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CONTISTHD DISCOURSES:
THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION Ol' CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE
AS A SOCIAL PROBLEM

BY
Mary MbCormack

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of Sociology

1989

(004(401

ABSTRACT

CONTISTED DISCOURSIS: THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION
OF CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE AS A SOCIAL PROBLEM

BY
Mary MbCormack

Beginning in the mid-19703 feminists, clinicians and
child protectionists made claims about child sexual abuse
as a social problem. Later joined by the New Right and
aided by the mass media, these claimsmakers in constructing
four discourses about child sexual abuse, drew on different
views of children, childhood, gender, sexuality and
families. This dissertation. studies these social
constructions of child sexual abuse as a social problem
from 1974 to the present.

The methodology integrates field work, interviews,
documents and media reports to explore the constructions
advanced by the four claimsmakers.

Popular accounts identify child sexual abuse as a
single, unified problem against which society has mobilized
to protect children. Understood from the perspective of
social constructionism, however, ‘it becomes clear that
sexual abuse is not one problem, but many. Alternately

conceptualized by claimsmakers as a problem caused by male

violence, family dysfunction, child exploitation, or
decaying social values, analyses of claims about child
sexual abuse reveal layers of conflicting narratives. Far
from comprising a single, concerted effort to protect
children from victimization the constructions about sexual
abuse are contested. definitions that are actively
reshaping social perceptions of children, childhood. and
sexuality.

Examined in the context of other current social
problem constructions focused on children - especially the
Missing Children’s Movement - claims about child sexual
abuse are viewed as a broader reconstruction of childhood.
The contention that sexual abuse produces a "damaged child"
is placed in relationship to the early 20th century
construction of the sentimental child. The constructions
about sexual abuse are examined as discourses which
redefine the boundaries between adults and children and
lead to a rethinking of adults’ attempts to protect,

control, or empower children.

Copyright by
MARY JEAN MCCORMACK
1989

ACHIOVULIDGMNTS

Writing this dissertation has been an arduous, but
almost always intellectually' interesting ‘task. I ‘would
like to thank the people who made the process and
completion of writing possible. The members of my
committee - Marilyn Aronoff, Kevin Kelley, Peter Lyman,
Katherine O’Sullivan See and Barrie Thorne provided me with
helpful suggestions and leads as I undertook this study.
They also gave me valuable feedback on earlier drafts.

Marilyn Aronoff has been very helpful to me throughout
my graduate career. II have appreciated her encouragement
and her willingness to discuss portions of this
dissertation over the past two years.

I am particularly grateful to Barrie Thorne who acted
as my adviser and the chair of my dissertation committee.
Her attention to the content I wrote about, and the style
in which I wrote it, was always thoughtful and helpful. I
have benefited greatly from Barrie’s expertise in the
fields of sex and gender and the sociology of childhood and
the ways she taught me to think about these and other

topics.

ii

As a peer in graduate school and a friend Ginny Powell
has been a strong source of support. She listened to me
formulate my ideas and read several chapters in early
drafts. Most importantly she told me, and not just once, I
could finish this project when it seemed impossible.

Claire Kohrman has been an important source of support
- both professionally and personally for the past decade.
I have appreciated the clarity of her thinking, her
interest in writing and her knowledge of social science.
Writing her own dissertation she was an important model of
someone struggling to complete a difficult task and
succeeding.

Paddington, Dakota and Sylvia also helped in their own
ways - either sitting at my feet as I worked, running with
me or lying on my papers as I tried to write.

I would also like to thank Mary Ann Stehr for giving
me the courage, coherence and context I needed to do this
work and for discussing social constructionism with me.

Jackie Mahoney has lived with this dissertation and my
piles of books and papers for a number of years. I am
grateful to her for talking to me about my ideas whether
they were about capital accumulation or family violence. I
especially valued her letting me read pages aloud so I
could hear what I was writing and therefore see it in a

different way. Her choice of musical accompaniment in the

iii

weeks I was finishing was often witty and. motivating,
especially, "It's the End of the World as We Know It.“
Finally, I would also like to thank the students whom
I have taught and learned from over the past few years. In
writing this I have always been particularly grateful to a
student in an Introduction to Women’s Studies class who
asked me when I was discussing incest survivors if most
people died from incest and if that was why the word
survivor was used. Her question made me see more clearly
the power of words in constructing social problems. It is
the story of this, and other forms of power which all of

these people have helped me to tell.

iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART ONE
UNDERSTANDING CHILD SEXUAL.ABUSE: A.VIEW FROM
THE FIELD AND EROM.A SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE

Chapter

1. THE CONTEMPORAR! ANALXSES OF CHILD
SEXUAL ABUSE . . . . . . . . .

Introduction . .

The Social Construction of Childhood

Child Sexual Abuse as a Social Problem

How Child Sexual Abuse is Understood
Today . . . . . .

Defining Child Sexual Abuse . . .

Estimating the Number of Sexually
Abused Children . . . . . . . .

The Population at Risk

The Characteristics of Sexual Abusers

The Impact on Victims .

Prevention Programs . . . . . .

Treatment Issues . . . .

Questions and Plan of Analysis

CONCEPTUALIZING A.SOCIAL PROBLEM

Placing Social Constructionism in Context:
Sociological Approaches to Social
Problems . .

The Consensus and Conflict Models of
Social Construction . . . . . .

Experts as Claimsmakers . . . . .

Language as an Activity in Social
Problem Construction . . . . . .

The Media as Claimsmakers .

.The Media' 3 Construction of Childhood .

~The Historical Construction of Childhood

"Child Advocacy Movements . . . . .

