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今天，成人与青春期之前的儿童的性接触实际上在所有国家都是犯罪行为。当处于青春期或青春期之后不久的青少年涉及到与青春期之前的儿童发生性接触的时候，所牵涉到的法律就不那么一致了（参见此处）。不管怎样，普通公众主要还是对专拈青春前期的女孩和男孩的成人感到焦虑。当与儿童有性接触的这群人都被逮捕和因对儿童的性辱虐而受到指控的时候，这种焦虑常常被耸人听闻的媒体所强化。不过，大多数诸如此类在美国、德国和法国引起公众广泛关注的媒体审判都以宣判无罪而告终[1]。对于这些案例，有复仇心理甚或有错觉的个人早已撰造了一些错误的指责；报纸和电视已经把公众搅合得歇斯底里了，而且营造了一种对被告敌意的总体舆论氛围；警察的侦破工作已经被泼进了一些水分[2]；当事的儿童已经受到了诱供的引导，以至于他们的证言失去了法律效力；而所谓的“专家”终于成了彻头彻尾不合格的庸人，如此等等。
正如能够从这些审判中所获悉的那样，对性侵犯儿童者的迫害可能容易演变到对当事双方都不公正的地步：错误的指控可能太容易被人相信了。当事的儿童可能不仅会成为性侵犯者的牺牲品，而且也会成为不适当的法律系统的牺牲品，因为随着不同的线索出现，这个法律系统会持续不断地一遍又一遍地询问当事儿童。这可能歪曲和败坏所涉及的案例，以至于最终，这个无辜者却受到了惩罚，而罪犯却逃脱了罪责。（欲知这些议题的详细论述，请点击此处）。万幸的是，近年来，在许多国家，审判此类案件的法院已经变得更有了效率。法院会想方设法改进它们的专家的资质能力，并且也会极为小心不要“诱导”儿童的证词。现在通常只会让接受过专门培训的接访者进行调查询问，而且会用录像记录下来。因而，儿童可以完全远离审判室，而且此时还可避免受到反反复复的、不适当的和挑衅性的质问。
所涉及到的这类问题的复杂性，使得在像这种概要性课程里不可能对它们作出细致的判断。要想学习有效地处理任何一个这样的问题，则需要研修大量的专业高级课程。
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Adult sexual contact with children before puberty is a crime in virtually all countries today. When juveniles during or shortly after puberty are involved, the law is less uniform (see
here). In any case,
the general public is primarily concerned about adults seeking out prepubescent girls and boys. This concern is often heightened by sensational press reports when whole groups of people are arrested and accused of sexually abusing children. However, the most widely publicized mass trials of this sort in the USA, Germany, and France ended with acquittals (1). In these cases, vengeful or even delusional individuals had made false accusations, newspapers and television had fed public hysteria and created a general atmosphere of hostility toward the defendants, police work had been sloppy, the children had been subjected to leading questions and suggestions that invalidated their testimony, “experts” had turned out to be utterly unqualified etc.
As can be learned from these trials, the persecution of sexual offenses against children can easily become unfair to either side: False accusations may be too easily believed. The children may be victimized not only by sex offenders, but also by an inadequate legal system that keeps interrogating them over and over with differing results. This can distort or undermine the case so that, in the end, the innocent are punished and the guilty go free. (For a detailed discussion of these issues, click
here). Fortunately, in recent years, the courts have become more effective in many countries. They try to improve the qualifications of their experts and also take great care not to “lead” their child witnesses. These are now usually interviewed only once by specially trained interviewers, and this is recorded on video. Thus, children can be kept out of the courtroom altogether and avoid being traumatized by repeated, inappropriate and aggressive questioning.
The complexity of the problems involved makes it impossible to do them justice in a general course like this. Learning to deal effectively with any one of them requires a number of special advanced courses.
(1) The McMartin Case, Los Angeles, USA 1983-90; the mass trial in Worms, Germany 1994-97; the Outreau trial, France 2001-05. These are just the most spectacular and notorious examples.
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