What is child sexual abuse?

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Touching sexual offenses include:

* Fondling;
* Making a child touch an adult’s sexual organs;
* Penetrating a child’s vagina or anus no matter how slight with a penis or any object that doesn’t have a valid medical purpose.

Non-touching sexual offenses include:

* Engaging in indecent exposure or exhibitionism;
* Exposing children to pornographic material;
* Deliberately exposing a child to the act of sexual intercourse;
* Masturbating in front of a child.

Sexual exploitation can include:

* Engaging a child or soliciting a child for the purposes of prostitution;
* Using a child to film, photograph or model pornography.

In the UK the official definition is “sexual abuse involves forcing or enticing a child or young person to take part in sexual activities including prostitution, whether or not the child is aware of what is happening. The activities may involve physical contact, including penetrative (e.g. rape, buggery or oral sex) or non-penetrative acts. They may include non-contact activities, such as involving children in looking at, or in the production of, pornographic material or watching sexual activities, or encouraging children to behave in sexually inappropriate ways”

The TRUTH of child abuse and trauma project

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“the trauma myth” is a book written by a “professional” on chid sexual abuse. The book basically implies that sexual abuse is not traumatic to a child as they “do not understand what sex is, so cannot understand that they are being victimised”…

There is more information on here writtings (and my opinion of it) here and here

I want to know what other peoples opinions are. Personally I feel that this “theory” is actually danagerous and sort of adds weight to the argument used by several peadophile rings of “the child isn’t being harmed”…

I also think that we need to counter this… I like the idea of a mass writting campaign, but I want your opinions and input. What do YOU think would be the best way forward?

paraphillia (sexual desires outside the norm) and abuse

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• Pedophilia refers to a sexual preference for prepubescent children
• Nepiophilia, also called infantophilia, is used to refer to a sexual preference for toddlers and infants (usually ages 0–3).
• Hebephilia refers to a sexual preference for pubescent children.
• Ephebophilia refers to a sexual preference for individuals in mid- to late adolescence, usually 15-19 years old.
• Teleiophilia (from Greek teleios, “full grown”) is a term coined by sexologist Ray Blanchard to refer to the sexual interest in adults.
• Gerontophilia refers to the sexual preference for the elderly.

Professionals can not seem to agree on if these paraphillias are or are not mental disorders.

The American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (DSM) lists pedophilia as a mental disorder and the US Supreme Court has upheld the idea of pedophilia as a mental abnormality.

However, there are those – both respectable experts and pedophile apologists – who argue that pedophilia, should be removed from this list of mental disorders, just as homosexuality was removed in the 1970s

The thing that has to be remembered though is although these people have sexual impulces that are out side of societies norm, and that if acted upon may constitue as abuse, many such people lead perfectly normal lives never acting upon these impluses. On the other hand there are many who have sexually abused children (and other ages) who do not see theirselves as having any form of paraphillia, insted merely seeing their victim as an easy target. Unlike paraphillia which has it’s basis in sex generally abuse and rape have a greater basis in control, power and enjoyment/satisfaction of inflicting pain. This is not to say that no child abusers or rapists are paraphilliacs, just that not all paraphilliacs are abusers and rapists.

For more information see here