Child Abuse Is a Special Kind of Evil

Children are considered precious by many. A lot of people like them and want to protect them. Even the worst villains can honestly say that they Wouldn't Hurt a Child and are appalled by people who would.

Unfortunately, not everyone is kind to children. Some kids, through no fault of their own, end up with parents or caretakers who emotionally abuse them, neglect them, hurt them, or worse.

For obvious reasons, many works of fiction portray treating children like this as a particularly evil thing to do, with those who abuse children often being shown as villains or completely unlikable characters. Sometimes a character who abuses their child will eventually have a Heel Realization (possibly followed by a My God, What Have I Done?) and try to make things right. Other times, though, the abuser will be Beyond Redemption and face punishment (sometimes Laser-Guided Karma) for what they've done (or at least be hated/called out by others for what they've done). As for the abused, oftentimes others will be appalled and shocked at how they've been treated, and will take them in or find them a new, healthier family.

Often Truth in Television, as the abuse of children is considered evil in many cultures. This is especially true in prisons: inmates with a history of abusing children are famously known to not fare well and are often attacked by their fellow inmates for their actions.

Subtrope of Child Hater. Often coincides with Abusive Parents, Pimping the Offspring, Parental Abandonment, Parental Neglect, Orphanage of Fear, and Would Hurt a Child. Can sometimes cross over with Parents as People, with the abuser not realizing until much later that their behavior was wrong and thinking that they were doing the right thing. This can invoke Villainous Parental Instinct (for when villains object to hurting their own children). May also overlap with Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil and Kinslaying Is a Special Kind of Evil. If the child is an animal (normal, uplifted, or Funny Animal), then it's a crossover between this trope and Bad People Abuse Animals. If the children ended up in an abusive environment due to misjudgment on the part of Child Services, then this trope crosses over with Department of Child Disservices. Contrasts with Good Parents, Friend to All Children, Orphanage of Love, and Adopting the Abused. May occasionally lead to a moral of Friends Are Chosen, Family Aren't.

Because child abuse is something that occurs far too often in Real Life and can be a fairly tough/triggering subject for some people, No Real Life Examples, Please!

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Ai Yori Aoshi: Kaoru's grandfather was infuriated that the legitimate child to the man's late son was the sole heir available to the Hanabishi Clan, so he would frequently beat Kaoru with his cane, leaving garish scars on the boy's back, particularly when Kaoru saved a birth charm from his mother from a fire with all of the items left of her. As soon as he was old enough, Kaoru left the Hanabishi grounds, and would eventually take up his mother's maiden name of Honjou, severing his ties with the Hanabishi Clan for good.
• Black Lagoon: Balalaika, a hardened war veteran turned Russian mafia queenpin, is disgusted when she learns about the brutal abuse that Hansel and Gretel went through at the hands of the mafia snuff ring that had them. This doesn't stop her from having them killed for what they did to her men, though even though they tortured two of them to death, she does not do the same to them as she is "not as vulgar as them".
• Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba: During the heroes' investigation to find an Upper-Rank Kizuki in the Red Light District, Zenitsu Agatsuma stumbles across a child servant being ridiculed and physically beaten by her Oiran. Atypical of his boisterous and cowardly nature, Zenitsu immediately stands up to the girl and questions the Oiran for why she was being so harsh, which is responded to by said Oiran to get ticked off and knock out Zenitsu with one blow, confirming her to be one of the Upper Rank Kizuki, Daki.
• Elfen Lied: Mayu's perverted stepfather would force her to get naked for him, and her mother was only upset that Mayu was "stealing her man". It's little wonder Mayu decided to leave home.
• Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha: Precia Testarosa is shown to be one of the worst villains of the series when she whips her daughter Fate after Fate retrieved a number of Jewel Seeds on what could easily be described as a successful mission, only because Precia decided it wasn't successful enough. Fate's familiar Arf — who had earlier threatened to kill Nanoha, herself a child, if she kept interfering — is so horrified by Precia's treatment of Fate that she can barely stand to listen to it. And then at the climax of the first season, Precia delights in breaking Fate by revealing that she's not her daughter, just a copy of her real daughter, Alicia, who died in an accident of Precia's own making. She'd tried to bring Alicia back, creating Fate in the process, but rejected her for not being the true Alicia.
• In Make the Exorcist Fall in Love, Leviathan's lies about being a girl who washed ashore from a recent shipwreck are paper-thin, leaving Leah and Barbara suspicious of her. But when Leviathan explains that her "Papa" told her to bear lots of children, Father immediately takes her under his wing despite his coworkers' misgivings due to mistaking her for a child sexually abused by her father.
• Queen Emeraldas: The Arfressian military under El Domain already have a large number of crimes under their belt, but when they arrive at a bar to try and find out whose ship had damaged theirs, El Domain's first officer, Gamor, shows a particularly nasty mean streak when he beats on Hiroshi Umino, a young boy who had stowed away on a ship in search of the legendary Tochiro. After Emeraldas saves Hiroshi from Gamor, the Arfressian's take Hiroshi and the bar patrons hostage to force Emeraldas' hand. When they stage an escape, Gamor even takes a potshot at Hiroshi before fleeing.
• xxxHolic: Kohane Tsuyuri's mother is quite a Stage Mom who physically abuses her and takes advantage of her reputation as an exorcist so she can use her fame and wealth for selfish reasons. What's worse is her mother refuses to call her by name and touch her. When Kohane befriends Kimihiro Watanuki, her mother is against their relationship and at one point, hits Watanuki, causing Kohane to realize that she had enough and leave her mother instead. As much as Kohane wishes her mother to love her again, Yuko reveals that she cannot fulfill her wish because her mother has to be willing to change.

