The Sexual Life of the Child

by Albert Moll

The social dangers of masturbation are very closely connected with the ethical dangers, and we frequently find them appearing concurrently. In isolated instances, as Lombroso and Ferrero have shown,[95] premature awakening of sexuality may lead to prostitution. In the chapter on Biology and Psychology, a special section is devoted to sexual prematurity, and the authors contend that in Italy this factor plays a greater part than it does elsewhere. It is further characteristic that in erotic literature women who are famous or notorious for their love-adventures are commonly described as having been the subjects of premature sexual development. From the beautiful Helen, who at the age of seven, according to one story, and at the age of twelve, according to another, was deflowered by Theseus, down to modern times, we find that premature sexual development is frequently adduced as a characteristic of such women. Although it is true that in many cases of the seduction of children there is no question of sexual prematurity, still, for a part of the cases, premature sexual development is responsible. For it can hardly be disputed that the crime of the child-seducer is greatly facilitated, if the child meets the seducer halfway. In cases in which sexual offences were committed on little girls, Tardieu[96] made a special class of those in which the offence was frequently repeated upon the same individual. Of the 60 cases of this kind, 29 were in little girls under eleven years of age, and 26 were in girls from eleven to fifteen years. He states that in these chronic victims, he was first of all struck by the premature development of the genital organs and the remarkable prematurity of general sexual development, both of these conflicting with the age and the development of the girls in other respects, Tardieu certainly paid especial attention to the physical peculiarities of the genital organs, and he was inclined to refer the premature development to the early experience of sexual intercourse. But it is possible that the real connexion was the reverse of this—and, indeed, many other observations support such a view—in that owing to their sexual prematurity the children experienced a powerful sexual impulse at an unusually early age, and that for this reason they became the victims of sexual attempts much earlier than others. Kisch[97] also believes that in many cases of premature puberty, premature sexual intercourse is observed, and parturition may even occur at a very early age. He writes: "A girl in whom menstruation began at the age of one year, gave birth to a child when she was ten years old (Montgomery). A girl who began to menstruate when at the age of nine years, became pregnant very shortly afterwards (d'Outreport). The well-known case recorded by Haller, in which at birth the pubic hair was already grown, and in which menstruation began at the age of two years, was also one of very early pregnancy, the girl giving birth to a child when nine years old. Another girl in whom at birth the pubes were already covered with hair began to menstruate when four years old, copulated regularly from the age of eight, and at nine years became pregnant, and was delivered of a vesicular mole with an embryo (Molitor). A girl began to menstruate at the age of two, had a growth of hair on the pubes and developed mammæ at the age of three, and became pregnant at the age of eight (Carus). With these cases must be classed that observed by Martin in America of a woman who was a grandmother at the age of twenty-six. Lantier, in his travels in Greece, speaks of a mother of twenty-five with a daughter of thirteen."

Whatever the real sequence of events—whether in a little girl the occurrence of sexual intercourse is favoured by the spontaneous premature awakening of the sexual impulse, or, conversely, it is the premature intercourse which awakens the impulse and keeps it active thereafter—the consequences of premature awakening of the sexual impulse are always extremely serious, and often result in the permanent social extinction of the girl concerned. Although in many cases she may be fortunate enough to escape the fate of the prostitute, none the less in modern civilised countries the loss of virginity is a serious disgrace, by which her future will be affected altogether apart from the moral shocks resulting from sexual intercourse in early childhood, and from the possibility of impregnation. The case is much the same as regards children of the male sex. The fact that a boy is sexually precocious, will greatly facilitate his being led astray by grown females to whom his extreme youth acts as a stimulus. Moreover, his sexual precocity may deliver the boy to the embraces of homosexual men, an outcome which is rendered the more likely by the commonly undifferentiated character of the childish sexual impulse. There are certain homosexual adult males whose impulse is especially directed towards boys still possessing the milk-white face of the child, and his encounter with such a pervert may make all the difference to a sexually premature boy. Although I have been engaged for years in the collection of facts bearing on this question of homosexuality, I have recently been astonished to learn, in an ever-increasing number of cases, how adult homosexuals, men of thirty years and upwards, form homosexual relationships with schoolboys, and regard their right to do this as practically self-evident. It is obvious that this is likely to do grave moral injury to the boy—altogether apart from the fact that the production of homosexuality is thereby greatly facilitated, however much interested homosexuals may contest this assertion. It is clear, too, that boys upon whom such relationships are imposed will sometimes tend to grow up as male prostitutes, just in the same way as little girls prematurely seduced in consequence of an early awakening of sexuality often adopt a life of prostitution.