11
16
19
28
37
41
43

48

49

53
57

58
60
64
67
68

Social Construction and the Medicalization

of Deviance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Institutional Power to Stigmatize . . . . . 74
Identity Politics: Redefining Stigma . . . 79
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

3. DECODING CONSTRUCTIONS: METHODOLOGIES . . . . . 84
Introduction . . . . . . . . . 84
Research on Child Sexual Abuse . . . . . . . 87
Field Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
Documents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
Interviews . . . . . . . . . . . 99
The Methodological Mosaic . . . . . . . . . 103

PART TWO

SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONISMMAPPLIED TO CHILD SEXUAL
.ABUSE: THE CREATION OE.A SOCIAL PROBLEM

4. HON CHILD SEXUAL.ABUSE IMBRGED.AS.A

SOCIAL PROBLEM IN THE 1970: . . . . . . . . . 106
Emergence of Social Movements . . . . . . . 106
'The Women’ 8 Movement . . . . . 107
Feminist Understandings of the Family . . . 110
The Family as an Expression of the
Sex/Gender System . . . . . . 113
The “Private" Sphere of Family Life . . . . 116
Contradictions Within the Family . . . . . . 119
oViolence Against Women . . . . . . . . . 121
The Feminist Perspective on Rape . . . . . . 123

Wife Battering: The Analysis of
Gendered Violence Moves Inside

the Home . . . . . . . . . 126
The Split of Reproduction From
Sexuality . . . . . . . . . 130
'Sexuality as a Source of Identity. . . . . . 133
.Children’ 3 Rights Movement . . . . . . . . . 135
The New Right . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139

5. THE CONSTRUCTIONS OF CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE

18.1 SOCIAL PROBLIMI . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141

Child Sexual Abuse Becomes a Social

Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
The Feminist Construction: The

Discourse on Violence . . . . . . . . 145
Linking the Feminist and Clinical

Discourses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
The Clinical Construction: The

Discourse on Trauma . . . . . . . . . . . 155

vi

Family Violence Research . . . . .
The Child Protection Response: The
Discourse on Childhood . . .

The New Right: The Discourse on
Sexuality and the Family .

The Mass Media’s Constructions
of Child Sexual Abuse: The
Discourse on Feelings and Facts

Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . .

6. THE PROCESSES OI CONSTRUCTION: THE POLITICS
OF IDENTITY, INNOCENCE, DAMAGE AND DANGER

The Issue of Numbers . .
Counting Sexually Abused Children
Numbers as a Rhetoric of Rectitude
Constructing the Damaged Child:
Building on the Sentimental Child
«Constructing the Survivor: How Child
Sexual Abuse Shapes Identity .
The Survivor as a Twentieth Century
Discourse

Sexual Abuse Prevention Programs: Claims

About Touch and Self Concept .
Claims About Adult Authority and

Children' 3 Power . .
A Model Prevention Program .
Discussing Sexual Abuse in Public

Settings . . . . . . . .
Summary . . . . . . . . .

PART THREE
THE BROADER CULTURAL CONTEXT: .ALTERING THE
IMODERN CONSTRUCTION OE CHILDHOOD

7. RECONSTRUCTING CHILDHOOD: PUTTING
CONSTRUCTIONS ABOUT CHILD SEXUAL
ABUSE IN CONTEXT . . . .

The Sentimental Child . . .
«The Loss of Childhood . . .
”What is a Real Child? . .
~Redefining Adult/Child Relationships
-Social Constructionism as a Way
of Thinking . . . . . . . .

vii

161
164
170
181
191
192
193
194
198
200
205
208
219

223
226

228
233

234

235
238
242
245

250

CHAPTER 1

THE CONTEMPORARY ANALYSES OE CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE

Introduction

The most recent history of child sexual abuse has been
written as a narrative of social concern for victims of
abuse (Butler, 1978; Miller, 1984). Much of this concern
has been reflected in a vast literature which seeks to
identify the causes and effects of sexual abuse. It has
also been reflected in media coverage. A stated aim of
this material has been the prevention and ultimate
eradication of sexual abuse (MacFarlane and Korbin, 1982).
Read from this perspective, the emergence of child sexual
abuse as a social problem in the 1970s is the story of a
society's increasing concern with children who are
victimized by adults. But this reading is at best cursory.
It skims the surface without probing the depths of the
discourses that have been articulated about sexual abuse.
When the history of the labeling of sexual abuse as a
social jproblem is viewed from. a social constructionist
perspective, the story changes dramatically, for this is

neither a singular nor a unilinear narrative.

2

My research focuses on the contemporary construction
of sexual abuse as a social problem by four groups:
feminists, clinicians, child protectionists and the New
Right. In this work I have not tried to enter the debates
over whether the actual amount of abuse has increased or
whether or not children lie about their victimization. I
see such debates as activities of construction, important
for what they represent and what they come to symbolize. I
have traced the discourses that have emerged around these
and other issues and the social contexts in which they
appeared, in order to understand how child sexual abuse has
been socially constructed.

I have chosen to focus on the discourses which
identified sexual abuse as a social problem for several
reasons. First, studies of the historical context and
institutional structures which led to abuse have been
appearing for some time (Rush, 1977; DeMause, 1974; Gordon,
1988). It is by nOW’ well documented that children’s
relative powerlessness in families, schools and day care
settings makes them vulnerable to violence. Inn analyzing
sexual abuse I did not want to simply trod a well worn
path. Secondly, the discourses that have been sounded
about sexual abuse are sociologically rich and compelling.
Characterized by ideological agreements and conflicts, the
arguments put forward by those who have "discovered" sexual

abuse provide maps of contested terrains of modern society

3

- particularly family and gender arrangements. Finally, in
focusing' on discourses and. uncovering' the processes by
which they are formulated, advanced and reshaped, I could
analyze two significant structures of social problem
construction - language and the media. Child sexual abuse
has proven to be especially well-suited to understanding
the ways in which linguistic choices shape the social
construction of reality and in illuminating the roles which
the media serve as architects and conduits of
construction.

Marked by vastly different political perspectives and
social agendas, those who make claims about the nature of
sexual abuse share a common view: all believe that they
speak in the best interest of children. ,And this is what
makes social problems which center on children so fruitful
from a constructionist perspective - the current victims of
the problem are not the ones who are shaping its
presentation. Those who are now being sexually abused are
spoken for and the definitions of what these children are
experiencing, what they need and how they should be helped,
is generated externally by people who are not only trying
to do something about abuse, but who are also trying to
advance their own interests.