Comic Books

• Batman: Batman is a Friend to All Children, and has made it clear hundreds of times that he cares for their safety and well-being. He's taken in several orphans or abused children and made them into his sidekicks, and the child abuser who crosses paths with Batman will not get off scot-free.
• Deadpool: Wade Wilson is an assassin who's been known to do terrible things for money and doesn't always care who he's working for. But there are some lines he'll never cross. One of the biggest lines he won't cross? Hurting kids. And he shows no mercy to any child abuser he finds. On at least two occasions, he's brutally killed people who he learned abused kids, and he did so for free.
• Superman: In the Grounded storyline, a kid named William is undergoing a harsh life because of his father being a vicious domestic abuser who takes out his aggression on his wife and son for the most disproportionate of reasons. William hopes to use a handmade Superman flag to get the Man of Steel's attention, later following him screaming Superman's name at the top of his lungs when the latest abuse sees Vincent throwing his son into the basement. Superman does arrive, incredibly furious at Vincent for his actions before handing him over to the authorities and ensuring William and his mother that they'll be safe and he'll be in contact. During a conversation with Lois Lane, Superman admits that Vincent's actions were so deplorable that he contemplated ripping the man apart with his bare hands, only holding back to not compromise his forgiving and compassionate nature and because using violence against a domestic abuser wouldn't turn out favorable on Supes' part.

