Sexual Abuse, Abuse of Conscience and of Power: A New Definition

C’est l’ambiguïté insurmontable du Mal qui est son essence.

Emmanuel Lévinas, L’Humanisme de l’autre homme

Introduction

Throughout the history of humanity, childhood and adolescence have been subjected to the most diverse forms of violence by the adult world¹. One of these forms—one that has been especially silenced and devastating, minimised and normalised—is sexual violence. All the more so because it is committed mostly in contexts and by people that ought to offer the greatest trust and care, such as the home, members of the family, the school or the Church². This crime has gained greater visibility and aroused greater social and political outrage since the adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) in 1989 and the rise of the protection of minority rights from the last decade of the twentieth century onwards³. This increase has not ceased and has also coincided with the scandals of child sexual abuse committed by clerics and covered up by various factions of the hierarchy of the Church, of dioceses and of religious congregations, which have marked the recent history of the Church worldwide⁴.

The protection of rights goes hand in hand with an understanding of what harms them. In the case of sexual abuse, for centuries that understanding was centred on the genital aspect and on the physical force used in rape. Throughout this study we seek to problematise the concept of sexual abuse from a structural perspective, with the aim of establishing a definition that allows it to be understood more comprehensively and that makes it possible to develop strategies to prevent it and to do justice.

Although we concentrate on sexual abuse committed against children and adolescents, this is only because, so far, the asymmetry produced by the difference in age is taken for granted; nonetheless, we seek to establish elements that make it possible to understand the structure of sexual abuse as abuse of power.

Restricted and individual view

Centred on the strictly genital violation, carried out by force.

Facilitates the cover-up, institutional denial and re-traumatisation of victims.

Comprehensive, structural and ethical view

Understands sexual abuse as abuse of power.

Allows society, persons and institutions to assume their responsibility in recognition of and justice for victims.

The evolution of the definition of child sexual abuse

From a mechanistic dualism of body and violence towards an integration of trauma

Throughout history, the relationship of human beings with their own bodiliness has taken many forms. This relationship has also had different effects in different cultures and legal systems, in which sexuality and violence take on particular importance. This has been the case with the understanding of sexual violence in Western society since at least the sixteenth century, moving from almost total invisibility to the recognition of trauma in violence during the twentieth century⁵. Only from the 1970s did the symbolic violence of the abuse of power in general begin to gain importance⁶. This gradually came to include sexual violence exercised in asymmetrical contexts, in particular by men against women and also against children. Although Western legal systems have defined rape as an offence for centuries, until well into the twentieth century it was rarely prosecuted and seldom led to imprisonment⁷. High standards of proof were required, which in some cases included, in addition to the use of force, witnesses to the ejaculation⁸.

A mechanistic view of bodiliness⁹ and of the world, dualistic to the point of dissociating human reality, caused violence and harm to be seen predominantly in terms of physical force and pain¹⁰, leaving out what is not physically perceived, such as psychological violence and manipulation, as abusive elements. With the development of psychology and phenomenology in the twentieth century, pain and violence have been incorporated into the concept of trauma as forces that destroy subjectivity. This phenomenological overcoming of dualism through the integration of the self has also made it possible to develop a more situational understanding of trauma, in which the environment in which the person finds themselves plays a fundamental role¹¹. Socio-legal concepts were also transformed by this theoretical development. This was the case, for example, with the theory of the protected legal interest in criminal law¹². Before a theory of the protected legal interest grounded in subjectivity was developed, such as sexual indemnity (indemnidad sexual), the harm suffered through sexual violence remained in a dimension separate from the subject, such as “nature”, modesty, public morality, decency or purity.

The nineteenth century saw important changes in the definitions and delimitations of the legal interests protected by Western legal systems. With regard to the sexual abuse of children, the protected interests were still modesty (France¹³) and decency, or honestidad (Spain¹⁴).

In the case of Spain, for example:

“The Criminal Code of 1848 ceased to regard sodomy as an offence, but criminal proceedings against the sexual abuse of children still retained the penal mentality of the Ancien Régime, and sought to protect the decency of certain persons more than to protect the sexuality of those under age”¹⁵.

However, it was not until the publication and ratification of the International Convention on the Rights of the Child¹⁶, at the end of the twentieth century, that the protected legal interest began to incorporate the subjective interest of the victim, in the form of dignity, or the best interests of the child in the form of sexual indemnity¹⁷. Sexual indemnity itself, however, needs to be reviewed as a protected legal interest in cases of sexual abuse, where the subjective devastation goes beyond the sphere of sexuality in its genital expression. The development of trauma theory has been a fundamental lever for understanding the harm of the subjective violence that sexual abuse entails, although this is a task still under construction and there is still a long way to go.

This path began during the twentieth century with certain isolated voices, even in the scientific world. In 1932 the Hungarian psychoanalyst Sándor Ferenczi gave a lecture at the Twelfth International Psychoanalytic Congress in Wiesbaden whose original title was “The passions of adults and their influence on the development of the character and the sexuality of the child”. Ferenczi called into question the whole understanding and practice of trauma that had dominated psychoanalysis until then. Ferenczi called on psychoanalysts to be humble, to set aside “professional hypocrisy” and to be empathetic; to understand the trauma caused by child sexual abuse, which was far more common than people—and psychoanalysts themselves—believed or admitted. This lecture was a theoretical counterpoint to the proposals that understood sexual abuse as the manifestation of an Oedipal fantasy rather than a reality.

Sexual abuse was silenced for centuries, and in the twentieth century the scientific world was in conflict over whether to silence it too. If it was committed against a boy or a girl, it could be regarded as an Oedipal fantasy; and if it was committed against an adult woman, without evidence of violence, consent and hysteria were presumed. Oedipal and mythomaniac children, hysterical or seductive women¹⁸.

