Also parents and schools need to give children and adolescents regular advice about how to spot abuse and about the need to report abuse. Software providers are urged to do more to police their environment and make it safe for children. International law
Child sexual abuse is outlawed nearly everywhere in the world, generally with severe criminal penalties, including in some jurisdictions, life imprisonment or capital punishment. An adults sexual intercourse with someone below the legal age of consent is defined as statutory rape, based on the principle that a child is not capable of consent and that any apparent consent by a child is not considered to be legal consent. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) is an international treaty that legally obliges states to protect childrens rights. Articles 34 and 35 of the CRC require states to protect children from all forms of sexual exploitation and sexual abuse. This includes outlawing the coercion of a child to perform sexual activity, the prostitution of children, and the exploitation of children in creating pornography. States are also required to prevent the abduction, sale, or trafficking of children. As of November 2008, 193 countries are bound by the CRC, including every member of the United Nations except the United States and South Sudan.The Council of Europe has adopted the Council of Europe Convention on the Protection of Children against Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse in order to prohibit child sexual abuse that occurs within home or family.
More recent prospective longitudinal research—studying children with documented cases of sexual abuse over time to determine what percentage become adult offenders—has demonstrated that the cycle of violence theory is not an adequate explanation for why people molest children.Offenders may use cognitive distortions to facilitate their offenses, such as minimization of the abuse, victim blaming, and excuses. Pedophilia
Pedophilia is a condition in which an adult or older adolescent is primarily or exclusively attracted to prepubescent children, whether the attraction is acted upon or not. A person with this paraphilia is called a pedophile. In law enforcement, the term pedophile is sometimes used to describe those accused or convicted of child sexual abuse under sociolegal definitions of child (including both prepubescent children and adolescents younger than the local age of consent); however, not all child sexual offenders are pedophiles and not all pedophiles engage in sexual abuse of children. For these reasons, researchers recommend against imprecisely describing all child molesters as pedophiles.The term pedocriminality (De: Pädokriminalität; Fr: pédocriminalité) is a controversial term which originated in the 1980s and has been used by organisations such as UNICEF, UNHRC, the World Health Organization and the Council of Europe to refer to child sexual abuse and sexual violence used against children, child prostitution, child trafficking and the use of child pornography. The term "cyber-pedocriminality" has been used to refer to the activities of viewers of child pornography online.