Can children be ‘in love’ with their abuser? Why don’t we ever talk about it?

Dr Jess Taylor talks about the child’s perception of love, abuse, desire and romance.

A topic rarely discussed in the sexual abuse and relationships of children is sexual desire. Their own feelings of wanting to be loved, wanting to be desired, wanting to explore sex, and the way our society and millions of abusers can exploit these completely natural feelings and thoughts.

This leads professionals and parents to believe that children either do not feel sexual desire, or that children feeling sexual desire is deviant or problematic. This also creates a gap in the understanding of how children experience sexual abuse when they are subjected to it, and what they may perceive the sexual activity to be.

If we assume that children understand that what is happening to them is harmful and abusive, we expect them to act in accordance with that knowledge (which we know is problematic because it ignores power dynamics). But what happens if the child feels sexual desire for the abuser – or has a need to feel sexually desired themselves? And where does this sexualisation come from in children?

Should we just ignore it? Dismiss it? Focus on the abuse?

Sexual desire and sexual arousal has been so intertwined throughout history and literature that there is not really an agreed definition of what sexual desire is, and whether it is any different from sexual arousal. In studies about prevalence and emergence of sexual desire in children around the world, it has been shown that desire emerges at around the same time as puberty begins. Around 25% of US 11-12 year olds report that they ‘think a lot about sex’ (Larsson and Svedin, 2002), and in a sample of Spanish children, 6% of 9-10 year old boys reported having sexual fantasies. This had increased to 66% by the time the boys were 13-14 years old. When the same study was done with girls, none of the girls reported sexual fantasies until around 13-14 years old, at which point around 15% of girls reported having sexual fantasies (Arnal and Llario, 2006).

You may notice that these statistics are somewhat dated now, and in 2024 as I write this, it is likely that the massive consumption of porn and sexualised materials will have significantly increased these findings.

The disparity between the percentage of boys and girls experiencing sexual fantasies may be influenced by the reporting bias in children, due to societal norms and values that support male sexual expression and shame female expression. Thus, the number of girls may be considerably higher. We see this in porn use too, where most people think of boys watching porn, not girls.

This disparity in the emergence of sexual desire is often linked to bio-psycho-social theories of child sexual development, in which theorists discuss the impact of hormonal change, brain development, societal norms, and psychological development on the sexual desire of children. What is clear from a large body of studies is that young children do experience sexual desires for and fantasies about other children and other adults. Whether this is a celebrity or a kid at school, we cannot pretend this is not happening.

The desire to be desired

The other side of desire, of course, is ‘the desire to be desired’. Another topic rarely discussed is whether children want to be sexually desired by others, and when this begins in their development. 

Research suggests that children do want to be sexually desired, especially those who are sexually developing during puberty (Fortenberry, 2013). This is a complex process that involves both individual pubertal development and the absorption of social images and pressures which celebrate the objectification of women and girls. Research by the APA (2007) found that girls as young as 6-7 years old were already self-objectifying and self-sexualising - that is, seeing and judging themselves through the male gaze. This is compelling evidence of the power of the media on the need to be desired as children, especially as girls of 6-7 years old are unlikely to have started puberty, which would influence their sex hormones and brain development, and have additional influence on their need to be desired by others.

Again, I must stress here that whilst the APA reports on this topic from 2007 and 2013 were excellent, they probably don’t even scratch the surface of self-sexualisation for little girls now - in an era of porn, TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat streaks.

Children often report that they loved their abuser, and some love them for many years after the abuse has ended. Adults who were subjected to abuse as children can report that they have no concept of their abuse, because they thought they were in loving relationships with the abuser – and even when they showed violent or aggressive behaviours, the child was not able to recognise or escape the abuse. It is therefore important that we discuss what love means to children, whether they do feel ‘love’ as adults would define it, and whether children can be ‘in love’.

It would be so easy to say, ‘these children were never in love, they were groomed!’ - of course they were groomed, but for some children, the intense love they felt (and May still feel) for their abuser is broader than the grooming, and deserves to be explored and discussed in a trauma-informed, non-judgemental way.

What is love?

Tonn (2008) argued that humans learn about love from early childhood, and whilst there is no single definition of love, it is a topic that has been researched, talked about, argued about, and thought about throughout life, media, art, and history for millennia.

Children learn about love from their parents, carers, and families – but they also take in influential messages about love from the media. Love is portrayed in cartoons, programmes, education, films, and games for children of all ages, right from infancy.