Viewed from this perspective the construction of child
sexual abuse becomes a tale of contested definitions of

childhood and of sexuality, of boundaries between adults

4
and children and of battles about the changing nature of
the American family. It is also about the emergence of new
ideas about identity and gender. Most importantly, it is a
story about power and the social relationship among
protection, control and empowerment as it is manifested

between adults and children.

The Social Construction of Childhood

Children are unequal to adults. By American cultural
definitions, children need to be protected both from
themselves and from adults who might harm them. ZU1 order
to protect children it is necessary to empower them in some
ways and control them in others; to restrict their
movements and define behaviors which are appropriate and
inappropriate. Historical and anthropological analyses
reveal that these definitions are bound by time and place
(Zelizer, 1985; Kagan, 1984). Norms about how children
should be treated fluctuate depending on prevailing social
conditions. For instance, Viviana Zelizer (1985)
discovered that when children had a clear economic value
they were prized for their labor power and this became the
basis of their social treatment. In earlier centuries
children did not need to be protected from the vicissitudes
of work. As children were removed from the paid economy in
the late 19th and early 20th centuries, their emotional

worth rose and became the primary basis of their value.

5

Work then became seen as a source of potential damage to
children - something that would strip them of childhood, as
if childhood. was an inherent characteristic. Thus an
ideology arose which depicted children as emotionally
priceless, but economically worthless (Zelizer, 1985).
Children were valued for being childlike, that is, innocent
and dependent.

It is just such definitions of what it means to be
childlike which lie at the heart of social problems which
affect children (Best, 1987). In the case of child sexual
abuse the boundaries between adult and child sexual
experiences and their psychological responses, are called
into question and debated (Courtois, 1988; Meiselman,
1978). But debates are not limited to purely sexual norms.
The entire character of children and childhood itself is
being questioned (Winn, 1983). A clear example of this
focus has appeared in discussions of whether children are
”capable" of lying about sexual abuse. The debate around
this question has been cast in rigid dichotomies. On one
side children are seen as innocents, never lying about
sexual abuse; on the other side children are viewed as
diabolical, frequentLy manipulating adults through sexual
abuse charges (Conte, 1982). Sociologically this debate,
which reflects historical dichotomizations of children as
angels or devils, is less interesting for its resolution

than for its content. The question, "Are children as a

6
group capable of lying about abuse?" reveals more about a
society's view of children than it does about children's
inherent veracity or duplicity.

The emergence of such issues in the discussion of
child sexual abuse helps to make clear that a normative
definition of childhood is the backdrop against which
abused children are measured. Defining the experience of
victims illuminates what it means, socially, to be a non-
victim, that is, what it means to simply be a child. It
also establishes the existence of experts who have staked
claims to identifying the parameters of normal and impaired
childhood. These claims are treated as legitimate and
given credence because they come from the authority of
professions which have been socially sanctioned to regulate
definitions of reality. As Paul Starr has written with
regard to medicine, "The authority of professions is
distinctive because they not only advise actions, but also
evaluate the nature of reality and experience..." (Starr,
1982). ‘Childhood and child sexual abuse have become the
province of a number of fields, especially: medicine, law,
psychiatry, psychology, social work, sociology and
theology. Representatives of these professions, through
whom the changing history, structure and definitions of
childhood have been revealed, are among the claimsmakers

about child sexual abuse.

'7
Child Sexual Abuse as a Social Problem

Like other social problems which. were "discovered"
during the 19703 (e.g., wife battering), child sexual abuse
has a long and continuous private history. Its public
history has been short and sporadic. Although documentary
research by Gordon (1988) shows that social service
agencies received frequent reports of sexual abuse during
the 19th and early 20th centuries, it was not until the
late 19703 that the label social problem as opposed to
"cultural taboo" or "psychological fantasy" was applied to
the problem. In order to understand how a social problem
arena was built around sexual abuse, I have focused on the
specific construction of discourses about sexual abuse by
particular groups and the emergence of a social and
historical environment which. made the constructions
possible.

The claimsmakers in this case have been: feminists
who worked in the rape crisis and battered women’s
movements and who saw children as socially analogous to
women; clinicians who initially were trained to understand
their clients as fantasizing about sexual encounters with
adults, but who, through complex processes, began to
believe their clients' accounts of sexual abuse; child
protectionists who had discovered the physical abuse of
children in the 19603; and--coming from quite a different

perspective--the New Right which was concerned with what

8
they identified as the growing fragility of the family and
the increasing vulnerability of children. Each group has
taken as a central concern the psychological damage done to
children who have been abused, and thus each has discussed
the nature of childhood and the internal worlds of children
within which they identify and assess the situations of
those who have been abused. I have come to believe that
views of the damaged. or endangered. child are uniquely
modern in construction and that they exist in relation to
conceptions of normal, sentimentalized childhood developed
during the Progressive Era. The social environment which
provided the material conditions for the construction of a
social problem included the expanded social and economic
roles of women, the changes in the organization of family

life and the growth of the mass media.

How Child Sexual Abuse is Understood Today

The claimsmakers' views of child sexual abuse differ
on the social causes of abuse, on what is being taken from
children when they are abused and on the kind of adult
world abused children are plunged into. But there are
shared definitions in the field. Consensus in the sexual
abuse literature is emerging in the following areas: acts
that comprise sexual abuse; characteristics of abusers;
psychological ramifications for victims; and requirements

for prevention and treatment. This literature has appeared

9
in a variety of contexts, proliferating in the academic and
professional journals and in the popular culture. Whether

the information comes from Newsweek or The International

 

Journal of Child Abuse and Neglect, from feminists or from

 

the New' Right, shapes the context of discussions, the
analyses of the origins of the problem and the
presentations of potential solutions. Despite these
sources of diversity, there is, however, a surprising
uniformity in any given discussion about sexual abuse
itself. Agreement stems from widespread perception and
mounting empirical evidence that sexual abuse is harmful
to children because it has short and long term
psychological effects. In order to understand how these
negative effects are produced it is necessary to have a
definition of sexual abuse, an idea of its incidence and
prevalence and a profile of those who are at risk for
being abused and for abusing.

