Language Matters When Talking About Child Sexual Abuse |
What Is Sexual Abuse?
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Media framing child sexual abuse as a “relationship” harms children.
Sexual grooming is a psychological manipulation of children; language used to describe it can reinforce guilt.
Media portrayals often minimize female perpetrated child sexual abuse, but it is just as harmful.
Media language influences public perception of child sexual abuse and can increase harm to children.
Language shapes perception. Nowhere is this more consequential than in discussions of child sexual abuse. When an adult engages in sexual behavior with a child, it is sexual abuse. Yet media portrayals often use terminology that softens, romanticizes, or reframes abuse in ways that obscure power, coercion, and harm.
The media we consume influences how we interpret events, assign responsibility, and evaluate severity. Words such as “relationship,” “affair,” “involvement,” or “seeing each other” imply mutuality and consent. In the context of child sexual abuse, these implications are false. A child cannot legally or developmentally consent to sexual activity with an adult. Describing abuse using relational language risks distorting the inherent power imbalance and shifting perceived responsibility away from the adult perpetrator.
Research on sexual grooming provides important context. Sexual grooming is a manipulative process through which perpetrators choose vulnerable........