Little is known about how children experience and understand romance and love. All research, policy, and theory are based on adult inferences and assumptions about whether and how children can understand love and romance, rather than the actual experience of the child (NIJ, 2014).

I do wonder if we simply ignore the child experience of romance, falling in love, being in love, and heartbreak because we see it as silly, impossible, or a waste of time? There is a wide societal narrative that children cannot be in love, and yet, we believe that children can ‘love’ - meaning we clearly have a different understanding of these two types of ‘love’. Interesting.

In popular use is the term ‘crush’ instead of love when it comes to discussing children’s feelings for others.

In one study, 25% of parents reported that their 10 and 11 year old children have a substantial sexual interest in other people, and 56% of children aged 12-15 years old reported having at least one crush (Bowker et al., 2012). The authors of the study argue that ‘crushes’ may be the beginning of the sexual objectification of others, rather than love, and could therefore be linked to hormonal changes during the beginning of puberty. However, it is possible that traditional social perceptions of children mean that adults have assumed that children cannot feel ‘real love’ or sexual desire due to their age, maturity, and cognitive development.

Participation in romantic relationships in childhood, usually in adolescence, is regarded as a significant and normative step in development (CDC, 2011). But sexuality, arousal, and sexual desire in children is typically seen as immature and qualitatively different to that of adults, despite there being almost no research on these topics to confirm this (Fortenberry, 2013). Sexual experiences are globally perceived as the boundary between childhood innocence and adulthood, representing an irreversible crossing of this boundary.

This conceptualisation of sexual experiences as being the gateway to adulthood is problematic in itself, leading to children who have been sexually exploited and abused being perceived as ‘little adults’ who have crossed the threshold and are now displaying ‘adult behaviours’. This often results in heavy responsibility being placed on children who are sexually active; even those who are being sexually abused.

I would add here that this is especially important when discussing the adultification of girls, and more specifically, Black girls.

Schalet (2004) argues that because we perceive sexuality, romance, and desire as adult behaviours, child romance and sexual desire is perceived and written as confused, inept, immature, tentative, dangerous, temporary, and experimental in nature. Indeed, most of the literature discussing this is focused on positioning sexual desire, and romantic relationships and activity, as a form of ‘risk taking’ in children that should be stopped, suppressed, or changed. Some argue that romance and sexuality in children is seen as so negative that the majority of writing relating to it is about teenage pregnancy, and preventing STIs and abuse (Fortenberry, 2013).

When we take a step back and think about this, we can really see how toxic the world has become. We are happy to frame children’s romance, sexual development, desires and feelings as immature, stupid and dangerous - but we actively continue to sexualise and pornify children every single day.

Getting back to abuse though, the negative conception of love, desire, and romance in children has led to an incomplete understanding of the real experiences of children who claim to be ‘in love’ with or to ‘love’ their abuser. Whilst this does not place any blame or agency on the child who is being abused by someone else who is choosing to harm them, it does mean that interventions to support the child may be incomplete if we simply dismiss their feelings as ‘immature’ or ‘not real’.

This does not mean that their feelings of love for an abuser should be positively supported, but they may need to be acknowledged as real to them. Acknowledging and seeking to understand the child’s feelings of sexual desire and love for the abuser could also help us to improve practice wisdom and research evidence of how to support children who have been groomed using romantic tactics, or children who have been raped, abused, or even trafficked, who still have love for the abuser even after legal action has been taken.

To demonstrate what I mean, let’s use this case example:

Charlotte was sexually abused by a number of men between the ages of 12 and 14 years old. One man in particular had always used romantic gestures to groom and control her including affection, gifts, and promises to live together, get married, and have children. When the abusers were arrested and charged with a number of sexual offences, Charlotte understood why the other men were being prosecuted but could not understand why her ‘boyfriend’ was being prosecuted. Charlotte attempted to sabotage the trial by deliberately changing her story in the court room, and by contacting her abuser to tell him what to say and what she had said in court. When I met her case worker a year later, Charlotte was still writing love letters to the abuser in prison and was telling professionals that his conviction was a misunderstanding. She believed that when he was released from prison, they were going to get married and have children because she loved him dearly.

Examples like that of Charlotte above are not uncommon. Children who have been subjected to multiple rapes, exploitation, trafficking, and abuses have been through trials, been removed from their families, placed into care, and watched their abusers serve prison sentences, and still love or desire them. It is therefore important to explore how children learn about love and desire from society.