Prior to reviewing the sexual abuse literature,
however, I first need to comment on language. In the
following sections I have used the language of the sexual
abuse literature. This language is part of the social
construction of child sexual abuse as a social problem.
The next sections include discussions of victims and
survivors, of perpetrators and offenders. By writing
about the problem in this manner I am trying to show how

child sexual abuse is currently being written about - as a

10
therapeutic, and sometimes, criminal problem. I am also
introducing the language as data. In any project that
examines the social construction of a particular social
problem, the terms that are used to describe the phenomenon
being studied are essential (Hazelrigg, 1985). In the case
of child sexual abuse, language seems especially important
because this is a social problem that is most often
described through metaphors of silence and speech. Silence
is credited for the generational perpetuation of sexual
abuse; speech is envisioned as a liberatory force. Given
this construction, the power of silence and speech to shape

perceptions of sexual abuse is substantial.

~Defining Child Sexual Abuse

Child sexual abuse is broadly understood to be any
coercive sexual interaction between a child and a more
powerful person, either an adult or another child who is
five or more years older than the victim (Finkelhor, 1986).
This interaction may or may not involve physical contact.
In cases where there is no contact, the abuse may include
exhibitionism, as well as verbal harassment or seduction.
In cases where there is contact the abuse may range from
fondling to oral, anal, or vaginal penetration (Russell,
1986; Sgroi, Blick and Porter, 1982; Butler, 1978). By
defining sexual abuse as a multidimensional phenomenon, it

is possible to see abuse occurring on a continuum and

11
producing a range of possible effects. It also brings
questions of the incidence and prevalence of sexual abuse

to the forefront.

Estimatingthe Number of Sexually Abused Children

’Perhaps no issue has been more central in defining
sexual abuse as a social problem than the question of how
frequently children are sexually victimized. Establishing
the scope of the problem. has been essential both for
grabbing public attention and for garnering research funds.
Early estimates, which. emerged from. studies of college
students, were that 1 in every 4 girls and l in every 11
boys were sexually abused by age 18 (Finkelhor, 1979).
While the figures for abuse of girls has remained constant
and in fact is the same estimate given by Kinsey, Pomeroy,
Martin and Gebhard in 1953, the figures for boys have
often been questioned and revised.

It has frequently been noted that gathering accurate
data on boys is difficult for several reasons. First, boys
are less often reported as victims by physicians, teachers
or parents. Perceived as agentic and aggressive, boys are
often viewed as too powerful to be abused or culpable when
it occurs. Boys do not fall as easily into the category of
victim as girls do. Secondly, like girls most boys are
abused by men. Although at least 95% of these assaults are

perpetrated by heterosexually oriented adults, because the

12
assault is homosexual, boys will sometimes fear the
implications of the assault for their own sexual identity
(James and Nasjelti, 1983; Finkelhor, 1984). Putting aside
the fact that the attainment of sexual identity is a
complex and complicated matter, the fear of being labeled
homosexual in a homophobic society is a powerful form of
social control that has made some boys reluctant to report
incidents of sexual abuse. To eradicate this problem, the
federal government made research into the sexual abuse of
boys a priority area in its request for funding proposals
for the fall of 1985 (Federal Register, Sept. 4, 1985).
Until findings from the funded projects are available, the
sexual abuse of boys has been estimated by some researchers
by reviewing all available survey data on the topic. Using
this approach David Finkelhor and his colleagues found that
between 2.5 and 5% of boys under 13 had been sexually
victimized. Using 1980 census data Finkelhor generalized
these findings to the entire U.S. population of boys under
13 and stated that "if these figures are correct, a total
of 550,000 to 1,100,000 of the currently 22 ndllion boys
under 13 would eventually be victimized" (Finkelhor, 1984).
This analysis has in turn led to further estimates that
anywhere from one in every eight to one in every four boys,
a rate equal to girls, is sexually victimized before age 18

(Groth, 1985).

13

These estimates of sexual abuse include all cases
within and outside of families, those who have been
assaulted once, those who have been assaulted for years and
those who have been abused by more than one person. When
Diana Russell (1986) analyzed rates of incest among women
in the largest non-clinical probability study done to date,
she found that one in every six women had been incestuously
abused. From this number she extrapolated that 160,000 per
million women were incest victims; 45,000 of these were
father/daughter cases. Russell's findings were considered
essential for understanding incest because she was ‘ngt
examining psychotherapy or prison populations where incest
experiences could potentially be overrepresented. Her
estimates therefore have been ,considered more
statistically accurate than those of clinicians (Courtois,
1988).

A second reason for the significance of :Russell's
findings was that they clearly challenged what had been
prevailing wisdom in psychiatry, one of the arenas from
which expert opinion on child sexual abuse had
traditionally been sought. As late as 1975 one leading
psychiatric textbook estimated that incest occurred in one
in every million homes (Freedman, Kaplan and Sadock,
1975). Russell’s statistics called for a rethinking of the

prevalence of incest in American families.

14

yOnce an estimate of the number of sexually abused
children became available, the question arose as to whether
or not these figures represent an historically constant
level of abuse which was just being recognized or an
increase in the amount of sexual abuse in the country.’ The
American Humane Association had revealed that the reported
number of sexual abuse cases had been rising every year

since 1976. Locally, in Michigan The Lansing State

 

Journal (1984) had reported a 300% increase in Michigan
case reports during the 19803. Obviously, the popular
attention given to sexual abuse in newspapers, magazines
and on television has created a climate where abuse can be
reported more easily. School-based prevention programs,
and the use of teachers and physicians as mandated
reporters of suspected sexual abuse have also increased the
number of incidents coming to public attention. Yet,
historical evidence, such as that presented by Florence
Rush (1977), Linda Gordon and Paul O'Keefe (1984) and Linda
Gordon (1988) suggested that these reports of abuse
actually represented a decrease over past cases or a
constant number of incidents. Rush, citing documentary
evidence from Greek and Roman cultures, showed that a large
number of children were sexually abused as prostitutes.
Gordon looked at the structure of American families which
in the past gave perpetrators greater sexual access to

children. Gordon and O'Keefe presented data from Boston

15

social service agencies' records that, in a random sample
of 502 cases, produced 50 reports of incest. This rate was
comparable to that given in a number of contemporary
studies. Contrary to this evidence, Diana Russell’s recent
survey results yielded information that the number of
incest cases have "quadrupled from the early 19003 to 1973
(and) this was also the case for extrafamilial child abuse
before 14 years of age" (Russell, 1986).

