Handbook on Sexual Violence (74 page)

Introduction

... our choice of terminology may function like a self-fulfilling prophesy: what we name may become what we see.

(Crittenden 2008: 10)

Exposing children to violence and sex may seem to be unequivocally abusive as there is substantial evidence to show that child sexual abuse can have lifelong adverse consequences (Wilson 2010; Walsh
et al
. 2010). In the new millennium media and public attention in complex affluent societies such as the UK has focused upon scandal after scandal involving the prolonged sexual

abuse of children. A few examples highlight the extreme and horrific nature of these crimes. In Austria Josef Fritzl kept his daughter imprisoned for 24 years and fathered seven children by her (BBC News 2009); in Germany Wolfgang Priklopil kidnapped 10-year-old Natascha Kampusch and held her captive for eight and a half years (Mail Online 2010); and in England two sisters were made pregnant by their father a total of 18 times over a 25-year period (BBC News 2010a). The horror evoked by cases such as these has been eclipsed in the media by the emerging details of the extent of child sexual abuses by Roman Catholic priests in many parts of the world (
New York Times
2010). It has been argued that the continuing denial by some senior clergy in the Church was rooted in a ‘victim’-blaming attitude (Taylor 2010).

Abuse of children, however manifested, can best be understood as a continuum. Kelly (1988) identifies two ways of understanding sexual violence as a continuum: first, continuum as a generic framework, and in this sense it is possible to consider the commonalities underlying the involvement of children in sexual activity and violence in many societies. Second, Kelly also suggests that the concept of continuum makes possible the documentation and naming of a range of abusive acts while ‘acknowledging there are no clearly defined and discrete analytic categories’ (1988: 76) into which they can be placed. From this perspective I will consider specific actions and situations to explore why some adult/child sexual interactions are considered abusive yet others are disregarded. As violence, sex and even ‘child’ are socially constructed terms and sometimes socially specific phenomena, identifying harm is not always clear-cut. For example the Pitcairn Islands, a British protectorate and isolated community in the Pacific, was the site of a major police investigation by Britain and New Zealand in 2000. Sexual intercourse between adult men and prepubescent girls was apparently socially sanctioned and had been the norm for many decades. Some women in the community were clear they had been raped against their will when they were children but others argued their society was being judged by different cultural standards and that the sexual behaviours in question were not abusive – just different (Marks 2009).

Consequently this
chapter seeks to explore the complexities and contradictions in cultural and social attitudes towards ‘children’ and ‘childhood’, sex and sexual behaviours and violence. The construction of ‘child abuse’ and how this has been defined in UK policies and legislation designed to protect children and young people will then be examined. In conclusion the implications for the lives of children will be critically considered. It will be argued that contradictory constructions of ‘child’ and ‘childhood’ embedded in international conventions, UK policies, legislation and practices do not protect children and young people and may further harm them.

What is a child, what is childhood?

Two broad strands can be identified when conceptualising ‘child’ and ‘childhood’ – the first arises primarily from many decades of developmental psychology and the second is a more recent emerging paradigm, the ‘new’ sociology of childhood.

Nature v. nurture: born bad or made bad?

Much research attention has been paid in complex affluent societies to child development in order to identify the conditions that promote optimal maturation and, of perhaps greater concern, to understand why some children become ‘problem’ adults. Contributions made by Lorenz, Bowlby, Ainsworth and Piaget (see Mitchell and Ziegler 2007) have been particularly important in revealing the relationship between biological preparedness for maturation, learning stimulated by the environment and the emotional relationship between a child and their primary caregiver. The only theorist, however, who addressed children’s sexuality to any extent was Freud (Mitchell and Ziegler 2007).

Although he worked primarily with adults Freud’s theories seek to explain the development of personality from birth through psychosexual stages. Each developmental stage of a child’s personality revolves around a significant erogenous zone – oral; anal; phallic; latency and, from the onset of puberty, genital. Freud’s major contribution to our thinking about childhood is that adult personality is affected by psychosexual development and determines the sort of person we become. These theories were controversial during Freud’s lifetime and remain contested, but constructs such as ‘ego’; ‘subconscious’; ‘defence mechanism’; ‘Oedipal complex’ and so forth have entered everyday language and understanding and have been influential. Notwithstanding the lack of positivist research evidence for Freud’s theories many of his ideas have become truisms even if crudely understood.

Positivism has been the dominant research paradigm for several centuries and rests on a number of principles. The most important can be summarised as a belief in an objective reality that can be uncovered by systematic collection of verifiable empirical data in order to test out hypotheses derived from theory. Positivism relies heavily on statistical analysis to demonstrate causal links and generalisability. Freud’s theories, however, grew out of his clinical work with adults and children and he did not use positivist methods to ‘prove’ his theories. From his work he grew to understand ‘reality’ as having several layers and the ‘unconscious’ mind as a powerful driver affecting individual personality and behaviour. The ‘unconscious’ was often revealed in dreams and other symbolic manifestations and Freud developed ways of interpreting these in order to uncover the hidden and powerful personality determinants. Even today with the sophisticated neurological investigative techniques that are now available it is not possible to ‘prove’ the existence of the ‘id’, ‘ego’ or ‘super-ego’ personality elements theorised by Freud. They cannot be identified through examinations of brain activity or structure. Monitoring of hormonal levels and other bio-chemical changes in children and young people has not revealed evidence of the psychosexual stages of development.

