Handbook on Sexual Violence (76 page)

Determining what is abusive and what the consequences may be are judgements that are influenced by the values and perspectives of the adults involved. Crittenden describes the emotional responses child sexual abuse triggers in adults in a paper she gave to a professional audience:

I was describing as compassionately as possible, the developmental pathway of a typical incestuous sexual abuser ... But when he became a young father and I described how he dressed, bathed and comforted his preschool-aged daughter, the ‘temperature’ of the audience suddenly shot up. People got agitated . . . ‘He’s grooming her!’ ‘That’s sexual abuse!’ . . . We strip a complex and painful situation of its complexity, reducing it to a simple, albeit unrealistic, dichotomy. Why? Because it makes our job easier.

(Crittenden 2008: 10)

One manifestation of a discourse that constructs children primarily as ‘victims’ and child sexual abuse as a one-dimensional experience is the way in which attention focused on the single male ‘perpetrator’ as the dangerous ‘Other’ from the 1970s onwards in the UK and USA. Indeed it is the individual ‘perpetrator’ in complex affluent societies that generates the greatest concern despite the fact that the sexual abuse of children during wars and civil unrest is widespread and systematic (UN General Assembly 2009). Focusing on identifying ‘perpetrators’ in this way neither reveals the common characteristics of abusive events and experiences nor assists in documenting and naming the range of abusive acts (Kelly 1988).

Violence and children

Child sexual abuse and its consequences are multifaceted. Differentiating child sexual abuse from other forms of abuse oversimplifies a complex issue. It is important to examine all the narratives of violence to which young people are exposed in order to recognise the continuum of abuse. A few examples highlight the incompatibility between the actuality of the lives of some children and young people and the dominant discourses of ‘child’ and ‘childhood’.

Who are ‘victims’; who are ‘perpetrators’?

From the 1970s onwards research focused on the individual adult male as ‘perpetrator’ of child sexual abuse, as early evidence suggested they were male and ‘victims’ mainly female (Finkelhor 1986; Furniss 1991). Theorising centred on whether causality was single- or multifactorial. As with child development theories, however, current debates suggest an ecological approach is the most useful framework within which to understand child sexual abuse. That is, recognising there are multiple pathways to abusive behaviours associated with multiple triggers and buffers that either facilitate or block the abusive act (Elliott and Beech 2009). Early theories tended to presuppose a dichotomy between ‘victim’ and ‘perpetrator’ and to categorise abuse by distinct descriptors such as physical, emotional or sexual:

However, victims of child maltreatment are unlikely to be subject to only one type of abuse. For example sexual abuse and physical abuse are usually accompanied by emotional abuse, which includes verbal assaults, threats of sexual or physical abuse, close confinement . . . withholding food and other aversive treatment. Within each type of maltreatment, there is a continuum of severity ranging from mild to life-threatening.

(Browne and Hamilton-Giachritis 2007: 49, 50)

In the past decade growing awareness of boys as ‘victims’ and women, children and young people as ‘perpetrators’ has challenged the construction of ‘victim’ and ‘perpetrator’ as a gendered binary opposite.

Children can simultaneously be abused and abuse, as with the Edlington brothers, aged 10 and 11, who attacked and sexually assaulted two peers, aged

9 and 11, leaving one for dead (Walker and Wainwright 2010). Women criminalised as ‘perpetrators’ raise further questions about what is considered to be sexually abusive. In 2004 controversy raged in Australia about the sentencing of a 37-year-old female PE teacher for her sexual relationship with a male student three months short of his sixteenth birthday. Despite the insistence of the young man he was not a ‘victim’ and that sex had been consensual, public outrage meant her suspended sentence was reviewed and changed to six months in prison. Public opinion and media attention arose because three months earlier a male teacher had been given a custodial sentence of two years and three months for a sexual relationship with a 14- year-old female student who described feeling threatened and coerced. Nevertheless the judiciary were accused of gender bias as the two situations were perceived by public opinion to be comparable (Angelides 2008).

