Survivors of child sexual abuse have a lot to deal with. Betrayal of trust, sexual confusion, manipulation, violation of the body, secrecy, deceit, emotional ambivalence, loss of autonomy, dissociation from the body, shame, guilt, often pain, and often some degree of sexual pleasure can all be present in a single instance of abuse, or over the course of an abusive relationship. Many of these elements are at best difficult and at worst intolerable even in the context of relations between consenting adults. To lay this complex of confusion on a child, or even on a young adult in a dependent or protected relationship, is manifestly unfair. The younger the survivors-and the more subject to other vulnerabilities-the likelier that the burden of abuse gets "hard coded" into children's still-developing "firmware:" the base patterns of perception, understanding, and action they carry into the more normal ages for sexual development and exploration and on into adult life.