Children in whom sexuality has awakened are especially dangerous to their associates, since they readily seduce others to sexual malpractices. Thus, it sometimes happens, though happily not often, that children attempt sexual intercourse with one another. A question in forensic medicine formerly much discussed, is the age at which children are first able to effect sexual intercourse. I have no doubt whatever that by the end of the second period of childhood, in a comparatively large number of boys, spontaneous erections occur adequate to allow the introduction of the penis into the vagina to be effected; but no doubt it might be difficult for such a boy to effect complete penetration into the vagina of a girl in whom the hymen was still intact. Pouillet[98] even asserts that all boys have the faculty of erection in quite early childhood; and he places on record the following experiment, whose repetition had better be avoided. If in an infant lying in its cradle the edge of the foreskin be tickled with a feather, we shall at once see the penis swell up and become erect, and the infant will grasp at it with the hand. There is no doubt that boys in whom the sexual impulse is prematurely awakened may be a danger to little girls through attempting intercourse with them. More frequently, however, the danger lies, not in attempts at coitus, but in other improper manipulations and contacts, which may take almost every conceivable form. Mutual masturbation is fairly common among children, or one child may manipulate the genitals of another; such practices occur more often between two boys than between two girls or between boy and girl. But experience shows that other and more advanced sexual acts may occur, though fortunately less often; for instance, pæderastic acts between boys, introduction of the penis of one individual into the mouth of another, &c. Ferriani[99] has collected a number of cases of this kind, occurring in youthful criminals. In boys he distinguishes two groups, those from the tenth to the fourteenth, and those from the fourteenth to the eighteenth year of life. He made inquiries regarding the sexual life in 69 boys belonging to the former group, and in 48 belonging to the latter. Of the 69 belonging to the former group, 48 were found to masturbate, in 25 improper sexual acts with the mouth were admitted, in 12 active pæderasty, and in 17 passive pæderasty. It is evident that these data must not be generalised, for Ferriani's studies related to boys who had been morally neglected from the earliest days of childhood, and who had been sent to prison as thieves, beggars, and vagabonds. A great danger attendant on sexual acts in which one child is led astray by another is, of course, the moral harm which threatens the other associates of such children. Girls and boys are equally exposed to such seduction, and the seducer also may be of either sex. In cases of an altogether exceptional character, danger threatens in this respect from a child's own brothers or sisters. I alluded to this matter in an earlier chapter, on page 71. Among cases which have come under my notice, I may mention one in which a boy began to carry out all kinds of perverse sexual acts with his sister, who was about eight years younger than himself, and continued to do this when he had attained the age of twenty-nine years. Forel[100] sees, rightly, as I believe, especial danger in the leading of others astray by young homosexuals, alike in boys' and in girls' boarding-schools. In some of these cases the seducer's act is merely a manifestation of the early undifferentiated state of the sexual impulse, but in others it is an early sign of a real homosexual development.

I append here certain cases from the literature of the subject showing the great dangers that proceed from such premature sexual development. One case reported by Forel[101] was that of a girl nine years of age. "This girl would stimulate sexually all boys of her own age or somewhat younger whom she could induce to allow her to do so. She did this so secretly, that by mishandling the genital organs of her two little brothers, both younger than herself, she slowly brought one to his death, and in the other caused serious injury to the bladder and urethra. With an older boy, she was accustomed to have actual sexual intercourse in the woods. I could not, in this case, gain any definite information regarding hereditary taint. Such persons commonly become criminals in later life, or at least indulge in the most shameless masturbation or give themselves up to prostitution."

A case which at one time attracted great attention in France may here be given in the actual words of the report. "Leo, thirteen years old, demanded the favours of eleven little girls, offering in return, as the girls confessed, a small reward—a penny or a sweet. Many others must have been compelled by their parents to make no complaint, in order to avoid a mortifying publicity. Leo is the son of a good fellow, a shoemaker by trade, and also a lamplighter. The mother having run away, and the father being often out at work, the boy was left much alone. He would then entice into the house little girls of the neighbourhood, one after another, in order to commit immoral acts with them. One day he invited in a little girl of five. The girl's brother peeped through the window, and saw Leo standing naked in front of Mary, as if he posait pour le torse. Ultimately the matter was reported to the police superintendent of the district, and it transpired that not less than ten or eleven little girls of the quarter had been thus led astray. From time to time he invited into the house a number of good-for-nothings of the same stamp as himself, and here this youthful Casanova organised pleasure-parties of a kind usually unknown to those of his age. The lad was bound over to come up for trial if called upon. Such cases as this are commoner than is generally believed; and perhaps commoner in the country than in the town."

