On omnipresent perpetrators and absent children: discourses on sexual violence against children

The discourse on sexualized violence against children came to the fore due to the newest cases of sexualized violence against children in Bergisch Gladbach (North Rhine-Westphalia) as well as their documentation and exchange of picture and film data. In this article we analyse the phenomenal structure of the discourse on sexualized violence against children from a sociology of childhood perspective based on 58 articles of nationwide media. This theoretical approach emphasizes the focus on the offenders, the acts as well as the technical details of the documentation of sexualized violence. The public focus on the omnipresence of offender and act upstages both children and generational aspects of power and leads to an invisibilization of those concerned.