,It may be impossible to ever truly know if the rates
of abuse have been increasing, decreasing or remaining
constant. The stigma around reporting' abuse, although
apparently diminishing, still exists. In addition, there
is pressure on children to keep sexual abuse secret.
Studies which attempt to ascertain. the historical
prevalence of abuse suffer from flaws in rates of
reporting. Given a social constructionist view of sexual
abuse, the actual number of victims there are may not be as
important as the perception that today children are
sexually abused in epidemic proportions. Researchers tend
to agree that there has always been and continues to be a
substantial number of children who are sexually abused.
There are a number of factors which make some children more

vulnerable to sexual abuse than others.

16
The Population at Risk

Not all children are equally at risk for sexual abuse.
Initial attempts to discover which children might be more
vulnerable tended to focus on the earlier myths of abuse.
Past perceptions represented sexual abuse, particularly
incest, as a problem of rural, lower class families
(Butler, 1978). These families were frequently thought to
be black. When research was initiated on victims of abuse
these ideas turned out to be false.

Two models have been created to help identify high
risk children“ The first model comes from David
Finkelhor’s 1984 compilation of theory and research from
which he designed a checklist of "Eight Vulnerability
Factors in Childhood." These factors included: the
presence of a stepfather, living for any period of time
without mother, not being close to mother, mother never
finishing high school, a sexually punitive mother,
physically affectionless father, a family income of less
that $10,000 and two or fewer friends in childhood. Two
thirds of those children who had five factors present in
their lives were sexually victimized. Each additional
factor increased the likelihood that a child would be
abused by 10 or 20% (Finkelhor, 1984).

Finkelhor’s model--which did not find a correlation
for ethnicity, religion, size of family, or presence of

physical abuse--did reveal some important themes. Children

17
with powerless or relatively powerless mothers were more
likely to be victimized. Children who were isolated were
more likely to be sexually assaulted. This finding
appeared frequently in all of the child abuse literature.
Stepfathers were found to be more likely to sexually abuse
their stepchildren than were biological fathers to abuse
their children. This finding was also documented by
Russell (1986) among others. Some have conjectured that
stepfather’s abuse stems from a lack of inhibition on the
part of the stepfather who does not experience an incest
taboo (this reason is often cited alongside the high incest
rates which seems to indicate that many people do not
experience the incest taboo as a mechanism of social
control) (Courtois, 1988). Women who were divorced were
also more likely to bring strangers into the home who might
view the daughters as potential sexual partners. Finkelhor
also discovered that fathers who were politically and
morally conservative were more likely to sexually abuse
their children. Within these families victims were
punished for showing any curiosity about sexuality or
evidencing any sexual behavior. On the basis of this
information Finkelhor stated "sexually severe
families...foster a high risk for sexual exploitation."
This view fits with many studies of moral conservatism,
religiosity and “sexual deviance," including the infamous

Tearoom Trade, (Humphries, 1963).

 

18

The most controversial factor in Finkelhor’s study was
the finding that an income of less than $10,000 put a child
at greater risk for sexual abuse. Finkelhor himself makes
clear that part of the greater risk actually reflects a
higher likelihood of being reported. Upper-class children
are also at risk for sexual abuse but are less frequently
reported. Nevertheless the income finding, which has also
appeared in Straus, Gelles and Steinmetz's (1980) classic
work on family violence, appears significant.

Finkelhor's model was drawn exclusively from research
on girls; his findings fit with a second. model which
emerges from Diana Russell’s (1986) and Judith Herman's
(1981) research on female incest victims. Russell found
that parental absence and unavailability in the form of
mother's employment outside the home, disability or
illness, or complete absence of natural mother or father,
made a child vulnerable. In addition, poor parent-child
relationships, especially with mothers who were perceived
as harsh, punitive and/or emotionally cold added to the
likelihood of victimization. A conflictual relationship
between a girl’s parents and, as noted above, the presence
of a stepfather, also increased the possibility of sexual
abuse. Many of these findings were reported early in the
19803 by Judith Herman, a psychiatrist who many have
credited with being one of the first "discoverers" of child

sexual abuse (Bass and Davis, 1988). Herman identified

19

what is now considered the classic family constellation of
girls at risk. She found that incestuous families often
included authoritarian, morally rigid fathers and
physically or psychologically absent mothers. The girls
themselves were socially isolated (Herman, 1981).

Information on what makes boys vulnerable to sexual
assault has been harder to elicit. Finkelhor (1984), in
attempting to produce a similar model to the one he created
for girls, discovered that boys, like men who were raped,
were more likely to be abused with other children present.
Another finding’ was that. boys whose abuse *was reported
came from poorer families than abused girls; that they were
more likely than abused girls to be living in single parent
families; and that they were often physically, as well as
sexually, abused. Because it has commonly been found that
men who sexually abuse children have been sexually abused
themselves (Groth, 1979), identifying' boys at risk for
sexual victimization has not only been thought important
for preventing their abuse, but also for preventing future

generations from abuse.

The Characteristics of Sexual Abusers

As the study of child. sexual abuse expanded, new
information on perpetrators was being developed and
disseminated. Previous studies of offenders were based on

prison populations which tended to skew the data towards

20

those who abused outside of the family (Groth, 1985). New
research has focused on perpetrators who have received
therapy, instead of, or in addition to, being imprisoned.
This change is significant because it means that research
is available on a wider sample of offenders from different
classes and races. Limited data on women who sexually
abuse children are also becoming available, although most
abuse and therefore most data, are based on studies of men.