Ferenczi’s lecture was silenced for some fifty years, until it was rediscovered and translated only in the 1980s. Ferenczi himself suffered ostracism, rejection and isolation from this scientific community for having questioned it from a position of empathy and critical thinking. He died a year later¹⁹.

Once again, it was not until the 1990s that these paradigms began to be questioned structurally. The rise of minority rights and of feminism brought a new lucidity to Western society in the fight against violence²⁰. The evolution towards a more comprehensive understanding of the trauma caused by sexual violence, when it goes beyond the physical force imposed in rape, has been slow. It points to the need for a justice that is consistent with the harm done and that is, at the same time, preventive.

The case of the Catholic Church and canonical justice with regard to sexual abuse

In the case of the Catholic Church, the evolution has also been slow. To this day, canonical justice lacks a sufficiently comprehensive definition of the offence of sexual abuse to adopt comprehensive policies of prevention, intervention and justice. The protected legal interest in the definitions of the Code of Canon Law itself needs updating. Indeed, the Code punishes incitement to commit a sin against the sixth commandment²¹ when it has been committed with violence, with threats, publicly or with a person under age²². Or when a penitent has been incited to commit a sin against the sixth commandment²³.

Leaving aside possible theological reasons, in the eyes of a victim, the fact that canonical justice prosecutes the sin against the sixth commandment rather than the victim’s wounded dignity amounts to a lack of recognition and, for that very reason, to a new trauma. Indeed, if we think with Paul Ricoeur²⁴ that criminal sanction also has a role of recognition of the victim status of the person who has suffered the violation, then, since in this kind of violation there is a particular sense of guilt and shame, the sanction must lead the victim to give meaning to their trauma and recognise them as such, that is, as a victim. Otherwise, when the cause is dissociated from the sanction, it produces the experience of the annulment of the wounded self. This lack of recognition lies at the root of the rejection felt by so many people because of the reactions, and the failures to react, of the Church as an institution. Recognition frees the victim and reorganises their reality and their memory towards a healing resignification. The depth of the harm of abuse lies in ambiguity. Conversely, the recognition of the harm in the victim by and before a third party can rebuild the wounded subjectivity²⁵. Justice, in all its manifestations, must aim to break the ambiguity of abuse, the essence of its evil, towards a regenerative recognition.

The depth of the harm of abuse lies in ambiguity.

In 2014 the Committee on the Rights of the Child presented a report on the way in which the Catholic Church had dealt with the problem of child sexual abuse, stating that the intention to protect its own reputation had prevailed over the interests of the children in its care.

“The Committee is concerned that the Holy See has not given due consideration to the best interests of the child as a primary consideration in its legislative, administrative and judicial proceedings, as well as in its policies, programmes and projects relating to and affecting children. In particular, the Committee is concerned that, as noted by several national commissions of inquiry when examining reports of child sexual abuse, the Holy See has systematically preferred to preserve the reputation of the Church and to protect the perpetrators of such abuse, rather than the best interests of the child”²⁶.

The Committee questions not only the way in which the Church has handled cases of abuse and cover-up, but also, albeit indirectly, the good it seeks to protect, the value that guides the Church in these cases: the dignity and well-being of the children in its care, or its own reputation. And from this arises, for us, the question of the concept and definition of sexual abuse that underlies the protected legal interest that sanctions it. Indeed, the protected legal interest, which is not always explicit in a criminal legal order, is key to understanding the habitus that structures the society that establishes it. It is debated whether there are certain goods which, by their ethical, psychological, political or economic characteristics, “merit the status of legal interest, in such a way that only they may be legitimately protected by criminal law”²⁷. Is it, then, the harm principle that gives meaning to the protection of a legal interest, or is it the legal order itself, from its internal logic, that establishes its protected legal interests as a kind of tautology?²⁸. The question seems important to us because it points to the possibility of an evolution of criminal law, independently of the legal order in question, whether that of a country, a community of countries or the Code of Canon Law.

Beyond the errors and scandals caused above all by the hierarchy of the Church, both centrally and in many localities, which have been extensively documented by various historical²⁹ and psychological³⁰ studies, documentaries³¹ and films³², our aim is to explore a possible new comprehensive definition of sexual abuse.

In order to update, in every legal order, the protected legal interest in the offence of sexual abuse, it is necessary to explore the concept and definition of sexual abuse itself. In this sense, it will be fundamental to understand abuse not only as an isolated act, but as an act within a culture that makes it possible.

Culture of abuse

In 2018 Pope Francis published two letters on sexual abuse that have been central to this study. On 31 May he sent the “Letter to the Pilgrim People of God in Chile”, in response to the cases of sexual abuse and cover-up that were striking the Church in Chile. In this letter he already refers not only to sexual abuse, but to cover-up and to a culture that sustains both.

“The ‘never again’ to the culture of abuse, and to the system of cover-up that allows it to perpetuate itself, requires all of us to work together to generate a culture of care that permeates our ways of relating, of praying, of thinking, of exercising authority; our customs and languages, and our relationship with power and money. Today we know that the best word we can offer in the face of the pain caused is the commitment to a personal, communal and social conversion that learns to listen to and care for, above all, the most vulnerable. It is urgent, therefore, to create spaces where the culture of abuse and cover-up is not the dominant pattern”³³.

They are no longer approached as isolated acts, but as a culture; and the letter speaks of a “system of cover-up” that allows abuse to take place, to become established, to be silenced, normalised and perpetuated. It is a system woven within a culture, one that in itself constitutes a culture. If an abusive system is cultivated, systematic acts of sexual abuse are easily harvested.

