The Child Who Loses the Right to Say No
Sexual Abuse, Boundaries, and Autonomy
Sexual abuse of children constitutes a fundamental violation of the child’s bodily, relational, and moral boundaries. The abuse is not merely an act directed against the body, but also an intrusion into the child’s possibility of experiencing themselves as a subject with the right to will, refuse, protest, and withdraw. When a child is subjected to sexual abuse, the child’s no is often rendered powerless before it can even be formulated. The child does not only lose protection; the child also loses the experience that their own boundaries have validity.
This makes sexual abuse more than an individual traumatic experience. It concerns a basic practical-philosophical question: What does it mean to be a human being with the right to set boundaries for oneself? Autonomy is often understood as the capacity for self-determination. In children, however, autonomy cannot be understood as independence in the adult sense. The child’s autonomy is vulnerable and relationally conditioned. The child gradually develops the ability to understand themselves, express their own needs, and set boundaries within relationships in which adults protect, confirm, and respect the child’s integrity.
When the adult fails in this responsibility, the child is affected at a fundamental level. The adult possesses power, language, social authority, and often the power to define the situation. The child is marked by dependency, loyalty, limited understanding, and restricted possibilities for creating distance. Abuse therefore does not take place between equal parties. It takes place within an asymmetrical relationship in which the adult, or older person, exploits the child’s vulnerability. This is crucial, because it shows why questions concerning the child’s participation, silence, or lack of resistance must be approached with great professional and ethical caution.
A child who does not say no has not necessarily consented. A child who does not protest has not necessarily understood. A child who remains in a relationship with the perpetrator has not necessarily chosen that relationship freely. Silence, adaptation, compliance, or apparent loyalty may express dependency, fear, confusion, or the need to preserve a relationship on which the child is still dependent. In such situations, it is essential to distinguish between outward behaviour and genuine autonomy. The child’s actions cannot be interpreted as free choices detached from the power relation in which the child is situated.
This perspective is important because children subjected to abuse may come to understand themselves through what happened. If the child repeatedly experiences that their own boundaries are not respected, the child may develop a fundamental uncertainty about the right to say no. The child may learn that other people’s needs, demands, or desires carry more weight than their own bodily signals. The child may learn to adapt before they have time to sense what they themselves feel. The child may learn to read the moods and expectations of others more carefully than their own boundaries. In this way, the violation may gradually become part of the child’s relational pattern.
This does not mean that the child lacks will. It means that the will may become subordinated to survival. In a threatening or unpredictable situation, adaptation may be a necessary strategy. The child may attempt to reduce danger by being obedient, silent, competent, available, or invisible. Such strategies may be understandable and functional in the situation itself, but they may also have serious consequences later. The adult who was once abused may struggle to recognise their own boundaries, to say no without guilt, to distinguish care from self-erasure, or to understand the difference between closeness and invasion.
Attachment theory is relevant here. Bowlby (1988) shows how the child’s sense of safety develops through relationships in which caregivers are available, predictable, and protective. When the caregiving relationship is also threatening or violating, a particularly serious conflict arises. The child needs the adult, but may also fear the adult. The child seeks closeness to the very person who may cause harm. In such situations, attachment may become characterised by anxiety, confusion, and ambivalence. The relationship does not provide the child with a secure base, but with an insecure world in which the boundaries between care and danger become unclear.
This confusion may have consequences far into adult life. When abuse occurs within a relationship in which the child expects care, trust may become associated with risk. Closeness may become associated with invasion. Dependency may become associated with loss of control. The adult survivor may therefore both long for relationship and fear it. Relational difficulties after abuse should not be understood as a lack of willingness to connect, but as possible expressions of experiences in which contact was previously associated with danger.
Judith Herman (1992) describes how prolonged relational trauma may damage a person’s basic trust in themselves and in others. This is particularly relevant in cases of child sexual abuse. The abuse does not merely affect a single event in the past; it may disturb the very structures that make it possible to live safely with other people. Boundary, trust, body, language, and self-understanding become intertwined. When the child loses the right to say no, the child’s later possibility of saying yes in a free and safe way is also affected.
This is an important point. A genuine yes presupposes the possibility of saying no. Consent, closeness, and trust have no ethical value if they are not grounded in freedom. A person who cannot say no without fear, guilt, or loss of relationship cannot fully say yes either. Sexual abuse therefore damages not only the capacity for refusal, but also the capacity for mutual and trusting intimacy. What has been taken from the child is not only the right to protect themselves. It is also the experience that the body can be a place of self-determination, safety, and dignity.