Ninety-five percent of abuse of girls and 80% of abuse
of boys is reported to be done by men or adolescent boys
(Finkelhor, 1984). Many researchers trace the causes for
such large numbers of male perpetrators to patterns of
gender socialization (Finkelhor, 1984, 1986; Russell, 1986;
Herman, 1981). Because they are primarily raised by women
who must communicate a complex set of conscious and
unconscious gender expectations to them, boys learn what it
means to be masculine in American society through a process
of disidentification with the feminine (Chodorow, 1978;
Dinnerstein, 1977). As a consequence boys' internal worlds
are based on experiences of distance and differentiation.
The requirement that boys learn to be separate and
autonomous means that they also must become separate from
the core of their emotional selves - the part of themselves
that was initially tied to and identified with their
mothers (Chodorow, 1978). In this process boys learn that

sexual desires and emotional attachments need not coincide.

21

Theorists hypothesize that this ability to split sex and
emotion makes it easier for men to view women and children
as objects than as people and to direct aggression against
them. Subsequently, sexual assaults against women and
girls are easier to perpetrate because they are focused on
someone who is experienced as an "other" (Sanford, 1980).

This theory, which is largely' drawn from feminist
oriented, psychoanalytic accounts of gender socialization
help explain why men would more frequently abuse than women
and why they would victimize women and girls. It also has
been used to account for the repetitive finding that men
who sexually abuse children have been abused themselves.
According to these theorists, boys experience sexual
assaults as shattering experiences in the same way that
girls do. What differs is that boys split their emotional
pain and anger. Turning their anger outward and
identifying with the aggressor, who is presumably another
male, boys retaliate for their assaults by becoming
offenders. Girls, in contrast are thought to turn their
aggression towards themselves becoming self-destructive and
continuing to be victims through relationships with men or
women who abuse them and/or their children (Russell, 1986).
Because these findings are verified over and over, many
researchers believe that there is utility in drawing on
theories of gender socialization to explain the behavior of

sexual abuse perpetrators (Sanford, 1980; Howells, 1981).

22

Nicholas Groth (1985), who has worked with over 2,000
male offenders, agrees with this perspective and has added
to it a theory of personality types. According to Groth
(1982) there are two kinds of offenders: regressed and
fixated. Regressed offenders are those who are capable of
having mature, adult relationships, but because of some
external stress, such as unemployment or spouse’s illness,
will seek out children as substitute sexual partners.
These offenders are usually married men, and their victims
are frequently their daughters. It is these offenders who
are accounted for in the classic incest model of mother-
absent families. According to this model, when the wife is
sexually unavailable to the husband, he uses the daughter
as a surrogate partner. Here the daughter is imbued with
adult characteristics and is asked to take care of the
father’s sexual and non-sexual needs.

Fixated offenders are those whose sexual identity
formation has been prematurely foreclosed, usually because
of their sexual victimization. These offenders see
children as their peers, choose boys most frequently as
their victims, and identify strongly with those they abuse.
Fixated offenders usually begin sexually abusing children
at age thirteen or fourteen, although their abusive
behavior is usually ignored at that stage and identified as
harmless, adolescent experimentation (Becker, Cunningham-

Rathner, Kaplan, 1985). However, it is clear that these

23
boys establish patterns of sexual exploitation of children
beginning at an early age.
Although Groth’s typology is useful for identifying
certain patterns to abuse, it fails to capture the

complexity of either inter- or intrafamily abuse. In

 

presenting two types of perpetrators, Groth omits
variations in motivation of the offender and fails to ask a
key question: how is it that children come to be seen as
appropriate "sexual partners?" An additional problem
exists in Groth's research. It lends itself to a position
of blaming women for not being sexually available to men
and thereby creating an environment conducive to sexual
abuse. This is most clearly reflected in the case of so-
called regressed offenders who abuse children because of
the absence of an age-appropriate partner. Taken to its
logical conclusion this makes women responsible for
controlling and containing men’s sexuality. Although
women's civilizing role in taming male sexuality is neither
a new theme nor' a new’ expectation (Welter, 1973) its
emergence in Groth’s typology perpetuates the legacy of
mother blaming which has been a prominent theme in past
discussions of incest.

David Finkelhor (1984) has constructed a model which
adds complexity by emphasizing multiple factors which lead
people to sexually abuse children. The model includes four

factors, all of which must be present for an individual to

24

become an offender: emotional congruence, sexual arousal,
blockage and disinhibition. Emotional congruence refers
to patterns through which the offender has come to view
children as compatible sexual "partners." This may be a
process of reenacting a past experience of sexual abuse or
of seeing children as sexually acceptable because they are
not powerful or dominant. Sexual arousal refers to factors
by which abusers find children sexually appealing. As
Finkelhor and others have pointed out, this is a
controversial variable because it raises the issue of
whether or not sexual abuse has a sexual component.
Although this may be clear to some, for others it raises an
older debate, which will be discussed later, about the
relationship of sex and violence in rape.

Blockage is both the physical unavailability of more
appropriate partners and. a psychological experience of
finding equal partners too frightening. Finkelhor
distinguishes between these situational and developmental
issues and, like Groth, notes that most incest cases have a
situational dynamic, while many extrafamilial cases express
a developmental dynamic. The fourth variable,
disinhibition, is where feelings are turned into behaviors.
In order for disinhibition to occur there needs to be a
breakdown of these social norms which would preclude the
sexual use of children. Efforts to identify these factors

have frequently focused on the strong correlation between

25

alcoholism and sexual abuse, the experience of sexual abuse
oneself and lack of attachment to children while they were
young - an argument used to account for stepfather’s
overrepresentation as abusers. Authors who have sought
social origins for the process of disinhibition have
analyzed the property relation between fathers and their
children, the sexual objectification of children in
advertising and the burgeoning child pornography industry
(Finkelhor, 1984; Butler, 1978; Rush, 1977; Herman, 1981).