There are a number of theories of how children learn and develop norms, behaviours, and values. The constructivist model of child development posits that the child is active in their environment, and takes a central role in constructing the social world around them and their place within it. When they observe portrayals or examples of love or desire in their environment or in the media, they are not simply passively accepting these images and norms; they take them in and use them to make sense of the world and other people (Corsaro, 1997).

Theorists also consider social learning theory and modelling to be pertinent to how children learn about acceptable behaviours and roles in society – and with children aged 8-17 years old spending over 7.5 hours per day viewing depictions and portrayals of relationships, sex, communication, and love in various forms of mass media (Johnson, 2015), children have plenty of role models and material to view and learn from.

According to cultivation theory, heavy consumption of media leads children to adopt the beliefs and values suggested by the media (Lipmann, 2014) and reduces the child’s ability to distinguish between fact and fiction (Johnson, 2015).

What has Disney got to do with this?

From an early age, children around the world watch films and hear stories about fairy tales that have been adapted over time. Many fairy tales are based on females finding love and becoming fulfilled or rescued by a male. Walt Disney is the most famous producer of children’s films and has a large influence over the way children and adults understand and learn about love; so influential in fact that, in 1995, an analyst concluded that due to the influence of Walt Disney on the world, the films hold as much power in teaching children about values and social norms as traditional sites of learning such as schools, the family, the community, and religion (Giroux, 1995).

Whether children have watched Cinderella become a princess for just one night in a bid to find her prince charming, or whether they dreamed of having hair long enough for a prince to climb up to the top of a tower to rescue them, infants and young children receive powerful messages about love, desire, sexuality, and gender role norms from Disney films across the world. One of the strongest messages they receive is about the quest to find and please a male suitor.

Tonn (2008) cited O’Brien (1996) who claimed that the use of fairy tales and Disney films with children at a young age, in which the lines between fantasy and reality are still blurred, leads children to accept the stereotypical conventions of the fairy tale romance and the “submissive princess” role.

Children are not born with innate ideas of what romance, love, relationships, or desire should look or feel like; they develop those scripts from the information they take in over the years. Children can develop their schemas of love and relationships based on what they see on TV and in film, and even as they grow and observe new evidence and examples of other types of romance or relationships, they may reject anything that does not conform to the existing schema which was developed in childhood.

This is an important argument for those working with children, especially those who deliver relationships and sex education.

It is now common practice to include short sessions on ‘healthy relationships’ in education for children and adolescents (Bovarnick and Scott, 2016). However, arguments such as those from many academics mean that if children have been exposed to thousands of hours of media depictions of highly traditional, gendered, and patriarchal concepts of love, romance, desire, and sexuality, that even when their scripts are challenged by new information and education about healthy relationships and equality, it may not be powerful enough to undo years of reinforcement of their existing schemas.

The classic Disney princesses, watched and loved by children of infant age right the way through to adulthood, are always depicted as young, beautiful, thin, submissive, graceful, and looking for (or dreaming about) suitors of the opposite sex. Whilst it is argued that Disney princesses have evolved slightly over time, all of the stories and depictions of females in Disney films encourage young girls to embrace hyper-femininity and submission to males (Johnson, 2015).

All of the Disney princesses from the first era of Disney (Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, etcetera) also have the same traits that are directly related to gender role norms of females; the princesses are all emotional, helpful, in need of assistance from a man, a victim of something terrible, fearful, tentative, affectionate, sensitive, weak, and attractive (England et al. 2011). This relays strong messages to girls that their main goal should be to find a man who will protect and rescue them from their lives – and that as a female, they should be kind, beautiful, thin, domesticated, and emotional.

One example of problematic messages being given to young children is the ‘love at first sight’ myth. In the first era of Disney, all princesses experience ‘love at first sight’ where they end the film with a dashing prince, despite not knowing him or only having met him or seen him a couple of times. All of the princesses fear being alone and fantasise about meeting their prince and getting married as the main goal of their young lives. According to Egan (2013), Disney described the Disney Princess franchise as a harmless fantasy that encourages imagination and creativity for children.

Despite claims that the Disney Princess franchise is harmless, Orenstein (2011) suggests that it has an insidious and dark undertone.

This darkness is evident in several Disney movies, but none more so than in Beauty and the Beast (1991). If you have never seen this Disney movie, the premise is that Belle (the central female character) finds her father locked in the Beast’s castle, and agrees to stay in his place if her father is freed – essentially isolating Belle from any protection. In the following scene, the Beast invites (or rather demands) that Belle join him for dinner, saying “You will join me for dinner. That’s not a request”.

