CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE
Non-contact Sexual Abuse can include:
- Obscene calls, texts, remarks, questions, signs or internet chat.
- Obscene or sexual conversations or chat in person.
- Indecent exposure – “flashing”.
- Voyeurism – “peeping tom”
- Exposure of the child to pornography
- Inappropriate photograph of child used as pornographic tool.
- The taking of an indecent photo of a child.
- Forced to self-masturbate or watch others masturbate.
So let’s look at some forms of non-contact sexual abuse that can be part of a grooming process or just take place in isolation.
Heading the list, of course, is the kind of behaviour that’s growing like an epidemic around the world – online or virtual sexual abuse. This can include obscene or suggestive sexual texts or online chat.
Other examples of non-contact sexual abuse include offenders exposing themselves to victims, or watching them secretly.
Remember that sexual abuse, whether contact or not, is all about the offender using their victim to get sexual gratification – whether the victim is physically involved or not.
Some offenders get sexual gratification out of just having a child present while they masturbate or watch pornography. Others want the child involved and they get them to masturbate while the offender watches.
They might take photographs of the children – sometimes in sexual poses or naked but sometimes fully clothed and in seemingly normal childlike poses, and then use these photographs as a pornographic tool for sexual gratification.
Sometimes this is the only sexual abuse behaviour that abusers do and they will play it down and argue that it doesn’t harm the victim. Unfortunately, statistics show that after a period of time this type of arousal no longer works and they move towards getting their sexual gratification from direct contact with children.