If there were no rapist in the vicinity, the child would not have been raped. There is a phrase that has always bothered me when people use it to
If there were no rapist in the vicinity, the child would not have been raped.
There is a phrase that has always bothered me when people use it to talk about children who have been sexually abused.
“She knew what she was doing.”
About a CHILD.
Sometimes people say it because a girl didn’t scream. Sometimes because she kept going around the person who abused her. Maybe she accepted gifts, answered his calls, smiled at him, or even appeared to seek his attention.
And somehow, adults take these observations and decide that the child understood what was happening and willingly participated. (When ignorance pretends to have some “wise insight”)
But there is a world of difference between a child knowing what she is doing in a particular moment and understanding what an adult is doing to her.
Think About Precious
In Sapphire’s 1996 novel Push, adapted into the 2009 film Precious, we meet Claireece “Precious” Jones, a young Black girl who has endured horrific sexual and physical abuse within her own family.
Precious lives in a world where the adults responsible for protecting her are also responsible for much of her suffering. She depends on these people for love, life provision, and just survival.
She learns to survive by navigating their moods, anticipating their reactions, and trying to avoid making dangerous situations worse.
Her silence does not mean she approves of what is happening. Her compliance does not mean she has agreed to be violated.
She is a child trying to survive circumstances she did not create.
And that is what makes the phrase “she knew what she was doing” so cruel and abundantly ignorant AND cruel when applied to sexually abused children.
It takes a child’s survival behavior and turns it into evidence against her.
A Child Can Know Something Is Happening Without Having the Power to Stop It
A child may understand that an adult expects her to keep a secret. She may understand that refusing could make him angry. She may know that being pleasant might keep him calm or that accepting a gift will make the conversation easier.
She might even believe the adult loves her.
None of this makes her responsible for the abuse.
Children depend on adults for food, shelter, affection, guidance, and protection. An abusive adult can exploit those needs, along with a child’s trust and limited understanding of sexual relationships.
Sometimes children resist. Sometimes they freeze. Sometimes they become agreeable or try to please the person harming them. And sometimes their responses change from one encounter to the next.
What people describe as a fawn response may be an attempt to appease a threatening person. But a child does not need to demonstrate any particular trauma response for the abuse to be recognized.
Knowing how to survive an adult is not the same as consenting to what that adult does.
Why Are We So Quick to Give Children Adult Responsibility?
I want people to pay attention to how easily responsibility gets transferred.
An adult chooses to exploit a child, but the conversation turns to whether the girl was “mature for her age.” Whether she was “flirtatious.” Whether she went back. Whether she seemed to “enjoy the attention.”
We start examining the child’s behavior as though she were the person responsible for maintaining the adult’s boundaries.
And I have to ask: Why?
Why are we demanding adult judgment from a child while making excuses for an adult who had every opportunity to exercise it?
A girl may be intelligent, curious, affectionate, outspoken, or unusually mature in some ways. She is still a child.
Her personality does not transfer responsibility for an adult’s sexual conduct onto her.
And when people say, “She knew what she was doing,” I want them to finish that thought.
What exactly are you accusing this child of knowing? That an adult wanted something from her? That she might be punished for refusing? That keeping him happy could make her life easier?
Because none of those things makes a child responsible for an adult’s decision to sexually abuse her.
The Adults Knew What They Were Doing
There is another sentence I wish people would say more often.
“He knew what he was doing.”
He was the adult. He was responsible for maintaining appropriate boundaries. He had the power and the obligation not to exploit a child.
That is where the scrutiny belongs.
Stories like Push and Precious remind us that children can become skilled at surviving situations no child should ever have to navigate. They may learn to read a room, conceal their fear, manage an adult’s emotions, and protect themselves in whatever ways are available.
Those skills may help them survive, but they do not make them responsible for the violence.
So the next time someone says a sexually abused girl “knew what she was doing,” I hope somebody asks a better question.
Why was a child placed in a position where she had to figure out how to survive an adult’s sexual behavior in the first place?
And why are we questioning her choices instead of his?
A child should never have to prove she was innocent enough, frightened enough, or resistant enough to deserve protection.
She was a child. That was already enough.
Revisting the Silencing of Silenced Women and Girls: R Kelly – WE Survive Abuse
A Book and Film I Recommend: Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison – WE Survive Abuse
I’m Terrified to Tell You that I’m a Rape Survivor Because – WE Survive Abuse
His Truth Does Not Need a Permission Slip — Even When It Makes People Squirm – WE Survive Abuse