In August of that same year, the Pope sent another letter, no longer only on sexual abuse itself, but on the abuse of power and of conscience. In this way, on the one hand, the seriousness not only of abuse but of its cover-up is recognised and, on the other, the understanding of sexual abuse becomes more complex, since it is considered within the broader framework of the abuse of conscience and of power³⁴.

It would not, then, be a matter of three types of violation; rather, sexual abuse, the abuse of conscience and the abuse of power lie on the same plane of understanding. That is why the letter speaks of a culture and not only of acts. What has traditionally been seen as a problem confined to the genital is now understood from the standpoint of culture and the exercise of power. The abuse of power is the perverse use of the asymmetry of power. Within the context of the asymmetry of power, the abuse of conscience, for its part, is the violation of the intimacy of human subjectivity, the inner space that makes it possible to enter into the movement of existence in a healthy search for meaning.

Asymmetry of power

• Abuse of powerThe perverse use of the asymmetry of power.
• Abuse of conscienceThe violation of the intimacy of human subjectivity, the inner space where meaning is sought.
• Sexual abuseNo longer only a problem confined to the genital: it is understood from the standpoint of culture and the exercise of power.

A culture of abuse and a system of cover-up that allows it to perpetuate itself

There has been an important evolution thanks to advances in ethics, in science and also in human rights. This is where we place the Pontiff’s words of 2018, which locate sexual abuse, the abuse of power and the abuse of conscience within a culture that has sustained it. But this evolution requires us to problematise and update the very concept of sexual abuse, with all the elements that constitute it and the violence it entails.

1. 19th centuryIn the sexual abuse of children, the law protects modesty (France) and decency (Spain), not the sexuality of children.
2. 1932Ferenczi, in Wiesbaden, calls into question the understanding of trauma. His lecture is silenced for some fifty years.
3. 1970sThe symbolic violence of the abuse of power begins to gain importance.
4. 1989Convention on the Rights of the Child. The protected legal interest begins to incorporate the interest of the victim: sexual indemnity.
5. 1990sThe paradigms that denied abuse begin to be questioned structurally.
6. 2014The Committee on the Rights of the Child observes that the Holy See preferred to preserve the reputation of the Church.
7. 2018Pope Francis writes about the culture of abuse and cover-up, and about the abuse of power and of conscience.

Towards a new definition of sexual abuse

An updated concept of sexual abuse needs to incorporate elements that make it possible to understand it and to develop strategies for prevention, detection, intervention and support for victims and for the communities in which it has occurred.

It is not only a matter of declaring that sexual abuse is undesirable conduct, but of understanding it in its entirety. The lack of a definition and of a grounding has led to significant confusion, has hindered communication between those who intervene, and has prevented clear decisions from being taken³⁵, ultimately proving unjust, arbitrary or lax, or ensuring impunity rather than protection and justice.

We will take some of the definitions of child sexual abuse commonly used in the professional and academic world, identify some of their structural elements and propose a new, more comprehensive definition of sexual abuse.

First, one of the classic definitions is that of the World Health Organization, from 1999:

“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 violates the laws or social taboos of society. Child sexual abuse is evidenced by this activity between a child and an adult or another child who by age or development is in a relationship of responsibility, trust or power, the activity being intended to gratify or satisfy the needs of the other person”³⁶.

For its part, the Australian Royal Commission, in its final report of 2014, develops a definition that takes up these elements and complements them.

“Any act which exposes a child or adolescent to, or involves them in, sexual processes beyond their understanding or contrary to accepted community standards. Sexually abusive behaviours include the fondling of genitals, masturbation, oral sex, vaginal or anal penetration by a penis, finger or any other object, fondling of breasts, voyeurism, exhibitionism, and exposing the child or adolescent to, or involving them in, pornography. This includes the process of preparation (grooming), which consists of actions deliberately undertaken with the aim of creating and establishing an emotional connection with a child in order to lower their inhibitions in preparation for sexual activity with them”³⁷.

This definition, which was developed after thousands of interviews with people who were victims of child sexual abuse in institutional and religious contexts, contains elements that shed light on a more comprehensive understanding of sexual abuse. Indeed, it refers not only to the violating act itself, but also to the preparatory acts (grooming). In our view, the only thing this definition lacks is the addition of the activities that follow the genital violation and that seek to silence the victim and those around them. In this way, sexual abuse, rather than an abusive act, is a process that begins before the phase of genital abuse and ends after it.

We can find, then, various elements that characterise child sexual abuse, on the basis of which a broader and more comprehensive definition will be established.

Before building a definition of abuse, we shall look more closely at some of the key elements for understanding it. This will in turn make it possible to develop strategies aimed at establishing a culture of care.

The elements of the definition

1. Asymmetry of power and vulnerabilityWhere there is power, there is vulnerability.
2. ConsentIt can be manipulated, regardless of age and of physical force or intimidation.
3. A processIt is prepared before the genital violation and is prolonged after it.
4. The genital aspectIt is present, but abuse is not reduced to it.

Asymmetry of power and vulnerability

The Chilean child neuropsychiatrist based in Spain, Jorge Barudy, writes with regard to child sexual abuse: “It is important to consider coercion and the asymmetry of power between the adult and the child as fundamental structural factors in the genesis of sexual abuse”³⁸. The same author continues: “This asymmetry, based on the difference in age, on the vulnerability and on the dependence of the child, prevents the child from taking part in a genuine exchange and from deciding freely. Moreover, children have, in relation to the adult, very different experiences, degrees of maturity and purposes”³⁹.

Vulnerability is a structural correlate of the asymmetry of power. Where there is power, there is vulnerability, and vulnerability is a fragility exposed before a power (which can violate it).

