cases, she had to literally fight me off and I'd retreat and do something else. This happened only 3 or 4 times.

But, alas, not all sibling sexual play is so innocent or remembered pleasantly, especially if there is a marked difference in ages between the siblings.

I was a "victim" of incest (not including coitus) with my oldest brother for several years starting approximately at age 8. 1 lived in constant fear that I would be left alone in the house with him. I hated him with all my heart. I felt I was the only young girl that this ever happened to and, therefore, I had much guilt and never told anyone about it.

Mary was a sixth grader when she was raped by her 16-year-old brother. It was clear that the father, as well as the brother, was a source of sexual torment to her. [A social worker]

There is a special category of adults who enter into the lives of some children; we designate them pedophiles. the word pedophile is made up of the prefix pedo, which means "child," and the suffix phile, which refers to an affinity for or loving. Hence the term pedophile literally means "one who loves children." 

The literal opposite of a pedophile would be a pedophobe, one who fears or hates children. If this were the generally accepted meaning of pedophile, we would expect that pedophiles would be highly regarded in our society, but they are not because the kind of love referred to includes sexual love. Pedophiles are more descriptively defined as adults who are exclusively, or primarily, sexually attracted to children; hence pedophilia is defined as a sexual perversion. Pedophilia has to be defined as deviant behavior because there is no room in the normative structure of U.S. society for this form of behavior (Mohr 198 1). 

This normative perspective is reflected in Finkelhor and Araji's (1986) sweeping definition of pedophilia as any adult sexual contact with a child, regardless of motive. There is some difference of opinion about how pedophilia should be defined. A World Health Organization report (1986) states that pedophilia may or may not result in child sexual abuse and should not be used synonymously with child sexual abuse. Pedophiles sometimes defend themselves, saying that their feelings are not exclusively sexual but include interest in how children feel and think (Sandfort and Everaerd 1990). 

Sandfort (1982) interviewed twenty-five Dutch boys who were located through their adult partners. The boys were between the ages of ten and sixteen and were involved in a pedophilic relationship with an adult male at the time they were interviewed. The affairs had lasted between two months and six years. Pedosexual contacts usually involve a relatively low level of physical intimacy, such as touching, fondling, and exhibiting, and in the Sandfort study the adult always masturbated the boy; in seven cases the adult had oral-anal contact with the boy; if there was penal-anal contact, the boy most frequently penetrated the man. Almost all of the boys seemed to be heterosexually oriented and though they liked the man, they were not sexually attracted to him. 

The findings do not support the idea that these boys were seductive children who made the first sexual initiation. In addition, almost every boy recognized that having sexual relationships as a child with an adult is deviant, and since such contacts are also criminal offenses in the Netherlands, it was necessary to keep them secret. Most of the boys had pleasant relationships with their parents. They did not appear to feel coerced into continuing the relationship. I the face of all of this, why did the boys continue their pedophilic relationship? Their motives, aside from the sexual pleasure they received, appeared to be that the boys and the pedophile did lots of things together; the boys were attracted by the atmosphere at the pedophile's place; he was someone with whom they could talk easily; they received support in solving problems at home or in school; they learned from the pedophile or experienced him as a model; and they received from the pedophile friendship and, in a few cases, love. In reacting to Sandfort's findings, it is well to keep in mind that the average Dutch child appears to be more knowledgeable about sexuality than is the average child in the United States.

One cannot generalize from Sandfort's study of twenty-five boys, and cases of violent physical sexual abuse as a result of adult-child sexual relations are extensively documented. Abel, Mittelman, and Becker (1987) reviewed reports from 232 men (guaranteed confidentiality), who revealed that on the average they had victimized seventy-six children. Incarcerated offenders also reported a high incidence of encounters, reporting on the average eleven more victims than those for which they were prosecuted. 

Whether or not the adult was a "true" pedophile is largely irrelevant; using the term sexual abuse, which is derived from a legal perspective, the adult is always the offender and the child is the victim. In more than half of the pedophilic cases the sexual crime was committed many times with the same victim. From this perspective 100 percent of Sandfort's sample of twentyfive boys were victims of sexual crime. 