Fan Works

• The Apprentice, the Student, and the Charlatan and The Archmage's Last Bow: Nova Shine, under normal circumstances, is a goofy and relatively lax stallion who isn't afraid to joke and indulge himself on the job as a spellcaster, even during otherwise stressful situations. However, when Princess Chrysalis is being abused as a slave, or when Bright Gleam is threatened by Envy, Nova Shine's demeanor completely changes and he becomes outright murderous toward the perpetrators.
• A Diamond Under Pressure: Raquel is revealed to have an emotionally abusive father named Percival who always shames him for being effeminate and misgenders him whenever he doesn't conform to traditional masculinity. When Raquel finally stands up to him, Percival completely snaps and disowns him.
• Bruises: When Callaghan's actions are made known and he's arrested, everyone is utterly horrified, viewing him as a monster.
• Code Prime: When Lelouch explains his backstory to the Autobots, they are so shocked and horrified by how Charles treated him and Nunnally, that they offer to groundbridge to Pendragon and blast him to smithereens. While Lelouch admits that he finds their offer tempting, he turns it down as killing Charles would lead to a power vacuum for which the EU and the Chinese Federation would take advantage of, and would lead to innocent civilians getting caught in the crossfire.
• The Dragon and the Butterfly: The Parental Neglect Stoick gave Hiccup throughout his childhood and well into his teens is shown as horrible behavior, with the Madrigals being shocked and furious that someone as sweet and compassionate as Hiccup could have such a bad parent. He gets several The Reason You Suck Speeches over the first half of the fic. To his credit, Stoick eventually realizes that he was wrong to treat Hiccup that way, and (though it takes a while) they eventually make up.
• In Farther's Day, in addition to cheating on his wife Leverett and showing zero remorse for it, Marcel harshly shoves his seven-year-old daughter Sharuru to the ground and disowns her.
• Comes up a lot in Harry Potter fan fics:
  • Harry Tano: Ahsoka realizes fairly quickly after landing in the Dursley house that Harry has been abused (she found him locked in a cupboard with no food or water). She actually thought that he was a slave at first (which she also doesn't tolerate), but upon learning the truth she still has negative feelings towards the Durselys.
  • If Wishes Were Ponies: Everyone who learns what the Dursleys put Harry through while he lived with them is appalled, saddened, and utterly furious, not even knowing how someone could do such a thing. Lin Yueshi, their human lawyer, is so mad that, barely a day after learning about the abuse, he arranges for the Dursleys' arrest and incarceration.
  • The Last Seidr: The Avengers, when Harry tells them about what his life was like when he lived with the Dursleys, are furious. Cap even admits to himself that, should Harry find a way to return to his dimension, the super soldier might come along to have a "talk" with Vernon and Petunia.
• Inter Nos: When Natsuki, the last Princess of the Ortygians is orphaned, she is taken in by the allied nation of Otomeia, and sent to live with a Baron. She was twelve at the time. The Baron's only son, who was "wrong in the head", mistook Natsuki's trauma-induced Elective Mute status as a sign of weakness and attempted to rape her. She split his head open with his own father's daos. No one blamed Natsuki, but at that point, she was sent to live with King Kruger, who was furious when he learned what had happened to her. The King subsequently made sure Natsuki wanted for nothing, including the martial prowess to lead his armies.
• More than My Friend: Frankie tears into Terrence when she learns that he's been using Mac as a courier between him and his drug dealer, and has been beating Mac up so he won't tell anyone. His mother, who didn't notice that her older son was beating up her younger one, also technically qualifies.
• Papa Bear: The Dupain-Chengs, Child Services, and literally everyone who hears about it is horrified at the emotional abuse and neglect Adrien suffered at his father's hands for years. Thanks to Tom Dupain's actions, Adrien is removed from his father's custody... especially once Adrien and Marinette learn that Gabriel is Hawkmoth and get him arrested.
• Pokémpanions:
  • In Mon In The Moon, in Mewtwo's flashback, it's shown that Carnivine the farmer whipped Mewtwo with vines just for taking a couple of his berries when he was only five years old. This is one of the many ways his childhood was so traumatic.
  • In Growing Apart, the teenage Camellia has a strained relationship with her emotionally abusive father Carnivine. He rarely lets her leave the farm because he thinks she should Stay in the Kitchen, yells at her for wanting to be a doctor instead of working at the farm, and it's later revealed that he steals her money behind her back. She eventually decides she's had enough of his bullshit and leaves home to pursue her dream.
• Symposium Of Supremacy: Leo and Himika Akaba are despised by actually Devils for how they corrupted and abused children for their own gains, to the point that they were sent off to the Arc-V version of Hell.

Film — Animated

• A Goofy Movie: Downplayed. It is strongly hinted that Pete is very emotionally abusive towards his son P.J. to keep him obedient, while Goofy tries to guide his son Max with love and trust. Pete even confronts Goofy about the fact that he overheard Max talking about guiding them on the wrong path to get to a concert, urging him to check the map. Goofy says he believes in Max, saying that the boy loves him. Pete counters darkly saying, "Hey, my son respects me."
• In the animated Madeline film Madeline: Lost in Paris, the Big Bad is a woman named Madame LaCroque. She takes in/kidnaps orphans and enslaves them in her lace factory. If she senses hostility from them, she punishes them harshly, and defending them from her will bite your butt, too, as Madeline finds out the hard way when Fifi is punished for coughing despite it being LaCroque's fault. LaCroque gets her just desserts when Henri leads the cops to her after he runs afoul of them.
• Puss in Boots: The Last Wish: Big Jack Horner has no qualms about killing baby animals. He's even captured countless baby unicorns so that he can collect their horns. Horner even almost killed Perrito, who is a small puppy. Ethical Bug finds this especially horrifying, and just brings him closer to seeing just how much of an irredeemable monster he is.
  Ethical Bug: You're not gonna shoot a puppy, are you, Jack?
  Big Jack Horner: Yeah. In the face. Why?