The asymmetry of power lies at the basis of all abuse, especially of sexual abuse. In order to understand it, it is necessary to question, however briefly, the very concept of power. This concept is elusive. For the purposes of this research we will borrow a broad definition from the field of social psychology, developed by the American researcher Dacher Keltner⁴⁰. Going beyond political and Machiavellian (in the literal sense) conceptualisations of power as pure domination, coercion or manipulation, we will say that power consists basically in the “possibility of altering the state of another person or persons”. And this possibility is due to the inherent fragility of every human being, which makes them susceptible to being altered by another.

Altering is in itself a possibility without ethical content until it is carried out in a concrete action. The alteration may have integrative consequences for a person, or consequences of traumatic fragmentation. The act of power, like every concrete action, always has an ethical position. Without entering into the moral structure of intentions and actions, which goes beyond the purpose of this research, we will only say that power has consequences on the state of the people affected by those actions. The elements present are the asymmetry of power and the vulnerability that results from the asymmetry within which power is exercised. The greater the asymmetry—and therefore the vulnerability—the greater the possibility of alteration by an act of power. And the greater the consequences, too. In this sense, we can say that the greater the asymmetry of power, the greater the possibility of alteration and, likewise, the greater the responsibility of the one who acts.

1. Greater asymmetry of power
2. Greater vulnerability
3. Greater possibility of alteration
4. Greater responsibility of the one who acts

The difference in age is an objective quantitative parameter for determining the asymmetry of power. However, this asymmetry means nothing other than that the older person, whether through strength, experience, reputation or other means, is able to alter more effectively the state of the younger person. It is important to make clear that the alteration, the influence, the impact that one person has on another because of the asymmetry of power in which they find themselves does not necessarily mean domination or abuse. The impact of an action in a context of asymmetry of power can also be, and usually is, one of care, respect, protection, psychological or spiritual integration. The asymmetry of power is a reality that manifests itself ethically depending on the content and consequences of the action. What matters for our research is to bear in mind the reality of the asymmetry of power as a condition of the vulnerability of one person before another.

In cases of sexual abuse in clerical contexts, it is important to recognise that the vulnerability of the person who approaches a spiritual guide, a confessor or the superior of a congregation is directly proportional to the spiritual relationship with the divine of the one who exposes themselves. The greatest imaginable asymmetry thus arises, because it is the asymmetry of a human being open and exposed before the divine. That asymmetry ought to have as its correlate the highest responsibility, since whoever is in that relationship answers for the image of God held by the person who exposes themselves. An image of God that unfolds from the most intimate intimacy, just like sexual abuse, which is exercised in the most intimate intimacy, in open and exposed sensibility. Whoever exposes themselves in a relationship in which the divine is involved entrusts themselves to the divine promise of faithful care. Whoever commits sexual abuse in this context of asymmetry is entering that intimate vulnerability and using it, carrying into the realm of traumatic confusion what should be an exercise of infinite respect and care. Infinite in the sense that it cannot be reduced to an objective content, but exceeds it in the manner of a mystery⁴¹.

Sexual abuse in ecclesial or spiritual contexts thus constitutes the ultimate betrayal, especially when it is committed without physical force, where the confusion between spiritual tenderness and longing and erotic passion is used by the person in the position of greater power, that is, of care or responsibility towards another.

Analyses and definitions of sexual abuse, if they are to capture the real dimension of the harm, will have to take into account the levels of asymmetry and vulnerability in which abuse is usually committed. The vast majority of cases of sexual abuse are committed in contexts of intimacy and by those who have a duty of care⁴². Without understanding the vulnerability in which a person finds themselves because of the asymmetry of intimacy in contexts of affective care, it will not be possible to understand the level of harm that occurs with sexual abuse either, harm that can lead to schizophrenia and post-traumatic stress, among other consequences⁴³.

Consent

In general terms, consent is a free, informed and integral expression of the will to take part in an activity. And this is fundamental in sexual matters⁴⁴. The ways of defining the offence of sexual abuse of adults when there is no force, intimidation or mental disorder vary from country to country⁴⁵. Countries such as Canada, for example, use a broad definition of sexual abuse, which includes any sexual act that is unwanted or not consented to. It defines consent as “the voluntary agreement to engage in sexual activity”⁴⁶.

In certain circumstances, consent can be manipulated regardless of the person’s age and of physical force or intimidation. It is important to problematise consent in sexual matters, since there are legal systems or judicial prejudices that presume consent if there has been no physical force, no threats or even no physical resistance. Countries are generally evolving in this area thanks to movements that defend vulnerable groups and groups whose rights have been violated, and also thanks to feminism and the global #MeToo movement. Beyond genital sexual consent, what some movements seek is to build a culture of consent, in the belief that we currently live in a culture that promotes the transgression of limits⁴⁷.

So, beyond acts of violence, intimidation and taking advantage of a person’s unconsciousness, there are other strategies and tactics for annulling consent that must be taken into account. Here we propose some that may serve as a framework for understanding.

a) Confusion. We have taken this term from the Hungarian psychoanalyst Sándor Ferenczi and his last lecture, of 1932⁴⁸. Ferenczi understood that, in many cases, neurosis originated in eroticised seductions that children suffered at the hands of the adults closest to them⁴⁹. The approach that, for the child or for whoever is in the position of less power, means tenderness, closeness, care and trust is used and confused by the perpetrator as an erotic relationship. This confusion is not on the rational but on the affective plane and, for that very reason, it is subjectively structural. Abuse originates in the confusion that the adult produces in the child, and it also results in an existential confusion in the victim. A confusion that could end up undermining the very structure of subjectivity, leading even to schizophrenia⁵⁰, in Gregory Bateson’s sense (“double bind”).

b) Relationship of enthralment. The authors Perrone and Nannini⁵¹ have called “relationship of enthralment” (relación de hechizo) this abusive process through which the person who commits the abuse strengthens their power and weakens the victim’s capacity for resistance⁵². As the word suggests, it is not a matter of physical force, but of cognitive and affective manipulation. It is carried out through “ritualisations” by means of which they manage to modify consciousness and weaken or eliminate critical sense⁵³. “The person who is the victim of enthralment loses their quality as a subject and regards themselves, more and more, as an object”⁵⁴. In their discourse one clearly detects a “parasitised thinking accompanied by false certainties”⁵⁵.

