The Sexual Life of the Child

by Albert Moll

It should not need demonstration that such sexual malpractices on children may have serious consequences for these latter. A girl may suffer most severely, alike morally and socially, even though defloration has not been effected. It is quite conceivable that in such a way a girl may be brought to prostitution. Certain investigators have studied the question at what age defloration had been effected in women leading a life of prostitution, and have ascertained that in many cases this had taken place in childhood. Martineau[118] reports cases in which defloration had been effected at the age of nine or ten years. Experience teaches that boys also, especially when they have been seduced by sexual inverts, are very apt to adopt a life of prostitution. It must also be remembered that girls may occasionally become pregnant and give birth to a child even before they have themselves passed the years of childhood—another source of social danger. In addition, we have to reckon with dangers to physical health; among these we have the direct consequences of premature misuse of the genital organs, and, above all, the danger of venereal infection. In a great many cases, sexual offences against children are brought to light only when, on examining the child, gonorrhoeal or syphilitic infection is disclosed. Many authorities hold that the superstitious hope of curing venereal disease by sexual intercourse with an innocent child, is a comparatively frequent source of such infection in children. Freud, to whose views I have referred several times before, believes that sexual attempts on children may give rise in the latter to severe neuroses—an idea which forms an important part of the etiological system put forward by this author.

We must regard it as a peculiar danger of sexual relations on the part of a child with an adult, that sexual perversion may be induced. I may refer to what I said about this matter on pp. [60]-[62]. The chief danger does not arise from the fact that the child is occasionally utilised for a homosexual act, but from the circumstance that in the period of the undifferentiated sexual impulse, the child's sexual interest, and especially its contrectation impulse, is directed towards one of its own sex, and that thereby a permanent perversion may be induced. Edward Carpenter,[119] indeed, considers that in such homosexual relationships the younger partner makes the advances. "The younger boy looks on the other as a hero, loves to be with him, thrills with pleasure at his words of praise or kindness." In his general views on this question, Carpenter takes a somewhat peculiar position. Unfortunately, he overlooks the fact that the elder is not to be exonerated because the younger made the first advances—at any rate, in cases in which the elder is in a position to understand the true nature of such relationships. Everyday experience shows that in many cases the elder person is of such an age that there can be no doubt upon this point. And apart from this, it is not usual to find that it is the younger person who makes the sexual advances. In most of the cases which have come under my own notice it was unquestionably the elder who began to lead the younger astray. The matter is not as harmless as Carpenter makes out. The same considerations apply to sexual intercourse with immature girls. Beyond doubt, there are many girls who meet sexual advances halfway, owing to the premature development of their own sexual impulse; and some such girls go more than halfway. A common practice of pædophiles is to begin by arousing sexual excitement in the child, either by manual stimulation, or else by showing the child erotic pictures, or by reading to it from an erotic book. We must also admit that in certain cases the child meets sexual advances halfway, not so much under the stimulus of its own sexual impulse, but for other reasons; for example, the child may be following the instructions of its parents, who regard their child as a marketable commodity, either because they have been well paid by the pædophile, or because they wish to use the child as an instrument in a blackmailing scheme. The point last mentioned is one of great importance—the fact that intercourse on the part of a grown person with a child under fourteen years of age is sometimes deliberately instigated by the child's parents or guardians, with the sole object of securing thereby a permanent income from blackmail. In other cases, the instigation may not come from the parents or guardians, or not directly from these, but from professional procuresses, who have undertaken to satisfy the desires of sexual perverts. I may refer in this connexion to the Pall Mall Gazette revelations of the London of nearly a generation ago.

False accusations on the part of children, especially on the part of little girls, who allege themselves to have been the subjects of sexual assaults, have been mentioned in an earlier part of this work, but the matter is one of such outstanding importance, that its further consideration will not come amiss. An experienced Berlin lawyer has recently emphasised this danger.[120] He shows that it is a regular practice to utilise the existence of certain punishments as a means of getting undesired persons out of the way, by bringing false accusations against them. Immediately after the Franco-German War, these accusations dealt with offences against the laws providing for the safety of the Empire and of the individual States of the German Confederation. At a later date, persons seeking revenge made frequent use of accusations of lèse majesté. Still more recently, it is the section in the German legal code dealing with sexual offences against children, which is chiefly utilised for such purposes, "The good-natured householder who, because it is his birthday, presents a few sweets to children assembled in the courtyard of his house, is suspected of an offence against sexual morals;" when he finds it necessary to give warning to his untrustworthy hall-porter, this latter revenges himself by lodging a false accusation of this kind. It is a melancholy fact that an experienced barrister should find it necessary to make the following comprehensive declaration: "As a rule it is of no use for the accused person to call expert witnesses, who give the court long lectures upon the significance of children's evidence, and upon the import of evidence in general. In our own experience one accused of such offences rarely escapes conviction. He is hardly ever spared the terrible ordeal of examination and cross-examination. On all hands we hear the loud complaints of such persons, declaring that they have been wrongfully condemned." My own experience in the law courts leads me to accept these statements without reserve, and I regard as one of the gravest scandals of our present penal system the ease with which a girl who makes a pretty curtsy to the court, and who appears to be shamefaced when giving her evidence, is believed by the judge or magistrate. The dangers involved in this are obvious to many, especially to those who have much to do with children. An actor personally known to me, constantly received advances both from married women and from young girls, was pestered with letters from such persons, and to his great distress was several times followed in the streets by half-mature and immature girls. One day, in the street, he was walking with a friend, when two girls of about thirteen or fourteen years of age began to follow him. Turning round, he shouted to the girls that they had better run off home, or their father would give them a good spanking. To his astonished companion he explained that only by such drastic methods was he able, as he thought, to protect himself from false accusations.