Film — Live-Action

• Dick Tracy: The titular detective takes chase after witnessing the robbery of a pocket watch committed by The Kid. The reason for the robbery is soon revealed when the Kid arrives at a small shack owned by Steve the Tramp, a homeless crook who took The Kid under his wing, making him to commit petty thefts in exchange for food. In response to The Kid reaching for a piece of chicken after delivering the watch, Steve harshly pushes the kid into furniture, just in time for Dick Tracy to catch him in the act. After a small brawl that destroys Steve's shack, Tracy states his disgust while cuffing him.
  Dick Tracy: We've got a place for people who beat up kids.
• In The Fate of the Furious, Deckard Shaw the Ex-Big Bad of the previous film, proves that he has some moral standards by agreeing to help his former enemy Dom Toretto rescue his son Brian, who the villain Cipher is holding hostage. While fighting his way through Cipher's plane, one of her mooks tries shooting Brian's baby carrier, whereupon Shaw rescues the child, and then calls the villain out:
  Shaw: You were gonna shoot a baby? Really?!? You sick bastard! (to baby Brian) You're not gonna want to see this. (turns the baby carrier so Brian doesn't see Shaw beat the mook's face into a wall)
• Gracie's Choice: Rowena is a neglectful, terrible mother who spends most of her time indulging in drugs than raising her kids, leaving her teenage daughter Gracie to take care of all four of her younger siblings. During her Villainous Breakdown, she even strangles Gracie. By the end of the film, she's lost custody of all of her children, leaving Gracie as their legal guardian.