More recently in Wales a 28-year-old mother of four children was given an 18-month prison sentence for sexual activity with a 13-year-old boy. Sexual activity included kissing and fondling and sending him texts inviting him to sleep with her (BBC News 2010b). While there may well have been a breach of trust in the above situations it is arguable that the judicial and public response had less to do with harms caused to the young person than with the dominant discourse of sexuality (Leonard 1997) and social constructions of ‘child’ and ‘childhood’. Indeed the young men in question may well have suffered greater

harm by their participation in legal proceedings that labelled them as ‘victim’, which is not the social script usually offered to young men who have had their first sexual experience with an older woman.

‘Normalised’ violence against children

War and civil unrest are endemic in the human condition and increased affluence and complexity in societies have simply made the technologies of war more sophisticated and increased the likelihood of large numbers of non- combatants suffering death or injury, as in the recent war in Iraq. There is substantial evidence that rape and sexual violence against girls is common during conflicts and a suspicion that assaults against boys are under-reported:

Such violations are often perpetrated in a rule of law vacuum as a result of conflict, and there often exists a prevailing culture of impunity for such crimes ... Sexual violence appears to be especially prevalent in and around refugee camps and settlements for internally displaced populations.

(UN General Assembly 2009: 5)

The West seems little concerned about the violence affecting children and young people caused by their military actions. Furthermore it can be argued that the pervasive discourse of the ‘War on Terror’ shares characteristics with the demonisation of Jews in Hitler’s Germany, and that it stereotypes and dehumanises Muslim children and young people as well as adults in the UK. The ‘War on Terror’ suggests that violence is the best and only way to counter violence. Children and young people in countries such as the UK and USA live in a society where violence is normalised and even valorised. The instant nature of communication media ensures that they view the death and destruction of others, through war, famine or natural disasters all over the world, on an almost daily basis.

State institutions also legitimate violence towards children. The UK has one of the lowest ages of criminal responsibility – 10 years (12 in Scotland) – in Europe, with the highest rates of penal custody associated with high rates of peer abuse and suicide (Goldson 2002). The tension between welfare and punishment has characterised juvenile justice policies, legislation and practices for the past 40 years (Goldson and Muncie 2006). Even though current policies and practices are somewhat contradictory and veer between punitive and restorative justice, those engaged in ‘criminal’ behaviour are constructed primarily as ‘offenders’ not ‘children’ (Frost and Parton 2009). The conditions for young asylum seeking children in Yarl’s Wood Immigration Centre have been criticised in formal inspections since 2005 and the latest report continues to raise concerns (Travis 2010). The centre is run by a private security company, Serco, and the report by the Chief Inspector of Prisons, Anne Owers, following her inspection in November 2009, details the use of force against children on two occasions in the preceding year. On many other occasions children witnessed force being used against adult asylum seekers

held there. In the six months preceding the inspection 420 children had been detained for short or longer periods. Often traumatised by the events experienced and witnessed in their countries of origin these children are held in a facility with all the security features of a prison (Burnett 2009).

Corporal punishment is another example of violence children and young people sometimes experience in UK familial settings and until recently in schools. It’s a good example of how swiftly social attitudes towards the parent/ child relationship change. Fifty years ago parents and teachers routinely used corporal punishment to control children’s behaviour. Indeed those who did not were considered lax. Although smacking is not yet criminalised in the UK as in some Scandinavian and other European countries, it is forbidden in schools and can be investigated as child abuse (Lyon
et al
. 2003). When corporal punishment is used to control behaviour, violence is simply normalised. The message conveyed is only what not to do rather than what is better to do and so offers no alternatives. Since adults tend to smack when they are stressed the model shown is that the way to deal with frustration is through violence.

