fected in women
leading a life of prostitution, and have ascertained that in many cases
this had taken place in childhood. Martineau[118] reports cases in which
defloration had been effected at the age of nine or ten years.
Experience teaches that boys also, especially when they have been
seduced by sexual inverts, are very apt to adopt a life of prostitution.
It must also be remembered that girls may occasionally become pregnant
and give birth to a child even before they have themselves passed the
years of childhood--another source of social danger. In addition, we
have to reckon with dangers to physical health; among these we have the
direct consequences of premature misuse of the genital organs, and,
above all, the danger of venereal infection. In a great many cases,
sexual offences against children are brought to light only when, on
examining the child, gonorrhoeal or syphilitic infection is disclosed.
Many authorities hold that the superstitious hope of curing venereal
disease by sexual intercourse with an innocent child, is a comparatively
frequent source of such infection in children. Freud, to whose views I
have referred several times before, believes that sexual attempts on
children may give rise in the latter to severe neuroses--an idea which
forms an important part of the etiological system put forward by this
author.

We must regard it as a peculiar danger of sexual relations on the part
of a child with an adult, that sexual perversion may be induced. I may
refer to what I said about this matter on pp. 60-62. The chief danger does
not arise from the fact that the child is occasionally utilised for a
homosexual act, but from the circumstance that in the period of the
undifferentiated sexual impulse, the child's sexual interest, and
especially its contrectation impulse, is directed towards one of its own
sex, and that thereby a permanent perversion may be induced. Edward
Carpenter,[119] indeed, considers that in such homosexual relationships
the younger partner makes the advances. "The younger boy looks on the
other as a hero, loves to be with him, thrills with pleasure at his
words of praise or kindness." In his general views on this question,
Carpenter takes a somewhat peculiar position. Unfortunately, he
overlooks the fact that the elder is not to be exonerated because the
younger made the first advances--at any rate, in cases in which the
elder is in a position to understand the true nature of such
relati