An additional theoretical perspective which has been
used to understand the motivations and behaviors of sexual
abusers is based on the addiction model popularized by such
groups as Alcoholics Anonymous. According to Patrick
Carnes (1983), a psychologist who has been most
responsible for developing this view, sexual addictions are
experienced in four stage cycles, including: preoccupation,
ritualization, compulsive sexual behavior and despair. The
sexual addict is described as obsessed by sex which s/he
organizes around idiosyncratic rituals which propel him/her
to act out sexually. Despair follows each enactment of the
first three steps of the cycle because the addict fails to
either find fulfillment through sex or to stop repeating
the cycle. .Addictive sexual behavior may include:
compulsive masturbation, exhibitionism, rape and child
sexual abuse. Carnes argues that sexual abuse reflects a

"profound violation of cultural boundaries" and most often

26
results from abusers having been abused as children and
thereby learning that sex and affection, as well as
violence, are inextricably interwoven (Carnes, 1983).
People with sexual addictions frequently suffer from other
addictions, particularly to drugs and alcohol, forming a
personality based on a system of addictions.

The three models offered by Groth, Finkelhor and
Carnes have been drawn primarily and sometimes
exclusively, on data gathered from male perpetrators. In
the past seven years there has been growing interest in the
topic of female perpetrators. One of the key questions
which has been addressed, but not yet satisfactorily
answered is: do women sexually abuse children far less
frequently than men or is the sexual abuse which women
perpetrate hidden by certain cultural views of women?
Women are rarely arrested for sexually abusing children.
Groth reported that in his work with offenders who abuse
children, only 3 of 253 offenders were women (Groth, 1979;
Finkelhor, 1984). Nevertheless, Groth believes that women
sexually abuse children to a much greater extent than is
reflected in statistical evidence.

Groth is not alone in speculation about women as
perpetrators. Some theorists and clinicians believe that
women sometimes sexually abuse children under the guise of
normal mothering. Affection and nurturance can, according

to these theories, slip somewhat easily into abusive

27

situations without raising suspicions about inappropriate
sexual behavior (Justice and Justice, 1979). Because men
do not primarily nurture children their behavior is more
easily labeled as abusive. An additional point is that
because women’s sexuality is culturally defined as less
threatening and potent than men's, women who sexually abuse
children are defined as not doing much damage. Even though
this notion has been challenged by Kempe and Kempe (1984)
who cite mother-son incest as the most devastating form of
all abuse, it still enjoys some popularity, particularly in
the mass media.

Even though statistics are not completely accurate for
numbers of female perpetrators, overwhelming evidence
suggests that do men do abuse children in much greater
numbers than women. Diana Russell (1986) found in her
survey of incest victims that 5% of incestuous offenders
were women. Additionally, she found that her respondents
described their experience in less abusive and coercive
terms than those that involved male relatives. They also
occurred with less frequency (Russell, 1986). This
evidence gains more importance in light of the fact that
most female offenders are perpetrators of incest as opposed
to committing sexual assault outside the home (Finkelhor,
1984).

Both Finkelhor and Russell have speculated on why men

would abuse children more than women and why the issue of

28
women as perpetrators began to gain such widespread
attention in the early 19803. Their conclusions are
structured by an observation about reality and by a gender
analysis. The two sociologists have noted that clinicians
are hearing more from ‘their clients about women
perpetrating sexual abuse. This coincides with the fact
that clinicians are hearing more about sexual abuse in
general. Their gender analysis suggests that there is a
cultural recoiling in the face of statistics which reveal
such high proportions of male offenders. The idea that men
and women might offend in equal numbers means that sexual
abuse could be traced to non-gender origins. Sexually
abusing children could thus be explained as part of a more
evil side of human nature or ascribed to some element of
the social power which adults hold over children. But
since men have a greater' proclivity to sexually abuse
children, the issue does emerge as a gendered, as well as
a generational one. There is something in male
socialization, in their institutional power and subsequent
experiences which make them sexually abuse children more

than women do (Finkelhor and Russell, 1984).

The Impact on Victims
If research and theory about those who abuse have
grown substantially over the past decade, comparable work

on the experiences of victims has expanded even more

29
rapidly and in many ways, as will be discussed later, the
impact of abuse on the victim's identity has become the
most central facet of the current construction of child
sexual abuse. Much of the work describes and analyzes the
short and long term effects of abuse.

According to many experts in the study of child sexual
abuse, initial effects of sexual victimization may last
from one day to two years. The effects are both internal
and external (Sgroi, Porter, Blick, 1982). The internal or
more psychologically experienced effects may include:
sleep disorders, eating disorders, fears and phobias,
depression, and feelings of guilt, shame and anger (Browne
and Finkelhor, 1986). The external or more socially
displayed responses may include: school phobias,
incorrigibility, aggression ‘towards self and. others and
delinquency (Browne and Finkelhor, 1986; James and
Nasjelti, 1983; Sgroi, Porter, Blick, 1982).

The long term effects of child sexual abuse are just
beginning to be understood. Most of the research in this
area has been based on adult women who were sexually abused
as children (Herman, 1981; Russell, 1986; Courtois, 1988;
Bass and Davis, 1988). Some data on men who were abused as
children is currently emerging (Longo, 1982; Groth, 1982;
James and. Nasjelti, 1983; Finkelhor, 1986). The most
useful discussion of long term effects on boys and girls to

date has come from Finkelhor and Browne (1986) who have

30
created a four part model to discuss the traumagenic nature
of child sexual abuse. Their model includes: traumatic
sexualization, stigmatization, betrayal and powerlessness.

Traumatic sexualization evokes several different
dynamics. Of central importance is the way in which a
child becomes confused about the meaning and content of
close relationships. Rewarded for being sexual, deceived
about the meaning of sexual behavior and sometimes
disgusted by the acts s/he is asked to perform, a sexually
abused child learns that the need to be connected to other
people is not a relational need, but rather is a specific
sexual need. This misperception may lead a child into what
is perceived as "precocious sexuality." It may also create
confusion about appropriate sexual activity and partners.
The child could become sexually preoccupied or develop an
aversion to both sexuality and intimacy (Berliner, 1985;
Finkelhor and Browne, 1985).

