Violated Childhood
Abused and exploited children shown in paedopornographic pictures reduced even further to silence as they are slaves on a market that deprives them of their freedom certainly cannot ask for help. Their only chance is that someone notices them. Child abuse has devastating effects on the psychological and physical development of its victims: abuse changes children’s lives, changes their internal world, alters their relationships with adults and peers alike. Abused children are involved in sexual behaviour that is unfitting for their level of development and therefore not completely understandable. These experiences occur as part of a relationship that is asymmetrical and, in many cases, extremely close, thereby placing the child in question in a position of psychological subservience with respect to the adult. This is why children accept any proposals they receive – including those of a sexual nature – even though they don’t fully understand them, and tend to comply with the requests of the adult even when not violently forced to do so. This is one of the reasons why it is extremely rare for children to reveal abuse; this is where silence comes into play. Adults are also often silent when forced to look at something so disturbing as child abuse; they have a need not to see, not to know, not to think that renews the solitude and impotence of children with respect to their pain. All these silences hide and perpetuate child abuse. The serious consequences of abuse are further worsened and prolonged by the awareness that their abuse has been filmed. Circulation of pictures of abuse for a potentially indefinite amount of time via the Internet makes the memory of children’s abuse carry on for as long as these pictures exist. Above all abused and exploited children need to be sheltered from abuse before being accompanied along a route of therapeutic assistance to help them overcome the trauma of being abused and being filmed as they were victims to such. The effectiveness of any action is therefore measured by the number of victims that can be identified, removed from the possibility of further abuse and helped to commence a gradual recovery.