Abuse and Trauma in South Park

Depictions of, or references to, Abuse and Trauma in South Park are a common subject of fan interest and controversy.
South Park frequently deals in black comedy or dark comedy, which is "is a style of comedy that makes light of subject matter that is generally considered taboo, particularly subjects that are normally considered serious or painful to discuss" and this frequently includes references to characters, including child characters, referencing having experienced forms of abuse or other behaviors that would cause serious, life-lasting trauma in reality, but in the context of the show, is often never brought up again nor treated as contributing to meaningful psychological damage.
In the South Parq Vaccination Special, Matt and Trey seem to jokingly describe themselves, via character Bob White, as feeding "on the pain and torture of children", acknowledging that they use this as a source of comedy, and later refer to themselves via Mr. Garrison as "child-murdering pedophiles".
Many fans on websites including Tumblr, Reddit and Twitter often speculate which characters are most victimized and how abuse may affect them in adulthood.
==Canonical References==
===Abuse===
====Physical Abuse====
In the first season's "An Elephant Makes Love to a Pig", Stan Marsh is shown to be physically abused by his sister Shelley as a regular occurrence that is generally overlooked and left unaddressed by his parents.
====Sexual Abuse====
Main Article: Pedophilia and South Park
In season 10's "Miss Teacher Bangs a Boy", Kyle's little brother Ike Broflovski is shown to have a crush on his teacher, Ms. Stevenson, which leads to a "romantic relationship" between the two, which eventually includes sexual activity. Kyle reports Stevenson to the police, who seem indifferent to the revelation and allow her to simply claim alcoholism and visit rehab, before she tries to kidnap Ike to continue their "relationship". This is a form of child grooming and sexual assault played for comedic purposes.
===Depictions of Abuse===
===McCormick Hoax===
A widely circulated trivia point since the mid-2000s has claimed that Carol McCormick gave birth to her son Kenny McCormick at sixteen years old, which in turn would suggest she had her eldest child at only twelve. As her husband is in his thirties or forties, based on confirmation he grew up alongside other parental figures who are confirmed to be that age, this would imply Stuart had assaulted her while she was underage and he was an adult. These ages were later affirmed at South Park Studios' website based on the information about their ages hosted at Wikipedia and South Park Archives during the Manic the Hedgehog administration.
However, the original claim was added to Wikipedia citing an unknown episode and subsequent research found no such episode has ever contained a line indicating Carol had a child at that age. The line was removed from South Park Archives around 2016 and has not been seen there since; however, the belief remains prevalent in the fandom for how long the information was available and mirrored at multiple sources up to then. No canonical sexual abuse is known to have taken place between these characters despite the physical abuse they inflict on each other.
South Park Studios later reads:
Many fan sites have purported an episode claimed she gave birth to Kenny at sixteen - and with her son Kevin being around thirteen now, that would mean she gave birth around twelve years old; her husband is known to be in his thirties or forties, which would imply a 10-20 year age difference; however, no episode has reliably stated she gave birth to Kenny at sixteen, meaning her true age is unknown.
==Fandom Analysis==
On Tumblr, user Cheylouwho contributed a thorough analysis, South Park: The affect of Abuse and ACEs on Behavior of what abuse the principal child characters have endured, though with an acknowledgement that “its not that deep, fam”.
==External Links==
Category:Discourse
Category:Under Construction