The morality of child abuse

Seeking to explore the moral dimension and implications of child abuse may appear a strange endeavour; self-evidently, there is nothing whatsoever moral, good or ethical about mistreating minors.

Yet philosophy, the academic discipline whose ethical branch is dedicated to the study of morality, rarely addresses why harming children is an obvious wrong. For example, the classical Greek philosophers Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, who 2300 years ago formulated the moral code that, along with Judeo-Christian values, still underpins Western society, rarely explicitly condemn the pederastic, man-male adolescent relationships widely practiced in their cultural context (Percy 2005). An exception within the philosophical canon is British empiricist John Locke, who in the 17th century not only formulated ideas that would guide the American Founding Fathers, but also engaged in an unambiguous, quasi-21st-century advocacy for the gentle and peaceful parenting of children (1693, 2017).

Moral clarity

Despite this relative lack of philosophical inquiry, children affected by child abuse emerge from their ordeals as inadvertent experts on moral matters, imbued with a first-hand knowledge of both the reality of evil, and of many of its means. While few individuals grow up entirely sheltered from pain and suffering, there is an enormous difference between, say, a child mourning the untimely loss of a beloved parent, and another child experiencing habitual mistreatment and neglect at the hands of one or more abusers.

Both of these children will have to grapple too early with one of life’s fundamental questions (‘why me – why do bad things happen to good people?’), yet the former will eventually have their faith in humanity restored by an outpouring of compassion from their community. In contrast, the second child learns that few, if any, adults are willing to listen to and believe them, much less have the courage to act to protect them. Unsupported and unaffirmed, this child is left to construe their sense of themselves, and of their current and future place in the world, based on a single, axiomatic certainty: this, the abuse and pain that I am experiencing, is wrong and should not be happening.

And with that, they possess a moral clarity and moral passion that set them apart from most people. In contemporary Western societies – most markedly, but far from exclusively, in academia – everything is relative, on a continuum or sliding scale.

The existence of truth itself, demonstrable through objective methodology based on rigorous empiricism, is queried and equivocated with subjective, experiential data: my truth is different from yours; ergo, there exists no such thing- diddums. In this line of thinking, it follows that there is no right or wrong, much less good or bad (or evil) anymore. Survivors of child abuse know better.

Suffering and the importance of meaning

When an abused child howls out in pain, knowing that those in earshot do not care, whom are they crying out to? A deity, a hoped-for, universally shared human conscience, or perhaps their future self, i.e., the one person who can be counted on to one day put things right, both for this particular child and others like it?

The wounded healer or crusader for justice are clichés rooted in reality, as is the notion that ‘hurt people hurt people’. The latter point is exemplified by the fact that 98% of the US prison population has an ACE score of at least 1, with over 75% of prisoners having four or more ACEs (American Psychiatric Foundation website). But nowhere is moral judgment more palpable than within that brutalized context, with offenders against children commonly having to be segregated for their own protection (James 2015).

It seems common-sensical to infer that without child abuse, society and the world would be less violent, safer and more peaceful places. Auschwitz survivor and existentialist psychologist Viktor Frankl wrote that, ‘suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds meaning’ (2004:117); this meaning never occurs in isolation but instead always in relation to ‘a cause to serve or another person to love’ (2004:115). Survivors of child abuse will never lack for meaning. They possess moral certainty and the – painfully acquired – expertise to fundamentally change the world.

References:

American Psychiatric Foundation (2026), ‘What Are ACEs? A Guide for Probation Officers’, https://www.apaf.org/our-programs/justice/free-resources/what-are-pces-guide-for-judges/; accessed 08/16/26.

Frankl, Viktor E. (2004), Man’s Search For Meaning, The classic tribute to hope from the Holocaust, Reading, UK: CPI, Cox and Wyman.

James, Michael S. (2015), ‘Prison is “Living Hell” for Pedophiles’, ABC News, https://abcnews.com/amp/US/prison-living-hell-pedophiles/story?id=90004; accessed 08/16/26.

Locke, John (1693, 2017), Some Thoughts Concerning Education, GB: amazon.

Percy, William Armstrong III (2005), ‘Reconsiderations about Greek Homosexuality’, Journal of Homosexuality (49, nos 3-4; 13-61).

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