The UK is one of the countries that have used the ‘Mosquito’ device extensively. The device emits a high-pitched noise that can only be heard by young people under the age of 25 due to age-related hearing changes in adults. It is purchased by public authorities and located in public areas, where young people congregate. The noise is said to be unpleasant but not physically harmful, but is indiscriminate. Babies in prams, toddlers, those with restricted mobility or learning impairments are all affected and cannot move out of range unaided. Young people targeted have not committed an offence yet it is considered legitimate to subject them to an unpleasant experience and curtail their social and physical space. The manufacturer’s website quotes the Home Secretary saying the device was ‘very helpful’ in dispersing groups of young people in answer to a question in the House of Commons on 8 February 2010. A call for a ban was rejected (Compound Securities 2010). Shami Chakrabarti, Director of Liberty, asks, ‘What sort of society uses a low level sonic weapon against its children?’ (Liberty 2010). In the context of these contradictions and changing landscape of child abuse what are the implications for children and young people in the UK?

Protecting children and young people

The changing social constructions of ‘child’ and ‘childhoods’, sex and sexual behaviour and violence are observable in the ebb and flow between protection and prevention in policies and legislation in the UK. These changes owe more to changing social attitudes and political agendas than to the sufferings of children.

Policies and legislation

The current legal framework in the UK for protecting children and young people from abuse remains the Children Act (CA) 1989. Although there have been four administrations in the UK since devolution in 1999 – England,

Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales – policies and legislation designed to protect children remain the same or have developed in similar ways. It is not necessary in any administration to convict someone of a criminal offence in order to prove a child has suffered ‘significant harm’ (sec. 31(2) and (9)) and take statutory action to protect them. The CA 1989 provides a single legal framework for all court proceedings affecting children and young people other than adoption and juvenile justice. Thus child protection and divorce hearings use the same courts and access the same orders with the same burden of proof. The underpinning philosophy of the Act is that ‘the child’s welfare shall be the court’s paramount consideration (Part I, 1(1))’. Although the CA 1989 falls short of the standards of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) 1989 (ratified by the UK in 1991), for the first time in law children and young people have been given the right to have their wishes and feelings taken into consideration in any court hearing concerning their upbringing. There is a caveat, however, which is ‘in light of their age and understanding’ (Part I, 1, 3(a)) and, as with child development measures discussed earlier, legal definitions of ‘child’ are linked to chronological age and determine whether or not they are regarded as capable of forming a view about matters that concern them. For example, it has been legal for young women to have sex once they are 16 years old since the nineteenth century. For gay men, however, consensual sex between those aged 21 or over was only decriminalised in 1967 and reduced from 21 to 18 years in 1981. It was as recently as 2000 that gay young men gained equal rights with young women for consensual sex. For more than 30 years young men were not considered

mature enough to make decisions about their own sexuality.

Since the early 1980s these changing social constructions of ‘child’, ‘childhood’ and ‘abuse’ have been influenced by developments in forensic child protection, inquiries into child deaths from abuse and political and public opinion. These factors heightened professional sensitivity to child abuse and its consequences. From the public inquiry into the death of seven-year-old Maria Colwell in 1974 through the subsequent decade 27 inquiries into child death from abuse were held, contributing to a ‘child rescue’ professional culture (Corby 2000). Interventions by professionals to safeguard children from child sexual abuse increased but a change in professional behaviour followed the Cleveland affair in 1987. A hundred and twenty-one children were removed from their families on legal orders in spring and summer of that year because of suspected child sexual abuse. The resulting public inquiry generated public and political unease with the level of state intervention in family life (Campbell 1988). Simultaneously evidence was emerging about widespread, organised and serious abuse involving physical, sexual and emotional harm in state institutions that had, in some instances, been endemic for several decades (Frost and Parton 2009). There was a loss of confidence in the state as a protector of children in families and as a corporate parent. Coupled with the consequences of child poverty, which had tripled during the Thatcher/Major Conservative governments from the late 1970s onwards (Burden
et al
. 2000), and the election of New Labour in 1997, the child protection pendulum was pushed back towards an emphasis on prevention and away from protection.