The aim of this article is to discern what concept encompassed clerical sexual abuse in the Diocese of Santiago de Chile throughout the nineteenth century. It examines the terms in which the offense of illegitimate sexual relations - both for the faithful and priests - was defined in canon law as well as in secular law. To do so, the analysis follows a historical‑legal perspective that understands the normalizing effect of law as one that stabilizes certain meanings over time, thereby making them specifically identifiable. During this period, the process of secularization coincided with the transformation of the normative regime that had, for centuries, provided the frame of reference for understanding those sexual acts identified as abuse. Within a broad collaboration between canon law and ordinary secular law until the mid-19th century, the Republican period experienced tensions between the two that shed light on certain shifts in meaning. Within the process of distinction that occurred between these legal orders, this analysis proposes the notion of debt as an ideological connection between crime and sin that facilitates the identification of the terms under which sexual abuse would be conceptualized. Thus, it contributes to the incipient historiographical development of this field of studies by establishing a specific temporality of the phenomenon in a local-global perspective and providing historical depth to the concept of sexual abuse.