According to these authors, there are three phases in the dynamic of enthralment and sexual abuse: effraction, capture and programming. “Sexual abuse and incest can be likened to fraud and to abuse of trust, because the perpetrator takes possession of the victim by means of fallacious arguments, betraying the trust that the victim placed in him”⁵⁶. In the case of sexual abuse, when there is a relationship of “enthralment”, the victim has the sensation of no longer possessing their own body and spirit.

In the phase of effraction, the perpetrator manages to enter the victim’s inner world by making them vulnerable and weakening their defences and critical sense.

In these cases, the perpetrator

“[…] manages to establish a relationship of trust, disarming and disorienting the victim until he is already in the victim’s world, and strips the victim of the very possibility of consenting or not. He crosses ‘the barriers of the intimate, tears the membrane that protects the self, installing the symbols (fetishes) of his indefinable presence’”⁵⁷.

To do this he has had to capture the victim’s trust, hold their attention and, little by little, deprive them of their freedom⁵⁸.

In the case of clerical sexual abuse, effraction has a natural place: the enormous hope, generosity and vulnerability with which a child, an adolescent or any person in a situation of spiritual need or longing approaches.

A process that is prepared and that is prolonged

Although sexual abuse may consist of a single abusive act, it is generally a process that begins before the genital violation and ends after it. It begins with strategies of preparation (grooming⁵⁹), affective approach and the creation of bonds of trust with the victim and those around them, in order to lower protective barriers. It is a gradual process in which trust plays an important role. They are often subtle, calculated acts, which may make the victim feel good, trusting, protected, understood, but whose aim is the violation of their sexual intimacy⁶⁰.

Likewise, it is fundamental to consider as part of the process of sexual abuse as such all the actions whose purpose is to silence the victim, to confuse them, to make them feel guilty, ashamed of what happened to them, dirty. All the barriers that are intentionally placed before the victim and those around them must be considered a structural part of the sexual abuse they suffered. This takes into account the intention of the perpetrator, the role that silencing plays in abuse, and the traumatic consequences, which tend to be as deep as, or deeper than, those caused by the genital abusive phase.

1. BeforePreparation (grooming): affective approach and bonds of trust with the victim and those around them, to lower protective barriers.
2. DuringThe genital violation.
3. AfterActions to silence the victim, confuse them and make them feel guilty or ashamed.

The genital aspect

Evidently, in sexual abuse there is a genital element, that is, a violation of a person’s genital sexual limits. As we shall see, abuse is not reduced to it, but it is important to name it. Various studies group the different violations into types of abuse, on the understanding that certain typologies give them common features. Here we will follow those systematised by the Australian Royal Commission⁶¹, which, without the descriptions being reduced to an exhaustive list, are the following:

a) Abusive contact without penetration. This includes touching the genitals or erogenous zones. Or making the victim touch the erogenous zones or genitals of the perpetrator or of another person in order to watch it. It also includes harassment, masturbation or making the victim masturbate another person.

b) Sexual abuse with penetration. Penetration may be with the penis, another part of the body or an object.

c) Violation of privacy/intimacy. This may occur when a child or adolescent is forced to undress, or is watched in a private place such as a bathroom or bedroom. Any form of voyeurism.

d) Making a child witness sexual acts or sexual material. This type of sexual abuse may take place in person or through digital means. In person, it would consist of displaying pornographic material, sexual acts or genitals, as a form of exhibitionism. Through technological means, it may consist of showing images, videos, sounds or games. As part of the process of abuse, this exposure is used to normalise sexualised behaviour and thus to prepare the victim.

e) Sexual exploitation. There is sexual exploitation when a child is manipulated into taking part in sexual activities in exchange for some reward or the promise of a reward, such as affection, attention, money, food, protection, clothing, drugs or tobacco. Some also call it child prostitution, but we prefer not to use this word because it can be understood as sex work that could be legitimised or consensual. Here, on the contrary, there is manipulation or coercion, which makes consent impossible.

f) Production, consumption, dissemination and exchange of child sexual exploitation material. Any form of material that sexually represents or exploits children, which may include photographs, electronic images, videos, drawings or written material. The mere voluntary possession of this kind of material constitutes sexual abuse. And it can continue to be abuse even when the child is already an adult, since the image of them as a child remains.

One of the difficulties in understanding the depth of the trauma in child sexual abuse is that its definitions generally reduce it to the merely genital moment, without considering that sexuality transcends the genital. Sexuality is an existential category of affective being-in-the-world. According to Merleau-Ponty, following Freud,

“[…] libido […] is the general power that the psychophysical subject has to adhere to different settings, to become fixed through different experiences, to acquire structures of conduct. It is what makes a human being have a history. If the sexual history of a human being provides the key to their life, it is because in human sexuality is projected one’s way of being towards the world, that is, towards time and towards other human beings”⁶².

The body, its limits and sexuality are a force of affective projection and, therefore, orient the human being in the world, among other human beings, with respect to themselves and to the infinite. Only in this way can the depth of the traumatic impact of sexual abuse be understood. If it were a genital problem, it would manifest itself only in the genital. However, as has been increasingly shown, the long-term consequences of child sexual abuse affect the very structure of the subject who has been a victim. Thus, a vast meta-analysis⁶³ published in October 2019 showed the long-term relationship of child sexual abuse with psychosocial, physical and psychiatric outcomes, schizophrenia, post-traumatic stress and substance abuse being the most reliably established consequences of sexual violation in childhood. In that same study the authors say they do not know exactly how this happens, but the consequences can reach that level of structural harm. This would only make sense because of the deep connection between sexuality and being-in-the-world, affectively in search of existential meaning and orientation, where the body is neither a machine nor res extensa, nor an object, but the axis of the orientation of meaning⁶⁴.