She ignores his demands and refuses to join him for dinner, only for the Beast to angrily shout “You’ll come out, or I’ll break down the door”. Such use of threat and intimidation, to force Belle into submission, is characteristic of an abusive relationship - yet the audience are manipulated into believing this is a love story.

Indeed, this scene and the remaining storyline illustrate the four conditions explored by Graham, Rawlings, and Rigsby (1994) in relation to so-called ‘Stockholm Syndrome’. The beast ensures Belle’s survival is threatened (condition a) by locking her in the castle (condition d) and isolating her from the community (condition c) before offering her kindness in later scenes (condition b). Beauty in the Beast is, indeed, a tale as old as time, but is not the tale of love Disney would have us believe. We can see from this that a darker concept of “love” is thrust upon children from a young age, through exposure to fairy tales and the Disney Princess franchise.

Beyond these, we have entire generations who were brought up on the book series and movies such as Twilight. Such movies and series serve to show that innocuous storylines encourage acceptance of tragedy, pain, and abuse as a necessity to securing ‘true love’ and a ‘happily ever after’ (Hayes, 2014).

Second-era princesses such as Jasmine, Ariel, Mulan, and Pocahontas are slightly different and may not always be actively looking for a suitor.

Jasmine and Ariel conform better to the earlier era of Disney, in which the story revolves around beauty and sexual desire being used to capture the love of a man they barely know. However, Pocahontas and Mulan had storylines that were steeped in cultural and historic legends, and even though the stories of Mulan and the story of Pocahontas (if we momentarily ignore the cultural appropriation and racism present in the films) are supposed to contradict the gender role norms of both females, both of them are side tracked, tamed, or defined by the love interest of a man. Pocahontas was portrayed as secretly becoming involved with a white man who had come to ravage her land of resources and kill her community, and Mulan became involved with, and completely relinquished her skills and strength to be in a relationship with, a man who had only taken her seriously because she had posed as a man to be able to fight in the war. 

In these second-era stories from Walt Disney, children learn that, despite everything, beauty, being sexually-desirable to men, and love, will conquer all. In Pocahontas’ case, love even conquered the fact that the man had deliberately come to her home to destroy it and to kill her community, and refers to her and her community in racist language for the entire film.

This is important because it means children learn that no matter how different their values are from someone who finds them attractive, and no matter what their agenda or motivation is, the love and desire of a male is paramount.

Even the most modern princesses such as Elsa, Rapunzel, and Tiana conform to the gender role norm of a traditional female. All characters are very thin, with long hair, and big breasts; representing white western ideals of beauty. Merida from ‘Brave’ seemed to be the first princess to buck the trend until Disney straightened her hair, put heavy make up on her eyes, made her bust bigger, and overall made her “sexier” for their printed products and merchandise. This resulted in a large petition and many articles and campaigns about the hyper-sexualisation of Merida, and the back-pedaling of Disney who had earlier enjoyed praise from feminist and human rights organisations, who had originally celebrated the depiction of Merida as contradicting the gender role norms (Johnson, 2015).

Disney films and other love stories have been responsible for communicating strong myths about what relationships are, and how desire and love develops and is maintained. To millions of children, worldwide. But it’s so much bigger than Disney. Disney is a mere drop in the ocean these days, and it’s not 1996 anymore. We are not plonking kids in front of Disney films for a couple of hours of respite. Oh no, it’s much worse than that. Some of our children are watching 6-8 hours of social media content per day. iPads at dinner tables. Phones in prams. Babies watching YouTube. Children watching Andrew Tate shorts. Teenagers watching porn every single day.

We cannot underestimate the power of our media access. Children are spending every moment they have on these devices, watching videos, absorbing content from a couple of years old - and then we sit around wondering why these abusive narratives about love and sex are coming to life.

Why are our children mirroring abusive behaviours?

Why does my daughter think it is normal to be treated like shit?

Why does my teenage son talk about girls like dirt?

Why is my 8 year old dieting and starving herself to be thinner?

Why is teen domestic abuse increasing?

Why are children mixing up love and abuse?

Why do my kids think it is normal to be controlled and abused by their partners?

Why are so many children raping and abusing each other?

Maybe it is time to stop looking at our kids, and start looking around them - and around us.

Thank you so much for reading this article. I will always commit to my work being made available for free, but if you would like to support my work and access my private blogs, please think about subscribing!

This article is adapted from a set of articles written by Dr Jessica Taylor and Dr Claire Paterson-Young in 2018. My special thanks to Claire, these six years later - that our thoughts and our writing are still so relevant and useful to thousands of readers.