Abstract
“Why didn’t you tell?” “Why didn’t you say no?” These questions asked of children who are sexually abused by older persons continue to be asked by parents, other loved ones, abused children themselves, and many professionals even today, after decades of work with abused children and the older persons who sexually use them. There are many reasons for the beliefs that underlie these questions. Disbelief that children are at risk for abuse, the false hope that prevention of abuse can be accomplished by a child simply saying “no,” adults managing their own negative emotions about failing to protect children, and many others.
The process whereby an older, more sophisticated, and experienced person identifies a potential victim, entices or coerces the child into a “relationship” where she or he is abused, and maintains the child’s silence (aka grooming) is an advanced skill known best by the sexual offender. It remains difficult for others, even child victims, to fully appreciate or articulate. It is common for those victimized by the process of sexual abuse to misattribute why abuse happened (e.g., “I ‘let’ him touch my leg” or “I wanted to play that video game”), blame herself or himself (“I should not have gone camping with him”), or blame others (“Mom said it was ok to go to with him”).
Terms used to describe phenomena existing largely in public space and identified by nonprofessionals and professionals alike often are not subject to a scientific process of labeling. The field suffered considerably from the uncritical acceptance of the term “repressed memory” for the process of partial or total amnesia for a traumatic event. The process whereby older persons come to sexually abuse children shares much in common with processes potentially described as “psychological conditioning,” “coercive control,” “brainwashing,” “entrapment,” “deviant manipulation,” and probably a host of other terms that describe a deliberate process whereby a weaker person’s awareness, capacity for resistance, and external and internal means of protection are overcome.
Lanning and colleagues in the following Commentary provide an opportunity to revisit the term used to describe the process whereby children are recruited and enticed, manipulated, or forced into becoming victims of sexual abuse. After decades of use, it is helpful for the field to take a fresh look at the term used to describe this process. Understanding about basic processes such as how children come to be sexually abused can drift naturally over time. Children and adults who have not previously experienced abuse, and professionals who operate on fixed working models of abuse or extensions of concepts which explain one kind of abuse but may not be adequate to understand other forms of abuse, require periodic reevaluation of terms and concepts. Although an evidence-based field should ideally base reconsideration of concepts on research, nonetheless taking a step back to be sure that the term used to describe childhood sexual victimization is helpful to victims and those who love or work with them is a worthwhile undertaking. Ken Lanning and colleagues provide such an opportunity in the pages that follow. We can all hope that this will stimulate more research on the processes whereby children are recruited and become involved in sexual abuse.