Without understanding that human existence moves and orients itself in the world affectively, that is, as sexed⁶⁵, it is very difficult to understand the seriousness of sexual abuse. In this sense, when analysing child sexual abuse, we propose taking into account all the psycho-traumatic circumstances that surround the abuse, and including them as part of the abuse itself. Isolating abuse to its genital moment, as we shall see, may constitute a violation in itself.

Comprehensive definition

Having reached this point, we are in a position to attempt a new definition of sexual abuse, one that is not exhausted in itself but encompasses the elements we have been describing. This definition, although it addresses sexual abuse committed against children and adolescents, seeks not to be reduced to age, but to the possible asymmetries of power that make an interaction abusive and violating. On the basis of this definition we therefore propose understanding sexual abuse as any circumstance in which there is an asymmetry of power and this asymmetry is exploited to impose one will, one sexuality, on another person.

Conclusion: notes towards a culture of care

In the letter of August 2018, Pope Francis adds a concept that acts as a counterpoint to the culture of abuse and cover-up: the culture of care. It is important to dwell on this culture of care and to ask how it is put into practice, and not only in the context of the Catholic Church, but in every context in which asymmetry exposes the vulnerability of some to the power of others. This exposed vulnerability calls for a commitment from the one who has more power.

The hermeneutics of trust, proposed by the psychoanalyst Donna Orange in her book The Suffering Stranger⁶⁶ as the opposite alternative to the hermeneutics of suspicion, of blame, of distance and of lack of recognition, constitutes an ethical praxis to be built in relationships where vulnerability is at stake, as, for example, in a therapeutic relationship, which is also comparable to a relationship in ecclesial or spiritual contexts.

The words of a therapist to a patient are like those of an adult to a child, Orange states⁶⁷. That is the level of asymmetry that the therapist must take into account, and even more so a spiritual guide, a superior or a confessor.

Abuse committed in such asymmetrical contexts takes leverage from the confusion of the vulnerability of the person who seeks refuge in transcendence. When it is not physical force but ambiguity, manipulation, the deception of the promise of care turned into abuse itself, then the harm reaches the very depths of the being of the person who is the victim. Hence the constant consequences in the very structure of their personality. That is why care must be an unrestricted promise in response to the trust of the person who approaches seeking spiritual refuge. Indeed, in the very concept of trust there is a promise of care⁶⁸.