Literature

• In the Daniel Hawthorne Novels, Hawthorne is revealed to have an All Gays Are Pedophiles attitude which is heavily implied to stem from a traumatic experience he had while investigating a child pornographer in his past as a detective. (This is also why he was thrown out of the police.)
• Otherside Picnic: Sorawo did not have the most happy of childhoods. Her father and grandmother joined a cult, and they kept looking to abduct Sorawo, with strong implications that they intended her to be a ritual sacrifice. And she claims she was even abducted at one point by a rival cult. The thing that's the most disturbing about it is that whenever Sorawo tells Kozakura and Toriko about her Dark and Troubled Past, she seems to treat such things as though they were everyday occurrences for people, and will often conclude her stories with an utterly sincere, "You know, nothing special or unusual. Pretty normal stuff." So when a mysterious "red person" asked Sorawo if she needed "those people", she took a moment to think about it and said she didn't. She was not saddened to learn that the whole cult died when there was some sort of gas leak that killed them.
• Roald Dahl's children's books often showed people who abused or disliked children as villains, with them more often than not getting their comeuppance by the end of the book (or at least making it so that the child protagonist never has to see them again). In life, Dahl was a noted hater of abusive foster homes/schools (aka places meant to protect children), having spent a portion of his childhood in a school where he was regularly bullied by the other boys and his teachers.
  • The BFG: Sophie, upon the titular giant lamenting that he probably took the little girl from her family, tells him that she's an orphan who was staying in a group home run by an abusive woman who, among other things, would lock her charges in the basement for hours for breaking the slightest rules (even for things like getting up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night). The giant is furious, but it's never shown if said caretaker was punished.
    • One of the book's movie adaptations specifically gave the caretaker (here named Miss Lilly) her comeuppance by having the Queen agree to keep the orphanage's children at her castle until proper homes could be found, with the caretaker becoming the keeper for the captive giants.
  • James and the Giant Peach: James' aunts, sisters Spiker and Sponge, abused him every moment he was with them, starving him, beating him, isolating him, and forcing him to do all the house and yard work. When he escapes them by joining the giant bugs in the titular peach, the bugs show nothing but contempt for the aunts, both for their hatred of anything living and for their treatment of James. The bugs quickly take James in, becoming his surrogate family. The sisters get their just desserts when they're killed by being squashed by the peach.
    • In the film, the sisters get a different fate, with their abuse of James being exposed in front of all of New York City, their being humiliated in front of a crowd, and then being arrested for criminal child abuse.
  • In Matilda, Matilda's parents view her with apathy at best and scorn at worst, because she's highly intelligent while they detest most forms of learning. While they never beat her, they do emotionally abuse her, doing things such as ripping up her books in her face. The Trunchbull, the headmistress at Matilda's school, was the abusive step-mother of Miss Honey, and now uses her job as a means of abusing (in various ways) children for the simplest of reasons (she didn't like that one girl braided her hair, so she threw her like an Olympic track and field hammer by the braids out of the schoolyard). By the end, all abusers get their just desserts: Trunchbull, through a prank pulled by Matilda's telekinesis, believes that she's being haunted by her late brother-in-law that she murdered, and is scared out of the country, never to be seen again. As for Mr. and Mrs. Wormwood, they are found to be running a business selling stolen cars, and thus flee to Spain, willingly leaving Matilda with Miss Honey when the latter said she'd be happy to take care of her.
  • The Witches: The titular witches hate children, often putting curses on them to either kill them or trick their parents into doing it for them. In this book, their leader plans to turn all of the children of England into mice, meaning that they'll either be killed by their parents (or other adults), predators, traps, poisons, or die of old age (as most mice only live to be two or three years old). Luckily, the story's protagonist manages to trick them into falling for their own scheme, as they eat soup laced with the mouse potion, turn into mice, and are killed by the hotel staff.
• Vanishing Acts: Andrew tells Delia that he kidnapped her from her mother and stepfather after he saw her stepfather molesting her. After Delia supports his version of events, he is acquitted. Though Delia's memories aren't considered reliable enough to bring criminal prosecution, they do turn opinions onto Andrew's side.

