[Adolescents who sexually abuse children]

Abstract

The adolescents responsible for sexual abuses on children confront the medico-psycho-social workers with many questions. In this article, thanks to a bibliographical approach, we first discuss the definitions concerning sexual abuses and paedophilia as well as family, psychodynamic and legal specificities of adolescents. We then mention a few epidemiological facts as well as the different behavioural cognitive, psychodynamic and family hypotheses related to that problem. We finally illustrate all this through two clinical cases encountered during our ambulatory exercise and submit some thinking to readers.