Notes

1. See, for example: Lloyd DeMause, ed. The History of Childhood. New York: Rowman & Littlefield publishers, 1974; Louis A. Jackson. Child sexual abuse in Victorian England. New York: Routledge, 2000; Anne-Claude Ambroise-Rendu. Histoire de la pédophilie XIXe-XXIe siècles. Paris: Fayard, 2014; Philippe Ariès. L’Enfant et la vie familiale sous l’ancien régime. Paris: Librairie Plon, 1960; Gil José Sáez Martínez. “Aproximación histórica a los abusos sexuales a menores”. Eguzkilore 29 (2015): 137-170. ↩︎
2. According to various statistical studies, and bearing in mind that this is a difficult figure to establish, it is clear that 90% of sexual abuse is committed by people who know the victim. 30% is committed by a family member. The first and most significant analyses were carried out by David Finkelhor. See, for example, David Finkelhor, R. Ormrod, H. Turner, and S. L. Hamby. “The Victimization of Children and Youth: A Comprehensive, National Survey”. Child Maltreatment 10, no. 1 (February 2005): 5-25. ↩︎
3. Cf. Steven Pinker. Los ángeles que llevamos dentro. El declive de la violencia y sus implicaciones. Barcelona: Paidós, 2011. ↩︎
4. In recent years there has been a significant output of documents that systematise and analyse cases of sexual abuse committed in ecclesiastical contexts, although limited to certain countries. To give only a few examples: for the United States, the so-called John Jay Report must be taken into account, The Nature and Scope of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests and Deacons in the United States 1950-2002. Washington, 2004. For Australia, see the Final Report of the Australian Royal Commission: Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, at https://www.childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au/final-report (accessed 7 January 2020). For Germany there is the report of the German Bishops’ Conference: Sexual abuse of minors by catholic priests, deacons and male members of orders in the domain of the German Bishops’ Conference. Summary in English: https://dbk.de/fileadmin/redaktion/diverse_downloads/dossiers_2018/MHG-Study-eng-Endbericht-Zusammenfassung.pdf (accessed 7 January 2020), which reports thousands of cases of sexual abuse in ecclesiastical contexts between 1946 and 2014. At the global level, though without detail or case work, there is the report of the Child Rights International Network (CRIN), https://home.crin.org (accessed 19 January 2020). ↩︎
5. See, for example, Sarah Toulalan and Kate Fisher, eds. The Routledge History of Sex and the Body, 1500 to present. New York: Routledge, 2013. Especially part XII, “Sexual violence and rape”, 427 ff.; and chapters 23 and 24 respectively: Garthine Walker. “Sexual violence and rape in Europe, 1500-1750”, 429-444; Shani D’Cruze. “Sexual violence since 1750”, 444-459. ↩︎
6. See especially the work of Pierre Bourdieu, for example, with Jean-Claude Passeron. “Fundamentos de una teoría de la violencia simbólica”. In La Reproducción. Elementos para una teoría del sistema de enseñanza, 39-105. Coyoacán (Mexico): Ediciones Distribuciones Fontamara, S.A., 1995 (translation of the French edition. Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1970). ↩︎
7. Cf. “Sexual Violence and Rape in Europe”, 431. ↩︎
8. Ibid. ↩︎
9. See David Le Breton’s book devoted to the mechanistic and dissociative views of the human being in relation to the body that have prevailed in society, Anthropologie du corps et modernité. Paris: PUF, 1990. ↩︎
10. See David Le Breton. Anthropologie de la douleur. Paris: Métailié, 1995. ↩︎
11. Ellert Nijenhuis. The Trinity of Trauma: Ignorance, Fragility, and Control. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015. Especially chapters 7: “The Capricious Historical Understanding of Traumatic Melancholia and Hysteria: Part I. Psychological Considerations”, 147-168; and 8: “The Capricious Historical Understanding of Traumatic Melancholia and Hysteria: Part II. Philosophical Considerations”, 169-200. ↩︎
12. See Federico Szczaranski. “Sobre la evolución del bien jurídico penal: un intento de saltar más allá de la propia sombra”. Política criminal, no. 14 (December 2012): 378-453. ↩︎
13. Ambroise-Rendu. Histoire de la pédophilie XIXe-XXIe siècles. Paris: Fayard, 2014. ↩︎
14. G. Sáez. “Aproximación histórica a los abusos sexuales a menores”. Eguzkilore 29 (2015): 145. ↩︎
15. Ibid., 145. Sáez refers to articles 365-367 of the Código Penal de España. Edición Oficial Reformada. Madrid: Imprenta Nacional, 1850. ↩︎
16. See the Convention at https://www.un.org/es/events/childrenday/pdf/derechos.pdf ↩︎
17. Ibid., 147. ↩︎
18. See, in particular, Anne-Claude Ambroise-Rendu’s book Histoire de la pédophilie. Above all, chapter 6: “Mythomanes ou séductrices?”, 146 ff. ↩︎
19. See Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson. The Assault on Truth: Freud’s Suppression of the Seduction Theory 2012, especially chapter 5: “The Strange Case of Ferenczi’s last Paper”, 239-305 (in the print edition). ↩︎
20. Steven Pinker. ↩︎
21. “A priest who in the act, on the occasion, or under the pretext of confession solicits a penitent to sin against the sixth commandment of the Decalogue is to be punished, according to the gravity of the delict, by suspension, prohibitions, and privations; in graver cases he is to be dismissed from the clerical state.” (CIC, canon 1387). ↩︎
22. Canon 1395 §2: “A cleric who in another way has committed an offense against the sixth commandment of the Decalogue, if the delict was committed by force or threats or publicly or with a minor below the age of sixteen years, is to be punished with just penalties, not excluding dismissal from the clerical state if the case so warrants” (emphasis ours). ↩︎
23. Canon 1387: “A priest who in the act, on the occasion, or under the pretext of confession solicits a penitent to sin against the sixth commandment of the Decalogue is to be punished, according to the gravity of the delict, by suspension, prohibitions, and privations; in graver cases he is to be dismissed from the clerical state.” ↩︎
24. Especially in his lecture on justice or vengeance published under the title “Sanction, réhabilitation, pardon”. In Le Juste. Paris: Esprit, 1995. ↩︎
25. See Jessica Benjamin. Beyond Doer and Done To. Recognition Theory, Intersubjectivity and the Third. New York: Routledge, 2018. ↩︎
26. Committee on the Rights of the Child. “Concluding observations on the second periodic report of the Holy See”, 2014, n. 29. ↩︎
27. Federico Szczaranski. ↩︎
28. Ibid. ↩︎
29. We recommend Kieran Tapsell’s timeline view. Potiphar’s Wife. The Vatican’s Secret and Child Sexual Abuse. Adelaide: ATF Press, 2014, ch. 3: “Chronology of Church Response to clergy sexual abuse of children”. E-book. Also: Jo Renee Formicola. Clerical Sexual Abuse, How the Crisis Changed US Catholic. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. ↩︎
30. See Mary Gail Frawley-O’Dea. Predatory Priests, Silenced Victims. The Sexual Abuse Crisis and The Catholic Church. London: The Analytic Press, 2007. ↩︎
31. Alex Gibney, dir. Mea Maxima Culpa. El silencio en la casa de Dios. HBO, 2012. Albert Solé, dir. Examen de Conciencia. Netflix, 2019. ↩︎