The way in which such practices spread by moral contagion is shown by a report of Ferriani,[102] who made inquiries of nine boys, at ages varying between eight and twelve years, how they had learned to masturbate. I. had been taught by a certain K., II. by I., III. by IV., IV. by I., V. by II., VI. by III., VII. by IV., VIII. by VI., IX. by II. Not long ago, I myself came across such an epidemic, in which there occurred, not only masturbation, but, in addition, all sorts of mutual sexual contacts between boys and girls; a boy of five was the primary seducer, having undertaken the sexual enlightenment of a girl of seven, and beginning this process with the remark that she need no longer believe that babies were brought by a stork. These two went on to improper contact, and subsequently quite a number of children were gradually corrupted by the two.

To the jurist, also, the question of the sexual life of the child is one of great importance. I do not myself share the view of Ferriani and others, that the sexual life of the child, when it awakes prematurely, is a common cause of crime—although this may be true of certain special cases, presently to be described. But the sexual life of the child is of importance from another point of view. In cases in which children are the objects of sexual offences, such as have recently so often come before the courts, the question of the capacity of the children to give evidence frequently plays a great part. The lawyer, who is often ignorant of the extent to which sexual imaginations and sexual acts may prevail among children, is apt to assume that the child is of necessity sexually inexperienced, and for this reason to put a trust in childish evidence which is in many instances not justified by the facts of the case, because the supposed inexperience may not really exist. If judges and magistrates knew how much and how often children's brains are occupied with sexual imaginations, without speaking of the sexual acts which many children have engaged in while still quite young, they would be more guarded than they are at present in their acceptance of children's evidence in sexual matters. Not infrequently, when such a child describes the sexual offence which is supposed to have been committed, it is assumed without further inquiry that the child's account must be accurate, the grounds for this assumption being stated as follows: "How could such an accusation be invented? The poor child has had no previous experience of such matters; what is now described must have actually happened, for it is impossible that an inexperienced child could construct it all out of its own imagination." But to anyone who has seriously studied the sexual life of the child, this logic is utterly fallacious. Still, the argument is none the less a very dangerous one; and as an expert witness I have assisted at several trials as to which I remain convinced to this day that the judge has assumed the offender to be guilty simply because he (the judge) was ignorant of the nature of the sexual life of the child, above all as regards psychosexual imaginations. Some years ago there was tried in Berlin a case in which a wealthy banker was accused of misconduct with a little girl. In the end the accused received a severe sentence. In that trial I was called as an expert witness, and I believe that as regards the principal charge the banker was wrongfully condemned. The principal witness was a girl twelve years of age, and it was her accusation which formed the main ground of the conviction, and this notwithstanding the fact that the child had subsequently withdrawn her charges. In common with other expert witnesses, I pointed out, in rebuttal of the girl's evidence, that the person on whom the alleged offence had been committed was not, as the police magistrate and the judge had both assumed, an inexperienced child, but one in whom sexuality had prematurely awakened, and in whom strongly sensual tendencies were manifest; we showed that in her imaginative activities the sexual life played a leading part, and that the child herself had at an earlier date performed some of the actions with which she charged the accused. But the child had made so favourable an impression on the police magistrate and the judge that they firmly believed her first statement, and held that her subsequent withdrawal of her accusation was due to outside influence. It would be well, in some cases of the kind, to insist upon a complete examination of the girl who makes the accusation, this examination to include her bodily state, to ascertain if there are indications of a prematurely awakened sexual life—for example, any irritation of the genital organs by masturbation. We shall also do well, in such cases, to endeavour to ascertain whether the child is already fully informed concerning the nature of sex. We must always bear in mind that things which may give an indication regarding this are usually kept very secret, and that none of the child's associates may be able to give us any information. Even though among the witnesses we have parents, masters, or governesses all uniting to assure us that the child's mind is still perfectly innocent, and that not a suspicion regarding matters of sex has yet been aroused, the judge should not allow himself to be deceived. Sexual imaginations often dominate the consciousness of the child, at the very time when a display of shamefacedness in relation to such things deceives the onlookers. In such trials, it is sometimes put forward as a defence, that some third person, some police official, the examining judge, or even an enemy of the accused, has reiterated the false accusation to the child, and has, as it were, suggested it. Such an assumption is, for many cases, altogether superfluous, even if we do not believe a word of the child's accusation, for it completely underestimates the power of the childish imagination. The French physician, Bourdin,[103] in his work on Lying Children, gives the case of a little girl who by her good behaviour and affectionate disposition had won the love of her foster-parents. One day they were reading aloud the report of a scandalous trial, while the child was in the room playing with her dolls, and to all appearance paying no attention to the reading. A few days later the foster-parents saw the little girl putting her dolls together in an indecent posture. In answer to earnest inquiries, the child said she was only doing what someone had once done to her; she then went on to make detailed and serious accusations against certain other persons. A clever and experienced physician was asked to investigate the matter before any application was made to the law courts. As a result of a physical examination of the girl, he declared that what she described could not possibly have taken place; and ultimately she admitted that the whole accusation was false. As a reason for her lies, she said, "qu'elle avait voulu faire comme les dames que l'on avait mises dans le journal." Such imaginative activity may occur in healthy children, but it is in the case of those with a morbid inheritance that we have especially to reckon with these possibilities. As with the grown woman, so with the child, the degenerative form of hysteria makes those subject to it untrustworthy witnesses. This applies above all to accusations of sexual offences. Feeble-mindedness is also dangerous in this connexion, for its existence is apt to be overlooked by the judge, although an expert examination of the witness—who, in most of these cases, is of the female sex—would facilitate the diagnosis. Among the feeble-minded, we find, not only sexually premature individuals, but also persons with a tendency to pathological deceit, this latter sometimes manifesting itself in childhood, and of course lessening or completely abolishing the subject's credibility as a witness to the occurrence of alleged sexual offences.

