Book excerpt: With contributions from leading legal and policy researchers, clinical practitioners and child development specialists in southern Africa, this volume is an invitation to reflect on the many-sided nature of sexual abuse of young children. Many of the contributors propose effective ways to prevent abuse or improve care and services for the many affected children and their families. The book is in five parts. The opening section confronts the realities of sexual abuse of pre-pubertal children and the way abuse is represented in the press. The second section discusses the individual and socio-cultural causes of child sexual abuse. Section three covers legal and policy responses to the problem, while the fourth section presents a series of accounts of interventions on behalf of abused children drawn from South Africa, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. The book concludes with some critical reflections on research in this area.