32. Tom McCarthy, dir. Spotlight. Anonymous Content, Participant Media, First Look Media, Rocklin/Faust, 2015 (winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture). It deals with the efforts of the journalists of the Boston Globe to uncover the abuse and cover-ups in the Archdiocese of Boston. It exposes the acts of cover-up by Cardinal Bernard Law. François Ozon, dir. Grâce à Dieu. Mandarin Films and Scope Pictures, 2019. ↩︎
33. See Carta del Santo Padre Francisco al pueblo de Dios que peregrina en Chile, 4. At http://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/es/letters/2018/documents/papa-francesco_20180531_lettera-popolodidio-cile.html (accessed 10 January 2020). ↩︎
34. See http://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/es/letters/2018/documents/papa-francesco_20180820_lettera-popolo-didio.html (accessed 10 January 2020). ↩︎
35. Sandra Baita and Paula Moreno. Abuso sexual infantil. Cuestiones relevantes para su tratamiento en la justicia. Montevideo: Unicef-Uruguay, 2015, 21. ↩︎
36. In Report of the consultation on Child Abuse Prevention. WHO, 1999, 15-16 (accessed 10 January 2020, at https://apps.who.int/iris/handle/10665/65900) ↩︎
37. Royal Commission, Final Report, 2:30. ↩︎
38. Jorge Barudy. El dolor invisible de la infancia. Una lectura ecosistémica del maltrato infantil. Buenos Aires: Paidós, 1998, 162. ↩︎
39. Ibid. ↩︎
40. Dacher Keltner. The Power Paradox. How we gain and lose influence. New York: Penguin Random House, 2016. ↩︎
41. See Emmanuel Lévinas. Totalité et Infini. Essai sur l’extériorité. Paris: Martinus Nijhoff, 1971. ↩︎
42. Cf. Finkelhor. ↩︎
43. See Helen P. Hailes, Rongqin Yu, Andrea Danese, and Seena Fazel. “Long-term outcomes of childhood sexual abuse: an umbrella review”. Lancet Psychiatry 6 (2019): 830-839. ↩︎
44. David Archard. Sexual Consent. Boulder (Colo.): Westview Press, USA, 1998. ↩︎
45. Chilean Criminal Code (Código Penal), article 361. ↩︎
46. Criminal Code 237.1, 1. See the article on the website of the Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund on sexual consent in criminal law: “The law of Consent in Sexual Assault” (https://www.leaf.ca/the-law-of-consent-in-sexual-assault/ accessed 10 January 2020). ↩︎
47. See, for example, Milena Popova’s book Sexual Consent. London: MIT Press Essential Knowledge, 2019. ↩︎
48. Sándor Ferenczi. “Confusion of tongues between adults and the child. The language of tenderness and the language of [sexual] passion”. English translation in The Assault on Truth, Appendix C. ↩︎
49. We recommend: “The Strange Case of Ferenczi’s last Paper”, chapter 5 in The Assault on Truth. ↩︎
50. The theory of the double bind as the genesis of schizophrenia becomes relevant to this confusion. The relationship between the double bind and the subjective impact of child sexual abuse is a task still to be undertaken. See Gregory Bateson, Donald deAvila Jackson, Jay Haley, and John Weakland. “Toward a theory of schizophrenia”. Behavioral Science 1 (1956): 251-264. ↩︎
51. Reynaldo Perrone and Martine Nannini. Violencia y abusos sexuales en la familia. Una visión sistémica de las conductas sociales violentas. Buenos Aires: Paidós, 1997, chapter 4: “Relación de hechizo”, 157 ff. ↩︎
52. Cf. Ibid., 158. ↩︎
53. Cf. Ibid., 159. ↩︎
54. Ibid., 166. ↩︎
55. Ibid. ↩︎
56. Ibid., 167. ↩︎
57. Ibid., 169. ↩︎
58. Ibid. ↩︎
59. We have taken the explanation of the abusive relational process and of grooming from the Royal Commission. Final Report, 2:40: “We define grooming as behaviors that manipulate and control a child, their family and other support networks, or institutions with the intent of gaining access to the child, obtaining the child’s compliance, maintaining the child’s silence, and avoiding discovery of the sexual abuse. This definition takes a victim-centered approach and reflects what we were told during private sessions and public hearings, as well as being informed by research”. ↩︎
60. Cf. Ibid., 41. ↩︎
61. Royal Commission. Final Report. 2. Nature and Causes, 32 ff. ↩︎
62. Maurice Merleau-Ponty. “Le corps comme être sexué”. In Phénoménologie de la Perception, Gallimard, Paris, 1945, 196 (our translation). ↩︎
63. Hailes, Yu, Danese and Fazel, 830-833. ↩︎
64. The body as the centre of orientation is established by Edmund Husserl in Ideas II, section 41. It is taken up in phenomenology in a particular way by Jan Patočka, in “Leçons sur la corporéité”, published in Papiers phénoménologiques. Grenoble: Jérôme Millon, 1995. What is interesting is that this idea of bodiliness, of the human being incarnate in a body, has been in conflict and in dialogue with Platonic, Cartesian and Christian dualism alike. It is precisely in the view of sexual abuse that the concept materialises most clearly, not as an integral, incarnate subject, but as a dissociated, dualised one. ↩︎
65. Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological analysis in his Phénoménologie de la Perception. Paris: Gallimard, 1945, in chapter V: “Le corps comme être sexué”, 181-202, offers a very acute view of the sexed structure of the human being, one that transcends the genital moment. In these structural phenomenological analyses we find the reasons for the depth of the trauma caused by sexual abuse. In this text Merleau-Ponty engages in dialogue with psychoanalysis and recognises the importance of the affective in the relationship with the world and with one’s own history. In our view, a deeper analysis of sexual trauma from this perspective is needed, one capable of going beyond relational genital trauma and seeing it as an affective-existential trauma. Indeed, there is a common source in the affective structure for the capacity to trust and for sexed existence, so that a sexual violation attacks not only the genital, but the affective and sexual structure and, therefore, also the capacity to trust, that is, to find one’s affective bearings in the world. We made our first phenomenological approaches to this problem in Confianza lúcida. Santiago de Chile: Uqbar, 2012, but it needs to be explored further. ↩︎
66. Donna Orange. The Suffering Stranger: Hermeneutics for Everyday Clinical Practice. New York: Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2011. ↩︎
67. “Just as adults are giants to children, the words of therapists and analysts may carry more weight than we realize, and the equilibrium of the dialogic process will need restoration”. ↩︎
68. “Behind trust, and almost sustaining it, there is a promise, even if it is neither declared nor made explicit, on the part of the one who receives the trust. The origin of the word trust (fides) has to do with a request not to harm. The more fragile one asks fides of the more powerful so that he will protect him, so that he will not harm him or abuse him; that is, he trusts him and asks to be able to trust him. To trust, to entrust oneself or to entrust something to someone means to hope that this someone will not do harm but will care for, respect and protect what has been entrusted. He can do harm, he can betray the trust that has been placed in him, but the one who trusts hopes that he will not. Why? Because there is something in trust that creates a promise of protection, a promise that can, of course, be broken.” (José A. Murillo. Confianza lúcida, 87). ↩︎

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