It is very generally assumed that sexual offences against children are increasing in number. As regards the increase in Germany, the following figures are given by Mittelmaier.[121] For sexual offences against children, the convictions in the year 1897 numbered 3085; and in the year 1904, 4378. But of hardly any offences specified in the code can we say with more certainty than we can of sexual offences against children, that the convictions bear no necessary relationship to the number of offences actually committed. My own experience in the law courts leads me to see in the figures nothing more than an increase in the number of convictions for such offences—convictions which may have involved the innocent as well as the guilty. However this may be, historical studies prove that sexual offences against children are no new thing. Long ago, Martial, in the sixth and eighth epigrams of his ninth book, complained of the procurement of children, referring to boys rather than to girls. Otto Stoll[122] reports cases from uncivilised countries; and to his account of the defloration of children he appends the following words: "From all such details, we draw the ethnologically remarkable inference, that those human beings who have attained the highest level of civilisation, relapse frequently in the matter of the sexual life to the rudest instincts of savagery; and that in this respect neither does one civilised country much excel another, nor is 'civilised man' in a position to cast many reproaches in the teeth of the savage." Finally, I may refer to the experience of a Parisian Police Commissary,[123] who in the middle of the nineteenth century described prostitution in Paris, and devoted a special chapter to the subject of child-prostitution. Beyond question, the committing of sexual offences against children is no peculiar privilege of the civilised world or of modern times; although it remains possible that there has of late been some increase in the number of such offences.

It is obviously right that children should receive special protection from the law. The higher limit of the age of protection varies from ten to eighteen years. Ten years is the age-limit in certain States of the American Union; seventeen is the age-limit in Finland.[124] According to Mittelmaier, two considerations should guide us in regard to the protection of children: bodily immaturity, and moral weakness. The existence of the former leads the normal and healthy man to regard sexual approaches to children as unnatural and detestable. But, apart from the question of immaturity, we have to recognise that in children the moral sphere also deserves consideration; that notwithstanding the possible recent development of physical maturity, the child as such requires protection, in order to prevent the occurrence of such moral corruption as will render it incapable, when grown-up, of obeying the moral law. No thoughtful person can refuse to admit the child's right to protection.

But here a peculiar point needs attention, concerning, namely, the treatment in the law courts of such offences against children. I consider that by legal intervention in these cases the child's morals are sometimes more gravely endangered than by the original offence. If a man has momentarily laid his hand on the knee of a girl of ten, the child can hardly be said to have been injured, and will certainly have received much less injury than would result, if the case be brought into court, from cross-questioning of the child, not merely by its own relatives, but also by the police, the magistrate and his colleagues (in the court of first instance), by the public prosecutor and the counsel for the defence (in the higher court), and perhaps in addition by expert witnesses. When such a child is asked, whether the offender did not put his hand higher than the knee, whether he did or did not actually touch the genital organs, grave dangers may arise from such questioning. There is a further danger, in that some times, in such a case, the child is present in court throughout the entire proceedings. Some years ago, in Hamburg, I was called as an expert witness in a case of this kind. In this instance, the presiding judge, and also the public prosecutor and the defending counsel, exhibited the greatest possible delicacy, when one child was under examination, in sending the others, as far as possible, out of court. But I have also been present at trials in which no such precautions were taken, but in which every child was allowed to hear all the uncleanness in the evidence of the other children, and perhaps also in that of adults. Knowledge of the world, and, above all, tact, will best save the judge from treating children wrongly in this matter. The way in which a trial is conducted, which is often an extremely mechanical one, will not always enable the judge to avail himself of the means requisite for the protection of children from contamination in the course of such a prosecution. When we take a comprehensive view of the harm that may be done to children by sexual offences committed against them and by the consequent legal proceedings, we shall find, in my opinion, that from the legal proceedings arises a notable proportion of the injury.

