DefiningSexual Violence against Children

One primary challenge to thinking about sexual violence across time and place is that there was and is no simple or unchanging definition of what we mean by child sexual abuse. A widely used contemporary definition of CSA comes from WHO:

Child sexual abuse is the involvement of a child in sexual activity that he or she does not fully comprehend, is unable to give informed consent to, or for which the child is not developmentally prepared and cannot give consent, or that violate the laws or social taboos of society.^[236]

This may include sexual activity, or the exploitation of a child through prostitution or pornography.

Thinking historically, there is an immediate problem with this definition, for the meaning of the term ‘child' is historically contingent. How do we derive the social and legal parameters of childhood? Over the past 200 years, the majority of nations have sought to establish the boundaries of childhood through ‘age of consent' legislation. Age of consent laws outline when a child might be considered legally fit to have sexual relations, regardless of the issue of consent. The age of consent was generally conceptualised around girls, though many jurisdictions introduced age of consent laws for male homosexual activity. In some states, the age of consent was set at a higher age for boys or for the act of sodomy, with the implicit suggestion that homo­sexual sex was especially troubling.^[237]

Currently the age of consent varies across jurisdictions, with the majority settling on an age of consent of 16 or 18, though there are some as high as 21, and others in the early teens. A small number of jurisdictions have no age of consent, but control child sexual assault through other legal mechanisms such as gross indecency and rape legislation. In addition to age of consent laws, some nations have legislated specific child sexual assault charges, including laws around abuse perpetrated by fathers, teachers and other authority figures. In these instances, the age of consent might be higher, and the penalties stronger.

Criminal law was not, however, the only way that CSA was governed in a society. The age of consent might exist, but not be applied. Or, the age of consent might be over-ridden by marriage: in some jurisdictions, if the age of consent was 18, but a girl was married at 15, intercourse would be legal with her husband. Further, in some countries or regions, the age of consent was not a meaningful social or legal construct. Under sharia law, for instance, all sexual activity within marriage is legal, and all sexual activity outside of marriage illegal. Age of marriage could be, but was not always, legislated for. Thus, the idea of a single age of consent is not universal, but is culturally specific. What might be common or normalised in one culture would be unusual, troubling or even criminal in another.

Other difficulties with assessing CSA over time and place are common to all studies of sexual violence. Sexual assaults on children are generally private crimes, and criminologists and historians of sexual violence know that under­reporting of all forms of sexual assault is common. Few cases are reported to police, and even fewer enter the criminal justice system. Thus researchers capture only a small proportion of sexual assault cases, and this is complicated even further in historical cases, where record keeping was inadequate. For cases that have been reported, there are substantial problems with gaining access to records involving children, with the state maintaining a range of protective measures around CSA cases. While in some areas we can access broad information - arrests, prosecutions, charges - researchers cannot necessarily access the specificities of either the assault or the trial.