This article draws on research exploring adult women’s engagement with narratives of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) and identifies implications for both child and adult victims. As this research showed, any single story cannot accommodate all experiences. When that single story becomes dominant those whose experiences are not acknowledged are at risk of being silenced and left without a narrative framework to make sense of their experiences, which in turn risk being unrecognised as abuse by others. The article looks at contemporary understandings of CSA and argues for the need to move beyond a single damage narrative in which victims are constructed as sexually innocent, weak and passive and seen to be inevitably damaged by their experiences. The article argues for the need to separate wrongfulness from harm and (sexual) innocence from childhood. This would enable us to recognise sexual abuse in all sexually abused children, including those who do not conform to sexual innocence, and to recognise that CSA is wrong irrespective of psychological damage. In doing so, it is argued, we would all be better equipped to recognise sexual abuse and victims would be better able to tell their own stories which may, but may not, include psychological damage.

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In May 2012 nine men from Rochdale were convicted and jailed for grooming girls with alcohol, drugs and gifts before forcing them to have sex with multiple men. Following the case in Rochdale similar cases of grooming and sexual abuse / exploitation of young girls came to light in various towns and cities across the UK. In 2017 the BBC aired the drama Three Girls which featured the story of three of the victims whose abusers were ultimately jailed in May 2012, including one whose story of abuse was not listened to and whose abusers were ultimately not charged with abusing her (although they were charged with abusing other young girls). In this paper I draw parallels between the experiences of these three girls and another victim of childhood sexual abuse (interviewed as part of an ESRC funded research project) to show how the central features of this story (childhood sexual innocence and victims' lack of agency) are deeply problematic not only for victims and child protection services, but also for how teachers and other education professionals understand children and young people's sexuality and CSA (a term I use to include child sexual exploitation or CSE) and ultimately how they respond to victims.

Following the so called 'narrative turn' we have seen a burgeoning of interest in narrative research together with claims to adopt a narrative approach. This has been accompanied by a growing body of literature on how and why we might do narrative research (such as Andrews et al. 2013;Holstein and Gubrium 1999;Plummer 2001;Riessman 2008;Roberts 2001) and examples of telling stories (such as Plummer 1995; Steedman 1987) alongside numerous conferences and workshops where we can explore narratives and how to engage in narrative research. Whilst these all share an interest in narrative in all its manifestations, what any of us mean by narrative or narrative research is perhaps less clear. My own interest in, and understanding of, narrative is as a feminist sociologist and derives from and is grounded in my interest in women's lives and