This article discusses the treatment which is being given to the topic of sexual abuse by contemporary society and suggests a contrast from the psychoanalytic theory, especially as it refers to infantile sexuality. Assuming that the child is a subject of desire, therefore, subject to its choices, whether conscious or unconscious, we question the current tendency to relieve it's objectalisation in the legal, psychological and, even in some texts, psychoanalytic approaches and we emphasize an important difference between the juridical discourse and the psychoanalytic one. As we know, the latter distinguishes itself by giving the child the place of the desiring subject, which may be subjectively involved in the experiences in which it`s taking part, including sexual ones. We rely for this, primarily, on the works of Freud and Lacan, but also on the observations that some psychoanalysts reaffirmed in recent years, on the ethical position of psychoanalysis facing the child as a subject, with its desire and jouissance possibilities, against a moralizing, normative and hygienist logic, which turns the child still more into an object.
non imputation; subjective responsibility; sexual abuse; infantile sexuality; legal psychology