The child psychiatrists Brant and Tisza (1977) prefer the term sexual misuse, a term that derives from a mental health perspective. They define sexual misuse as exposure of a child to sexual stimulation inappropriate to the child's age, level of psychosexual development, and role in the family. What Brant and Tisza object to, as have other scholars and therapists, is that the term child sexual abuse is pejorative and compels one to think only in terms of victims and offenders.

One hears talk about rings, sex rings, or vice rings in which a number of adults are involved with children in illicit activities. Ennew (1986), who was commissioned by the English Anti-Slavery Society to write a report on child prostitution and pornography, had the task of sifting through many reports on vice rings and traffic and has no doubt that some cases exist but she saw none that were proven conclusively. 

On the other hand, Burgess (1984), in a two-year project on the use of children in pornography funded by the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect, reported on fifty-five sex rings in the United States. The methodology used in collecting the information is not discussed in the study and complete data were not available; hence Burgess suggested that the evidence should be treated a primarily descriptive and only possibly indicative of the population of sex rings.

 Three types of sex rings are delineated in the book. In solo rings an adult operates alone with a small group of children, who know each other and are conditioned or programmed by the adult to provide sexual services in exchange for a variety of psychological, social, monetary, and other rewards. Next is the transition ring. In such rings multiple adults are involved sexually with children and the children are usually pubescent. The adults exchange or sell pornographic photographs of the children and try to pressure the children, who have been tested for their role as prostitutes, into the next level, the syndicated ring. The syndicated ring is a well-structured organization that involves the recruitment of children, the production of pornography, the establishment of a network of customers, and the delivery of trade items (that is, children, photographs, films, and tapes). 

Ennew (1986) agreed that there is a market for young children and that organized prostitution of children and young people takes place in many countries and in various forms, but she suggested that it is not as large a trade as moral crusaders would wish us to believe. 

According to Paul Knuckman (Burgess 1984), children in sex rings come from families from which they are disengaged. They may see the adult in the ring as a surrogate parent and often do not perceive themselves as victims, confusing as they may love, trust, and comfort with sex. Whether or not they experience physical abuse and trauma, they are defined as victims for they are prematurely introduced into adult sexuality and aberrant behavior. 

Child pornography is generally defined as magazines, books, photographs, videotapes, and films that depict children of either gender in sexually explicit acts, including exhibition of genitals, masturbation, oral sex, sexual intercourse, and bestiality. Much of child pornography depicts an adult involved with a child in mutual exhibition or some other type of sexual act. Before the late 1960s, adult women with girlish figures were used as models in so-called child pornography; the actual use of children as models, some as young as three years old, is a fairly recent development. 

Today many authorities believe that a significant number of child pornography "stars" start out as teenage runaways. In one county 86 percent of children involved in child pornography or prostitution were runaways or missing (Burgess 1984). The total number of children involved in child pomography may not be as large as believed since the same children are often filmed or photographed and shown in more than one product of the pornographic media (Ennew 1986). Child pornography is a relatively lucrative business, and children on the street who must be concerned about their survival may find that they are able to earn more from allowing themselves to be photographed or filmed than they can from prostitution. 

Unscrupulous adults interested in involving children in some sexual activity often show them pornography as one of several ways used to lower their inhibition and to persuade them to enter into some type of sexual act. Of the sex rings reported on by Burgess (1984), 62 percent showed pornography to the children. 

It has been estimated that in the United States 600,000 boys and girls under sixteen years of age engage in prostitution to help supplement their income while on the run (Pierce 1984). It is not so much that sexual abuse at home leads to prostitution as it is that sexual abuse may lead to running away, and running away leads to prostitution. The majority of child prostitutes were runaways; the average age of first sexual intercourse was twelve, with the greatest frequency occurring between ages ten and thirteen (Burgess 1984). A number of children help support their families by working as child prostitutes.

In sum, the sexual encounters of children with older children, adolescents, and adults can be instructive and pleasant, but it can also introduce children into aspects of sexual life for which they are not physiologically, psychologically, or socially ready, experiences that can prove to be exploitative, abusive, and destructive. Children need to be educated in such a way to prepare them for the sexual life they are entering and to protect them, insofar as it is possible, from experiences that are not in their best interest.