SEXUAL ENCOUNTERS IN EARLY CHILDHOOD WITH ADULTS OTHER THAN PARENTS
Encounters involving sexual intimacy between child and adult can be overhearing adult sex talk, innocent and accidental encounters, loving and affectionate relations, or sensationally aggressive and violent child molestation.
It is common in the United States to debase non-marital sexual activity, especially that involving adults and children. Incest, pedophilia, exhibitionism, and child-molestation have become pejorative terms. In the United States, we usually use the general term pedophilia to define sexual behavior in which adults derive erotic pleasure from encounters with children. Such pedophilic practices include exposure of the genitals to a child, manipulation of a child, and possible penetration of a child, though the latter is not common. Adults who expose themselves to children are almost always males. Such exhibitionists usually do not pursue the child or aggressively seek involvement beyond exposure.
Contrary to common assumptions, old men relatively seldom are child molesters, and their approaches to children might be judged as quite harmless. The middle to late thirties, and the late fifties, are the main age groups from which so-called molesters come.
An excellent account of the ambivalent attitudes of a child toward molestation by an adult is that by Maya Angelou. 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 the child 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 following 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 pedophilia, if no violent aggression or physical harm accompanies the activity, need not create sexual trauma for the child. The child sometimes even has pleasant memories of such encounters. Parental distress, anger, and anxiety, a police investigation, and a court trial may have a more traumatic effect on the child than the sexual experience itself. A major difference between the child and the adult in a child-adult intimate encounter is that the adult is more aware of possible criminal penalties. But the child’s experiences are over before he or she has any comprehension of the legal proscriptions of adult sex codes.
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