The paper is based upon an explorative research project on children as social actors in investigation processes regulated by the Swedish family law, with particular focus on children whose father is violent to the mother. The discussion draws upon interviews with 17 children in the ages 8-17 who have participated in such processes and these children’s narratives about encounters with investigators. Our analytical framework combines a care perspective focused upon the vulnerable position of children exposed to violence, and a rights/participation perspective focusing upon children’s agency and right to participation. We show how investigators create at least four different victim positions for children in the investigation process: protected victim, invisible victim, unprotected victim, and victim with participation. Problematic aspects of investigators’ approaches are discussed in-depth and we exemplify the kind of practices that create the position invisible and unprotected victim respectively. These positions and practices are also linked to a wider context of interacting forms of inequality, in particular inequality tied to age and gender. Here, we focus upon what notions of the child, victims, girlhood and boyhood may mean for social worker’s approaches to children exposed to violence.