ABSTRACT
The problem of assessing the degree of damage—physical and psychic—sustained by the child victim of a sexual assault is a problem which appears increasingly to occupy the time of the courts. Ethically, the adult is at fault in abusing the child’s youth and lack of moral judgment, and frequently children are involved in sexual episodes quite unwittingly and without any premeditation on their part; but a clear distinction between attacker and victim seems rarely possible. The consensuality found in many sexual assault cases has long been recognised, and the fact that the courts ignore this element of mutuality belittles justice, and renders impossible a true understanding of the personality dynamics underlying this behaviour. Retrospective studies can never prove that affection seeking needs precipitated the child into the sexual affair—such affection seeking might have arisen subsequently from the child’s fright and confusion at his premature sexual involvement.
