My perpetrator and I were around the same age when the abuse happened, and I understand this falls under what's called COCSA, or child on child sexual abuse. But it's hard for people to understand how it can still be abuse when there was no age gap. I carry so much self-doubt and blame because of this. My therapist isn't very familiar with the term, but she has told me that his age doesn't justify what he did to me. Still, she seems conflicted about calling it sexual abuse or assault because we were the same age, and I wish she would use that language, because it would help me feel less alone. Can you explain how COCSA is still abuse when the ages are the same?

Thank you for sharing this with us. The fact that you and the person who harmed you were close in age doesn't cancel out what happened to you, and the instinct to push back against that confusion is a healthy one, not a sign you're overreacting.

Here's where I think your therapist's hesitation is coming from, and it's worth naming because it might help you talk to her about it directly. There are actually two separate questions tangled together here: whether what happened counts as abuse, and how much responsibility a child perpetrator should carry for it. Those are not the same question. The second one is complicated. The first one is not, at least not for the reasons age similarity raises. What determines whether something was abuse is coercion, power, and consent, not the number of years between two children's birthdays.

Coercion can look like force, but it can also look like manipulation, guilt, secrecy, or exploiting a child's trust. Power imbalances don't require an age gap either. Size, confidence, social standing, who initiated, or simply who had more sexual knowledge can all tilt the dynamic so one child has control and the other doesn't. And children, regardless of exact age, do not have the capacity to consent to sexual contact the way adults define it. That's true whether the other person is five years older or five months older.

It's also worth naming, without it changing anything about your experience, that children who cause sexual harm to peers have very often been exposed themselves to sexual content, abuse, or environments where boundaries weren't protected. It does not undo what happened to you or shift any responsibility onto you. Both things can be true at once.

Part of what makes COCSA so isolating is that there are fewer cultural scripts for it. You've probably absorbed messages like "kids being kids" that made it harder to trust what you know. Your therapist naming that his age doesn't justify what happened is a real starting point. It might help to tell her directly: "I know you've said his age doesn't justify it, but I need to hear it named as abuse to feel less alone with it. Can we talk about that?" You don't need her permission to call it abuse, but having her sit in that clarity with you matters. 

Thank you for trusting us with this. You are not alone.