In professional practice, this has several consequences. First, the professional must understand that boundary-setting is not merely a skill that can be learned through advice. For people who have been subjected to abuse, boundary-setting may be associated with danger, shame, or guilt. Saying no may activate earlier experiences of not being heard, not being believed, or being punished. Professional support must therefore not only encourage the person to set boundaries, but also help make boundary-setting once again experienced as legitimate and safe.
Second, professionals themselves must work with clear boundaries. The person who has been subjected to abuse does not need a boundaryless helper, but a reliable one. Good help requires predictability, respect for pace, informed consent, and continuous awareness of power. The professional must not force narratives, interpretations, or conclusions for which the person is not ready. Help that disregards the other person’s boundaries may, at worst, repeat something of the structure created by the abuse: that someone else knows, wants, or decides on behalf of the person subjected to abuse.
Third, professionals must be attentive to how institutions encounter people who have been subjected to abuse. Forms, interviews, assessments, treatment routines, and legal processes may be necessary, but they may also be experienced as invasive if they are not carried out with care. When a person who has previously lost control over their own body and their own story must once again explain themselves within frameworks defined by others, an ethical challenge arises. Institutional help must therefore be organised in such a way that it strengthens, rather than weakens, the person’s experience of dignity and participation.
It is also necessary to maintain a clear perspective on responsibility. When a child loses the right to say no, this is not due to the child’s inadequacy. It is because an adult or older person has crossed a boundary that should have been absolute. In many cases, it is also because other adults did not see, did not understand, did not dare to ask, or did not act. This does not mean that everyone around the child can be made morally guilty of the abuse. It does mean, however, that sexual abuse must always be understood within a broader field of responsibility. Children are not protected by good intentions alone. They are protected by adults who take children’s signals, boundaries, and stories seriously.
The practical-philosophical concern is therefore to insist on the child’s status as a subject. The child is not property, not a means for another person’s needs, not the bearer of adult secrets, and not a relational resource that can be used without consequence. The child is a human being with intrinsic worth. In Kant (1785/1996), this is expressed in the requirement never to treat humanity merely as a means, but always also as an end in itself. Although Kant’s concept of autonomy was primarily developed with the rational adult in mind, the principle points toward something fundamental: human dignity does not lie in usefulness, obedience, or availability, but in the fact that the human being is a subject who cannot legitimately be reduced to another person’s purposes.
In relation to children, this principle takes on a particular form. The child’s dignity must be protected before the child is fully able to defend it themselves. The child’s right to say no must be carried by adults before the child can formulate it clearly. The child’s boundaries must be respected even when the child does not yet have language for them. The responsibility of adults is therefore not only to respond when the child tells, but also to create spaces in which the child can tell, protest, and be believed.
Restoring the right to say no is not a simple process. It may involve treatment, safe relationships, bodily regulation, linguistic processing, and social support. At a fundamental level, however, it also concerns moral restoration. The person subjected to abuse must be able to experience that their own boundaries matter again. That discomfort can be taken seriously. That a no can be respected. That closeness does not have to mean submission. That trust can be built without self-protection having to be surrendered.
Sexual abuse deprives the child of more than safety in a particular situation. It may deprive the child of the experience of being a human being with the right to boundaries. Professional and societal help must therefore not only address symptoms, but also the restoration of autonomy, dignity, and trust. The child who lost the right to say no must later be able to regain the experience that their own body, their own voice, and their own boundaries have validity. This is not only a therapeutic task. It is an ethical obligation.
References
Bowlby, J. (1988). A secure base: Clinical applications of attachment theory. Routledge.
Finkelhor, D., & Browne, A. (1985). The traumatic impact of child sexual abuse: A conceptualization. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 55(4), 530–541. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1939-0025.1985.tb02703.x
Herman, J. L. (1992). Trauma and recovery: The aftermath of violence—from domestic abuse to political terror. Basic Books.
Kant, I. (1996). Groundwork of the metaphysics of morals (M. J. Gregor, Trans.). In M. J. Gregor (Ed.), Practical philosophy (pp. 37–108). Cambridge University Press. (Original work published 1785)
Pettersen, K. T.. Konsekvenser av seksuelle overgrep [Consequences of sexual abuse] [PowerPoint lectures between 2002 - 2024].
Tangney, J. P., & Dearing, R. L. (2002). Shame and guilt. Guilford Press.
van der Kolk, B. A. (2014). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. Viking.
This essay was developed from my own professional practice as a social worker and my many lectures on sexual abuse over a periode of more than 40 years (1981-2024). The text was written in a conversation with OpenAU/ChatGPT.
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