Fear of Sexual Abuse

What the reference work says about contreltophobia

The third edition of the encyclopedia of phobias, published in 2008, defines contreltophobia as fear of sexual abuse, or of being touched or fondled by another person, usually involving genital stimulation, and derives it from the Latin contrectare, meaning to handle or to take hold of. It cross-references the entry to child abuse and to sexual abuse, and the 2008 text gives nothing further: no case, no prevalence, no course and no treatment.

A second name circulates, agraphobia, from the Greek agra, something caught or trapped, and it is close enough to Agoraphobia to be routinely mistaken for it. The site that carries it states plainly that there are very few articles and nearly no professional psychological literature on this fear, which is the correct summary of the position.

Where the fear of sexual abuse shows up

The literature under the phobia names is empty. The subject itself is not, and where it appears in ordinary life it is usually in someone deciding on behalf of a child.

A parenting essay published by the Philadelphia public broadcaster WHYY describes the change in a single practice. Sleepovers were near universal for children growing up in the 1970s and the 1980s, and a substantial number of families now decline them altogether, allow them only at home, or hold what the writer calls sleep-unders. Among the reasons families give, the most commonly cited is fear of sexual abuse.

The writer's own position is worth recording because it is a reasoning process rather than an avoidance. She notes that abuse happens within families, on playdates, in sport and in schools, which made refusing sleepovers while permitting all of those look inconsistent to her. She allowed them, to homes she knew, on conditions:

• screening for guns
• keeping track of older siblings
• keeping track of extra adults in the house She then describes a friend whose daughter, in the fourth grade, was assaulted during a sleepover at a best friend's house, and who disclosed it because the family had talked about inappropriate touching.

Why that matters for the definition

The reference entry describes a fear held by the person who might be harmed. The version with any documented presence is held by somebody else on their behalf, and it does not behave like a phobia at all. It produces a risk assessment, a set of conditions and a conversation, and the conversation is what the account above credits with the disclosure.

That distinction is the entry. A phobia is defined by avoidance out of proportion to danger, and a parent weighing sleepovers is doing something a clinical term does not describe.

What is not known about contreltophobia

Whether contreltophobia exists as a distinct presentation is not established. A person with a persistent fear of being touched would be assessed against haphephobia, against post-traumatic stress disorder where there is a history, or against social anxiety, and the Latin name would not be used. No survey has measured either the fear or the version of it that parents hold, and no manual carries the term.