These considerations must not lead us to the opposite extreme, of altogether discrediting the assertions of child-witnesses; but they should convince us of the need for the recognition of a source of fallacy often completely overlooked by parents, namely, the indulgence by children in sexual imaginative activity, and the frequent existence of unsuspected sexual enlightenment. To this extent only do such questions form part of my subject. Following Hans Gross, I have on page 41 already drawn attention to the fact that girls of a certain age are untrustworthy witnesses regarding their own experiences. But to guard against too comprehensive a generalisation in this respect, I must point out that during the second period of childhood a girl may be a highly competent observer, and this precisely for matters in which her interest has been aroused by the development of her sexual life. I may quote from Hans Gross certain remarks bearing on this.[104] "We have to recognise that in the observation and understanding of certain matters, there is no one cleverer than a growing girl. Her school-life, and her personal experiences and occupations, do not adequately occupy her energies. Sexual influences are beginning to become active, and half-unconsciously the girl studies her environment in search of experiences bearing, however remotely, on this sphere. The little interests and amours of the nearer and further environment will be by no one discovered so speedily as by a bright and lively half-grown girl. Every variation in the mutual interest of the pair she has under observation will be noted by such a girl with the keenest sympathy. Long before the two have come to an understanding, she will be aware of their sentiments for one another. She notes when they are drawing nearer together, and she knows at once when they have given open expression to their love. Whether they become engaged or whether they draw apart from one another, the little one knows all about it before any of their intimates. Moreover, such a girl will take note of all the doings of certain of her acquaintances. An interesting beauty, or a young man living near at hand, will have no more watchful observer of all their doings than a young girl of twelve years. She, too, will take note more accurately than anyone else of all the changes of mood of those who are under her observation."

But the sexual life of children is of importance, not only in relation to the question of their credibility as witnesses, but also in respect of our decision as to matters of fact. Sexual attempts on children under fourteen years of age are legally punishable offences, and it is a matter of indifference whether the offender or the child was the instigator. In determining the degree of culpability it is, however, of important whether the child against whom the offence has been committed was innocent and uncorrupted, or was one with previous sexual experiences. In addition to this, we have also to take into account the question whether the child incited to the offence, under the influence of the spontaneous activity of its own sexual impulse. All these considerations will make it clear that from many points of view the sexual life of the child is a matter of forensic importance.

We must not forget that the child itself may be threatened with legal dangers as a result of the activity of its own sexual impulse. The German legal code decrees different degrees of penal responsibility at different ages. Children not yet twelve years of age are not liable to criminal prosecution. A child over twelve, but under eighteen years of age, must be exonerated if when the offence was committed the child did not possess the knowledge enabling him or her to understand its culpability. By the third paragraph of section 176 of the German criminal code, any one who has improper sexual relations with a person under fourteen years of age, or who induces such a person to practise or suffer such relations, is liable to severe punishment.