The examination of the mental condition of the child-depraver is a matter of the utmost importance. In cases in which we find that the offender is suffering from some pronounced mental disorder, such as progressive paralysis (paralytic dementia), senile dementia, or an epileptic disturbance of consciousness, there can be no doubt as to the existence of irresponsibility; but it must never be forgotten that in the early course of such diseases, these sexual perversions often make their appearance at a time when no other definite signs of the brain disease have as yet appeared, and that for this reason the conviction of innocent persons—old men, for instance—on account of sexual offences against children, often occurs. Kirn,[125] who in the Freiburg prison had under observation six old men at ages from sixty-eight to eighty-one, all convicted for sexual offences against little girls, states that in all of these there were intellectual defects, and in several of them pronounced symptoms of senile dementia. The psychiatric expert must examine all such cases with the utmost care. We may also express a wish that judges were not inclined to regard themselves as experts in this field, of which, as a rule, they have no expert knowledge whatever.

Cases in which there is no definite mental disorder belong to a different category. Fritz Leppmann, to whom we are indebted for the most comprehensive studies in this field of inquiry, comes to the conclusion that there is no such thing as a truly congenital sexual inclination towards children. Such inclinations often appear, indeed, in congenitally tainted or weak-minded individuals; but he considers that we have no right to speak of the perverse impulse as being itself congenital. Even if we admit this, and refuse to recognise the existence of a congenital perverse impulse towards children, still we have to admit that certain opportunities and conditions may not only lead to the committing of sexual offences against children, but may also induce pædophile tendencies. And the fact cannot be contested that this danger arises more especially in those who are much associated with children; especially, that is to say, in schoolmasters and tutors, on the one hand, and in schoolmistresses and governesses, on the other, Now, in every case that comes under our notice, two points must be taken into consideration. In the first place, if a remarkably large number of teachers come before the law courts charged with sexual offences against children, we have to remember that a certain proportion of these cases must arise from the false accusations to which those persons precisely are exposed who are much associated with children. The second point, on account of which limits are imposed on the extent of the last-mentioned etiological factor, is that certain persons adopt the profession of schoolmaster or mistress, or tutor or governess, either because they are aware of the fact that their sexual impulse is directed towards children, or else, and this is commoner, because, while they are but obscurely conscious of it, they are influenced thereby in the choice of a profession, without having any definite intention to make use of the children under their care in the gratification of their sexual desires. It is an indefinite impulse towards children which is here operative, and sometimes determines the choice of occupation. I have seen cases in which there seemed to be a sort of mania for giving education and instruction, but in which on closer examination it appeared that the interest in the children was a sexual one. Two cases which have been reported to me show that in the case of women also opportunity very easily awakens the sexual impulse; in these cases the giving of baths to the children under their care, first definitely gave rise in two governesses to such perverse inclinations, and in one of them subsequently led to serious sexual malpractices with the children.

As regards the psychiatric treatment of true pædophilia, as a rule in such cases there is no possibility of pleading extenuating circumstances, as provided for by Section 51 of the Imperial Criminal Code. By this section, the offence escapes punishment if the offender was at the time in a state of unconsciousness, or was suffering from a morbid disturbance of mental activity, by which free voluntary choice was rendered impossible. In general, such persons must be held to be legally responsible. It may indeed, in individual cases, be possible to plead extenuating circumstances, or, when it is legally permissible, to plead the existence of partial responsibility—this latter more especially in cases in which symptoms of mental degeneration exist. But by itself a qualitatively abnormal sexual impulse gives the offender just as little right to plead irresponsibility, as a qualitatively abnormal sexual impulse gives the right to invade the sphere of interests of another. The fact that pædophile tendencies occur in those who are in other respects admirable persons does not countervail the need that children should be protected. It would be an error to assume that only morally defective persons are thus affected. I may mention in passing that Dostoiewski is said to have exhibited such pædophile tendencies—at any rate for a time. From the circle of my own acquaintanceship, I have learned that such a tendency may exist in those who are in other respects morally and intellectually sound.

In the sexual inclination of adults towards children, we find a source of serious danger; but the risks are greatly enhanced by the fact that the pædophile tendency is often complicated by other sexual perversions. Exhibitionism in the male is exhibited not only towards adult females, but also towards children, commonly towards girls, but in exceptional instances towards boys. It appears that in these cases the stimulus of innocence plays the chief part. In many cases, the exhibitionist is satisfied with exposing his genital organs; and only in comparatively rare cases, which by many are not included in the category of exhibitionism, do we find that the exhibitionist also masturbates, sometimes in the presence of the child, sometimes after going elsewhere, The fetichistic tendencies of adults are also in many instances directed towards children. Well-known cases are those of the hair fetichists who not infrequently cut plaits of hair from the heads of schoolgirls; but other hair fetichists are satisfied with cutting from the head smaller fragments of hair.