As I was looking at the clothes I did not see
him move behind me. The next thing I
realized, he had my dress up and was taking my
underpants down.
I jerked away from him and
asked him what he was doing. While I was back
ing away from him he said he just wanted to see
what color my underpants were. I turned and ran
upstairs...
Children need to be protected from sexual molestation by adults,
and adults need to be wary of being compromised by the conscious or un
conscious sexual seduction of children.
The child is sometimes the ini
tiator or provoker in child-adult sexual encounters. The child's
behavior is determined by complex conscious and unconscious drives. The
child may seek a form of satisfaction which is given through an affec
tional-sexual encounter. (Bender and Blau, 1937).
The child as well as
the adult may be seeking the satisfaction that intimacy can give, but
society does not view such encounters charitably.
The American ob
server in the following case was "sickened" by observing what may have
been an innocent encounter between two persons with intimacy needs.
I left the home (a Church operated girls' home
in Italy) alone and, passing a heavy clump of
foliage on the side of the path, noticed an
older priest explaining something about the
leaves to a girl of about seven.
He hovered over
her in fervent explanation and his free hand
rambled over her small body. This presented a
problem I had not thought of and I sickened...
The best account that I know of in the literature on the ambivalent
attitudes of a child toward molestation by an adult is in an account
by Maya Angelou (1970, p. 94-98).
She provides a graphic and
moving account of a child's response to the tenderness, as well as to
the violence, that can accompany intimate, sexual encounters with an
adult.
In good faith she cooperates and receives certain satisfactions
only later to be deeply hurt by rape, extreme feelings of guilt, and
the threat of violence by the molester should she tell of the experience
to anyone.
The events that follow an occasion of child molestation
can be as traumatic or more traumatic for both parties than the
precipitating event itself.
Intimacy is a normal part of the maturational
process of children, and even child molestation, if no violent
aggression or physical harm accompanies the activity, need not create
sexual trauma for the child.
Distress, anger, and anxiety of parents, a
police investigation, and a court trial may have more traumatic effect
on the child than the sexual experience itself. The aggressor in such a
child-adult encounter is generally assumed to be the adult.
The reader is again referred to Angelou's perceptive account of a raped child as
seen through the eyes of an offended child.
A major difference between the child and the adult in a child-adult
intimate encounter is that the adult is likely aware that there are
statues which severely threaten his freedom if he is caught.
The written
codes and the prescriptions of the common law are not influential
in controlling the child's sexual behavior.
His childhood experiences
are behind him before he has any comprehension of the nature of the legal
proscriptions of adult sex codes. (Kinsey, 1948, p. 447).