Live-Action TV

• Breaking Bad: Hurting children or involving them in criminal activities is one of Jesse Pinkman's major Berserk Buttons.
  • We first see this side of him when he is forced to confront two meth users who ripped off one of his dealers and is horrified to find their young son home alone in squalid conditions. When the parents eventually arrive, he berates them for their neglect, and after the mother violently kills the father in front of them both, he carries the poor kid out and sincerely wishes him a great life.
  • He attempts to poison two of Gus's dealers who are using his girlfriend's kid brother Tomás to deal drugs and carry out kills, including the murder of his friend Combo. Then Gus finds out through Walt and tells the dealers "No more children." Tomás is found dead on the street that night, and in response, Jesse straight-up tries to shoot the dealers.
  • Later, he almost shoots Walt when he thinks he poisoned his girlfriend's son Brock. Walt is able to shift the blame on Gus and they team up to assassinate him. It turns out later that Walt really did poison Brock, and the betrayal drives Jesse to first try and burn his house down, and then team up with Hank to get him thrown in prison.
  • Then partway through Season 5, Walt, Jesse, and their new associate Todd celebrate a successful train heist, except they turn to see a kid watching them. Todd instinctively pulls out a gun and shoots the kid dead. The incident drives Jesse to a deep depression and leads to him breaking off his partnership with Walt, who disturbingly isn't fazed by the incident to show just how far he's fallen.
• Charmed (1998): In "Charmed Again Part 2", the Source of All Evil decides to use a case of child abuse to try to sway new witch Paige to his side, getting very close to provoking the otherwise good social worker into murdering the suspected abuser because she can't stand the idea of him getting away with it. The worst part is, the suspect has actually been covering for his abusive wife, so if Paige had gone through with it, it would have been innocent blood on her hands.
• Criminal Minds:
  • Carl Buford is a pedophile who targets kids while using his guise as a kind football coach to lure troubled kids to his side and then assault them. He also killed three children to protect his crimes from being leaked. One of his sexual assault victims happened to be Derek Morgan, and this is why he became a police officer, to one day prove evidence and bring Buford to justice. Sometime after his arrest, Buford became a Muslim and changed his name to Mohammad Alam... but only because he was lumped in with a Muslim prisoner gang who were unaware of his pedophilic actions, and the moment said Muslim gang discovers what led to his imprisonment, they immediately kill Buford.
  • In "Seven Seconds", a girl goes missing from a mall. The team determines that the UnSub is Katie's aunt, who's husband was sexually abusing Katie. In a case of Misplaced Retribution, she abducted the girl and left her to die. Prentiss gives her a "The Reason You Suck" Speech for blaming Katie for her husband's actions.
• CSI: Crime Scene Investigation: Grissom notes that the three things that will actually piss him off to the point he can't see clearly are "the sexual assault of a child, men who beat their wives, and the scum who deal death to children^note  drug dealers who deal to kids."
• ER: One episode has the hospital staff reporting a mother for burning her young daughter with a hot metal object left on the stove to punish her for supposedly touching herself. The mother reveals this is just the latest in a long string of abuse, as she has scars on her own hands from the same sort of treatment by her own mother.
• Firefly: In the episode "Our Mrs. Reynolds", Book mentions a "special hell" reserved for child molesters (and people who talk in the theater).
• Full House: In the Very Special Episode "Silence Is Not Golden", Stephanie learns that her classmate, Charles, is regularly beaten by his father. While Stephanie is horrified and wants to tell someone, Charles begs her not to, fearing that it'll only make the situation worse. Eventually, though, Jesse gets her to tell him what's wrong. Jesse, a loving father and uncle, is horrified and infuriated, saying he needs to call the police because otherwise "[he]'ll go straighten him out myself." The episode doesn't shy away from how child abuse is a terrible thing, along with delivering a message to the audience about how if they see or hear about someone being abused, they should always tell someone.
• Good Times: In the episode that introduced Janet Jackson as Penny, we learn that Penny is horrifically abused by her mother. The actual abuse itself is, thankfully, not actually shown, relying on a very disturbing Discretion Shot when her mother approaches her with a hot iron. But at no point is Penny's mother portrayed as sympathetic or justified in her behavior.
• The Incredible Hulk (1977): In one episode, Dr. David Banner (then going by the name "Baxter") is working as a groundskeeper at an elementary school. There, he learns that one of the students, a little boy named Mark, has a father who beats him semi-regularly. Both David and the Hulk can't stand people who beat children, thus the Hulk gives the father a taste of his own medicine. Ultimately, it leads to Mark discovering that his father was abused as a boy as well, leading to the man realizing what he's become and begging for forgiveness. Mark is grateful to "Baxter" and the Hulk, agreeing to keep the doctor's secret.
