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The text presents the results of a research project carried out in Portugal on the way children in danger are depicted in the media. An interdisciplinary study, it analyzes the question of endangered and ill-treated children as they appear in the discourse of four widely circulated dailies. We analyze how the role of child as aggressor and child as victim was construed in the press narratives reviewed. It is known that, from the legal, social, educational – and discursive – points of view, the notion of “child” is frequently associated with weakness and absence – of independence, responsibility, competence, power. The role of victim carries the stamp of weakness and when the victim is a child, the vulnerability of both conditions are compounded. On the other hand, the idea of child as aggressor challenges the prototypical representation of childhood. It is therefore tempting to analyze how the role of child as aggressor or victim is built up and what linguistic instruments were called upon to do so: what voices do we hear (particularly if the child has the right to be heard), what “frameworks” are created, using which argumentative tools?