This chapter explores what it means for adults to claim child rights. Focussingon activism against institutional child abuse, it considers the question of whathappens to the mobilisation of child rights discourse when the person claimingthose rights is no longer a child. In other words, how is the concept of childrights used retrospectively and what does this reveal, both about childhood andabout child rights? The chapter begins with the contention that childhood needsto be understood as not only a concept that speaks to the lives of children,their experiences, and their place within the social structure. Rather, we suggest that a more expansive view enables recognition of the enduring significanceof childhood in adults’ lives. We illustrate this argument with examplesof the formation of collective identities based on childhood experiences, beforeturning to the ways that child rights are marshalled by adults in activism, incommissions of inquiry, and in the legal sphere. Throughout the chapter, we consider issues of temporality. We explore the ways in which adult survivors ofchildhood abuse retrospectively claim rights denied to them in the past and weexamine how activism, official inquiries, and legal mechanisms position adultsin relation to their childhood selves. We then consider some of the dilemmasthat arise with retrospective rights claims; particularly questions of retroactivityin relation to responsibility and redress for past abuse. Finally, we explorethe temporal repositioning of childhood and how past and present is bridged.This occurs through survivor activism and, in more formal mechanisms such asinquiries, by focussing on how people are represented as child victims in the pastand survivors in the present.