• Deconstructed in the In the Heat of the Night episode "Perversions of Justice." A boy named Jimmy says that his teacher, Leonard Grissom, has molested him, and the police take the case extremely seriously. But it's not enough to stop a witch hunt from breaking out: the new editor of the town paper digs up dirt on Leonard's past (including the fact that he was mysteriously let go from another school without anyone knowing why and that he was found guilty of indecent exposure), Jimmy's father prepares to go full Papa Wolf via vigilante justice, the principal bows to public pressure to fire Leonard, and Chief Gillespie can't do his job because the citizens treat his (completely normal) investigation as covering up the crime. The fervent belief in this trope only makes the situation worse—especially when it's revealed Leonard is completely innocent: Jimmy's story is full of inconsistencies, the "indecent exposure" Leonard committed was a stupid prank he played in college, and he voluntarily left his previous job after he had a mental breakdown over the death of his parents, which he didn't share publicly because he knew it might keep him from getting another teaching position. Ultimately, the truth isn't enough to stop the public's campaign, and Leonard, knowing that he'll inevitably be found guilty and treated horrifically in prison, chooses to kill himself to escape. The episode ends with a furious Chief Gillespie chewing out the editor (and, by extension, the rest of the townspeople) for using this trope to ignore the facts and not giving Leonard the due process that he deserved.
• It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: Frank Reynolds is a Corrupt Corporate Executive par excellence who brags about owning multiple sweatshops, once manipulated the entire city of Philadelphia into buying guns and water filters just to make a profit, and engages in every shady business practice imaginable. But the one line he absolutely refuses to cross is hurting kids (though it's at least partially due to the fact that it's a crime that he doesn't think he can get away with).
  • In "Frank Reynolds' Little Beauties," Frank inadvertently invests in a child beauty pageant and is horrified by the idea that he might be considered a "diddler." Unfortunately, his repeated attempts to prove his innocence just make him look guiliter ("We have DEFINITELY gotta write a song about how we do NOT diddle kids!").
  • In "The Gang Solves the North Korea Situation," Frank learns that the major entrant in a wet T-shirt contest the Gang is throwing is only twelve years old. He desperately attempts to stop the contest and, when that fails, pulls a Taking the Bullet by leaping in front of the hose and getting soaked instead.
  • In The Gang Goes to Ireland, Frank reveals that he was a business associate of Jeffrey Epstein and had even gone to Little St. James, but insists that he had no idea of the sex crimes with kids going on and was only there to go snorkeling.
• Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: Many, many, many episodes deal with the sexual exploitation of children, with crimes against children being one of the main areas of expertise for the Special Victims Unit. They tend to be the darker episodes of a series that already deals primarily with sex crimes, and for good reasons.
  • This is also Stabler's Berserk Button, with multiple instances of him coming close to or outright violating department policy or even the law when dealing with suspects who abuse children, especially when it's their own children they're abusing.
• Leverage: Hurting kids is a Berserk Button shared by Nate and Eliot Spencer. So, in "The Order 23 Job", when Eliot meets a kid at a hospital whose father claims that the boy "fell off his skateboard", Eliot, already established as an all-around badass, dangles the man over the edge of a stairwell while depriving him of his wallet to learn his identity. Then, after they've defeated the Villain of the Week, Eliot asks a Federal Agent who owes them a favor to check in on the kid. The Death Glare that the Fed gives the abusive Dad when he comes to talk to the kid speaks volumes.
• Malcolm in the Middle: During "Evacuation," the family's forced to take shelter in the high school gym due to a massive chemical spill (unknowingly caused by Hal leaving an old couch on the train tracks). Lois had told Malcolm he was grounded earlier in the day and extends the punishment while they're in the gym, forbidding him from leaving his cot for any reason. Malcolm eventually grows sick of his mother's unreasonable demands, calling her out in front of everyone to which she responds by spanking him. As in lightly tapping him on the behind in front of all their neighbors. Everyone who sees this is horrified and disgusted that Lois would go that far, regardless of the lack of force, and she's thus forced outside alongside Hal, Reese and Dewey (who were kicked out for different reasons).
• Sons of Anarchy: When SAMCRO (whose laundry list of crimes includes murder, drug smuggling, theft, arson, insurance fraud, etc) learn that Venus Van Dam's mother physically and sexually abused her as a child and now intends to do the same to Venus's estranged son, they drop everything and rush to the kid's rescue, with Jax delivering the coup de grace by putting a bullet in the woman's head. When Stockton crime boss Charles Barosky is tasked with disposing of the body, he says she'll get the fate all child molesters deserve: "chopped, burned, and buried."
• Star Trek:
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation: Despite not being very good with children, Captain Picard is extremely protective of them. He's fond of his young nephew (who idolizes him) and has been shown to completely go off whenever someone does anything to hurt children. This is shown as early as the episode "When The Bough Breaks" in season one:
    Picard: Compensation? You've stolen our children away from their classrooms, away from their bedrooms, and you talk about compensation? You claim to be a civilized world and yet you've just committed an act of utter barbarity!
  • Star Trek: Picard: Subverted. For many years, Jean-Luc Picard had considered his father to be emotionally abusive to both him and his mother Yvette. Finally, Picard came to realize his father wasn't the abusive man he regarded him as since Yvette struggled with severe mental illness which drove her to commit suicide, and that he had been trying to help both her and their son in the only way he knew how as Yvette had refused all mental treatment.
• Succession: Logan was brutally beaten by his "evil uncle" Noah in his backstory. As a result, while he's bullying and domineering at best and abusive at worst to his kids and is implied to have had an active role in the normalized rape and sexual assault at Waystar, he also seems to have internalized this view. The only time he shows remorse for his actions (and, even then, it's pretty downplayed and he can't admit he was at fault) is when he hits Roman. He is pretty insistent about saying he wouldn't do that, though.

