This article explores the cultural and legal contexts in which the construction of childhood sexual abuse has taken place over the past three decades in the United States. It also explores a theoretical debate that pits ‘logico-scientific’ accounts of reality against narrative accounts of reality. This debate is of central importance to the study of social and legal responses to childhood sexual abuse, which is categorised in this article as a problem of sexual and domestic violence from a feminist perspective. Some feminists argue that narratives may serve an empowering function in legal and other institutions by giving voice and legitimacy to survivors of sexual and domestic violence. Other feminists argue that narratives of domestic and sexual abuse that fail to identify the social systems of inequality associated with abuse may produce hyper-individualistic and depoliticising accounts of these problems. In this article, the author argues, with Ewick and Silbey, that it is possible to specify the kinds of narratives that contribute to political discourse and confrontation surrounding issues of childhood sexual abuse. The strategic use of social science and expert testimony in criminal and civil court cases, the construction and cultural significance of autobiographical narratives, and the proliferation of narratives in popular media that deal with child sexual abuse are all discussed. It is argued that autobiographical accounts of child sexual abuse, such as those of Dorothy Allison and Maya Angelou, internally illuminate the contexts of inequality which perpetuate abuse and shape the lives of survivors, while discourses in legal institutions and popular media tend to reproduce hegemonic constructions of women, children, and the problem of childhood sexual abuse.