Nevertheless Freud’s theories have such resonance that they have become accepted as universal ‘truths’ and incorporated into everyday wisdom. For example, explanations for pathological and dangerous behaviour are commonly sought in early experiences especially involving sexual abuse and exposure to violence. It has been suggested, for example, that Mary Bell, who

murdered four-year-old Martin Brown and three-year-old Brian Howe in 1968 when she was 11, had been severely and multiply abused, including sexually, in her early childhood (Sereny 1998). Sereny argues that her abusive experiences caused psychological damage and were causal factors in the abuse and murder by her of two younger children. Similar arguments have been made in relation to Thompson and Venables, who murdered James Bulger in 1993 (BBC 2001) and the Edlington brothers, who murderously assaulted two peers in 2009 (Walker and Wainwright 2010).

Attachment theory (Bowlby 1951), is another key developmental conceptualisation concerned with childhood. Bowlby was influenced by Freud’s theories and regarded infants’ need for emotional connection with the caregiver as a basic and inherent drive. Attachment theory links abusive experiences and deprivations in early years to problematic behaviours in late childhood and teenage years and adult personality impairments and mental health. Bowlby’s influential monograph (1951) drew on empirical studies with war orphans and ‘juvenile delinquents’. He argued that depriving infants of maternal care during the first three years of childhood led to behavioural and personality problems including ‘juvenile delinquency’ and adult mental ill health. A major critique of attachment theory, however, was that the focus on the mother/child relationship excluded fathers and presupposed a particular family form. Attachment theory was used to justify social policies in the US and UK in the 1950s and 1960s aimed at preventing mothers entering the workforce.

Like Freudian theory discussed earlier, however, attachment theory is well known but poorly understood. Bowlby and colleagues such as Mary Ainsworth (Ainsworth
et al
. 1978), who explored childhood in other ethnic and cultural settings, continued to develop attachment theory for many decades and recognised that it was the quality and consistency of the caring relationship that was important, not the gender or number of primary caregivers:

What has stood the test of time has been the proposition that the qualities of parent-child relationships constitute a central aspect of parenting, [and] that the development of social relationships occupies a crucial role in personality growth.

(Rutter cited in Howe
et al
. 1999: 10)

Indeed seeking to explain and understand the relationship between the individual and society has been a feature of most secular or religious grand theories and propositions in Western societies from the ‘Age of Enlightenment’ in the eighteenth century onwards. In the twentieth century primary socialisation theories, drawing on developmental psychology, gained ground in complex, affluent societies influenced by functional sociologists such as Talcott Parsons (Parsons and Bales 1956).

Primary socialisation conceptualises childhood as the social space where children are acculturated into the mores and expectations of the society in which they live – in essence adult culture is transmitted to children through social institutions such as the family, the school and so on. Notwithstanding

the diminution of the centrality of functionalism following the emergence of the postmodern discourse in the late twentieth century (see Giddens 1991), primary socialisation theory, underpinned by developmental psychology, is still highly influential in relation to debates and policies about the ‘family’ in particular, especially when considering deviance. It has been argued that some children can be socialised into a dysfunctional subset of the dominant social culture, and primary socialisation theory has been used to explain both violence and criminality (Hoffman
et al
. 1995; Oetting
et al
. 1998).

Current debates, however, suggest an ecological understanding of child

development is the most accurate. That is, the biological mechanisms necessary for maturation are inherent but capacities vary from child to child. Crucially, however, environmental factors can affect a child’s development positively or negatively, whatever their innate capacities. Indeed the latest studies show that abusive experiences in early childhood affect brain chemistry to such a degree that damage to neurological structures and neurological activity is caused. Cognitive impairment and low impulse control may result, although whether or not this is lifelong, or whether the brain can re-adapt and, if so, the conditions necessary for this, are unknown (DiPietro 2000; Crittenden 2008). There remains a tendency, however, to regard genetic inheritance and childhood experiences as binary opposites in attempts to identify key factors in dysfunctional adult behaviour. In other words children are either born bad or made bad. Nevertheless the focus on the relationship between the adult and child and recognition given to the child’s contribution towards developing and maintaining that relationship within attachment theory suggests a shift in perspective. Sutton (1994) defines attachment as ‘the constellation of feelings and behaviours demonstrated by babies towards their parents and other caregivers’ (1994: 41). These are the ways in which infants seek to meet their needs by gaining attention and nurture from the caregiver thus demonstrating that even babies have agency. The ‘new’ sociology of childhood develops this thesis using a different theoretical approach.

The ‘new’ sociology of childhood: ‘becoming’ adult or ‘being’ a child?

Of course the biological maturation of children into adulthood is a cultural universal as childhoods are generationally limited. Children become adults but the point at which this change takes place varies historically and between societies notwithstanding the common experiences of physiological and psychological maturation. Aries (1973) argued that although younger members of the human species clearly existed in the Middle Ages they were not granted a special or distinctive social status – children were not separated from work, sex, childbirth, death, or capital punishment. Drawing on the diary of the court physician of Louis XIII of France in the early seventeenth century he describes:

. . . the liberties which people took with children, by the coarseness of the jokes they made, and by the indecency of gestures made in public, which shocked nobody and which were regarded as perfectly natural . . . ‘he laughed uproariously when his nanny waggled his cock with her fingers.’

(Aries 1973: 98)

Once children were weaned they participated in society according to their abilities in ways similar to adults. Only gradually did political and economic institutions respond to the notion that children’s needs were different, as demonstrated for example by the rise of universal schooling in the late nineteenth century in countries such as the UK. Consequently in the past two centuries transition points between childhood and adulthood were often marked by social rituals. In the nineteenth century in Western cultures girls were allowed to wear their hair pinned up and boys to wear long, instead of short, trousers as signifiers of the transition from childhood to adulthood. Until the mid twentieth century the twenty-first birthday was important as the point at which a young person living at home was given the ‘key of the door’. These rituals have largely disappeared leaving a socially ambiguous space between childhood and adulthood that is difficult for young people and adults to negotiate.