Video Games

• In Fallout, A good way to get hated across the Wasteland is to kill children. Even evil characters get a -30 points to initial reaction to you and bounty hunters are actively hunting you down.
  You have killed children, the youth of the wasteland. This is considered to be a really bad thing. You evil, evil person.
• Fire Emblem Engage: Lord Sombron has a very low opinion of just about everyone, but especially children. He thinks of them as mere slaves that he can use however he pleases. When they eventually rebel, Sombron labels his children as "defects" and quickly kills them without any remorse. This made Alear, one of Sombron's last surviving children, horribly traumatized and miserable. Thankfully, one day, they meet Queen Lumera and tell her everything. Understandably, Lumera is horrified by this and instantly pities Alear. It is at this moment that Lumera became the parental figure that Sombron wasn't.
• In the Trails Series, the single most unambiguously evil organization in the series is the D∴G Cult, which kidnapped children to use them as guinea pigs for their various experiments, most of them eventually lethal. One branch also subsidized their operations by using their test subjects as a child brothel. By the start of the series proper, the cult had been wiped out by a variety of other parties, including other villainous organizations, but the surviving children all have issues more than a decade later.

Visual Novels

• Higurashi: When They Cry: In many of the worldlines, Satoko Houjou is badly beaten and abused by her uncle Teppei when he returns to Hinamizawa, to the point where, up until the events of "Kai", Rika considered any world where Teppei appeared to take Satoko as doomed and a lost cause.

Western Animation

• Avatar: The Last Airbender: Both in-universe and in real life, Fire Lord Ozai is shown as evil not only for what he did to the world, but because he constantly (emotionally in Azula's case, emotionally and physically in Zuko's) abuses both of his children. Zuko's Start of Darkness was when he "dishonored" his father, so Ozai burned his face, leaving a scar that remains with Zuko for the rest of his life.
• Batman: The Animated Series: Batman, as stated above, is a noted Friend to All Children. And there is nothing that ticks him off worse than seeing someone hurting or taking advantage of a child.
  • In one episode, a villain known as Sewer King enslaved a small army of children to steal for him, abusing them if they so much as spoke. Batman doesn't kill him, but this villain's abuse of the children makes him so furious that the Bat almost broke his biggest rule. He didn't (even saving Sewer King when he almost fell to his death), but this one line shows how Batman feels about him:
    Batman: I don't pass judgement; that's for the courts. But this time, this time, I'm sorely tempted to do the job myself!
  • In the episode "See No Evil", Batman investigates a thief who's stolen invisibility technology to commit heists. He spends most of the episode treating it like he would any case... until he learns that the thief has kidnapped his daughter so his ex-wife can't take her away from him ^note  He does this after spending an untold amount of time pretending to be his daughter's imaginary friend so he can talk to her and learn what his ex-wife is trying to do. Then Batman Grabs a Gun (a tranquilizer gun, but still) and goes after the guy with no hesitation and no mercy.
• The Fairly OddParents!:
  • Vicky is an awful babysitter who pretends to be nice to the parents of the kids she watches but in actuality enjoys torturing (physically and mentally) her charges (a.k.a. Timmy). A flashback establishes that her abuse of Timmy is the main reason he received Fairy Godparents, and Vicky is often stated in the show to be a horrible person who's hated/feared by children, her peers, her teachers, even her own parents.
  • In the same vein, there's Mr. Crocker. While his cruelty mostly consists of giving out as many Fs as he can, on a number of occasions he crosses the line directly into child abuse, most notably in "The Secret Origin of Denzel Crocker" where he outright indulges in physical and psychological torture. While the same episode does give him a Freudian Excuse, it also makes it clear that this does not justify Crocker's actions, and he's consistently depicted as an evil creep throughout the show. His debut "Transparents" even implies that the only reason he still has a job is that he has Ultimate Job Security.

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