Stigmatization is a second effect of sexual abuse.
Referring to a process whereby the offender blames the
child ‘for the assault, denigrates the child’s sense of
self, and shames the victim for "participating" in sexual
acts, stigmatization has profound effects on the child. It
is as if the child’s whole sense of self has been
humiliated. This humiliation is exacerbated by the
offender’s desire to keep the abuse secret, which makes the

child feel isolated and different from her or his peers.

31

Lowered self-esteem is another result of having a stigma
attached to one's identity. If a child’s family or friends
react negatively to the disclosure of sexual abuse, the
child’s feelings of inferiority will be compounded. In
more dramatic cases this may lead to problems such as self-
mutilation, criminal activity, substance abuse, or
suicide.

Betrayal occurs in sexual abuse cases whether the
offender knows or is related to the child or whether the
offender is a stranger. A trust has been violated,
including a faith in the world as a benevolent place, and
the child’s long term ability to trust will likely be
impaired (Finkelhor and Browne, 1985). The expectation
that loved ones will and can protect the child is
shattered. A pronounced sense of the world as a hostile
place may make the child aggressive in a defensive way or
may produce a severe clinging or dependency response. In
either case the child’s ability to form relationships where
s/he may thrive is compromised.

Powerlessness is the final consequence of sexual abuse
that Finkelhor and Browne discuss. In sexual abuse cases a
child's psychological and bodily boundaries have been
violated. These violations leave the child feeling
vulnerable and often defenseless. If the child is unable
to make others believe that the abuse is occurring, these

feelings will become entrenched and the child may take on

32

an identity as a victim. Subsequent responses to
victimization include two very different reactions. One is
to become passive, fearful and anxious; the second is to
become aggressive, bold and defensively assertive.
Historically, these choices have been linked to gender,
with girls more likely to doubt their efficacy and assume a
subordinate stance, and boys more likely to need to be in
control, sometimes turning their victimization into a need
to dominate (Groth, 1985; Finkelhor and Browne, 1985).

Not all victims respond the same to sexual abuse,
however, and even though popular depictions of sexually
abused children define them as equally damaged, one study
of clinical populations reported that only 20-40% of
victims had some evident response to being abused (Tufts,
1984). Fewer than 20% of sexually abused children are
believed to suffer from severe psychopathology (Finkelhor,
1986). A number of variables have been identified as
significant predictors of the degree of subsequent trauma a
child will experience. These include: relationship to the
offender, number of offenders, age at onset of abuse,
frequency and duration of abuse, type of sexual assault,
amount of coercion and response to disclosure (Finkelhor,
1986; Russell, 1986; Gelinas, 1983; Herman, 1981; Butler,
1978).

Father-daughter and stepfather—daughter incest have

frequently been cited as causing the most trauma to victims

33

because of both the symbolic and real nature of the
relationship (Russell, 1986; Finkelhor, 1986; Gelinas,
1983; Herman, 1981). .Although 'the correlation. between
fathers and stepfathers as offenders and severity of abuse
is often cited, these same, as well as other researchers,
have pointed to the fact that any offender, regardless of
relationship, can cause trauma to the victim (Berliner,
1985; Sgroi, 1982). On the question of mother-son incest,
as noted above Kempe and Kempe (1984) report that this is
the most traumatic form of abuse. In her survey of incest
victims, Russell found that female incest perpetrators
were less coercive than male perpetrators and that they
produced less trauma in their victims. Finkelhor (1979) in
his pathbreaking study of sexual victimization, also found
women perpetrators to cause less trauma. Regardless of the
relationship between abuser and victim, when a child is
sexually abused by more than one person during the course
of growing up, the severity of the trauma is increased.
Feelings of vulnerability and a subsequent inability to
trust adults or older children are thought to account for
the exacerbation of trauma (Finkelhor, 1986).

There is some evidence that the younger a child is at
the onset of the abuse the more traumatic the experience
(Kempe and Kempe, 1984). Prior to the age of 36 months
children experience a psychological birth wherein they

learn to both be attached to and separate from primary

34

caregivers (Mahler, Pine and. Bergman, 1975). If" abuse
takes place during these formative years some believe that
the process of psychic structuralization (i.e., the
mechanisms by which one comes to establish an internal
world and ways of interacting with the external world) can
be more or less shattered. The most dramatic rupturing
results in the formation of multiple personality disorders,
which have recently been discovered to be more prevalent
than previously assumed and to be connected to early and
severe cases of child sexual abuse (Kluft, 1985).
Finkelhor (1986) in his review of studies focusing on the
age of onset and severity of trauma found more varied
results. Others have noted that some children are able to
overcome early abuse without severe long term consequences.
Dubbed "resilient," these children commonly had one trusted
adult in their environment who was able to counter the
effects of the abuse (Shengold, 1979).

Frequency and duration of abuse have been examined
often to see if they account for degree of trauma. While
many clinicians believe that the number of times a child is
abused and the number of days, weeks, months or years that
the abuse lasts have significant consequences, the
empirical results have been more mixed. Nevertheless, the
fact that the clinical data have been consistent on this
finding has been deemed as significant by Finkelhor, among

others. It should be noted, however, that Russell has

35

found widespread negative mental health outcomes in cases
of incest that occurred only once. INT fact, contrary to
many of the more publicized accounts of incest (Brady,
1979; McNarron and Morgan, 1982; Bass and Thornton, 1983)
43% of Russell’s respondents reported only one incestuous
experience yet 98% of the sample said that the experience
had been traumatic (Russell, 1986).

Several studies have concluded that the most important
factor for determining traumatic outcome was severity of
the sexual assault. If a child experienced oral, anal
and/or vaginal penetration it was much more likely that
s/he would have persistent mental health problems than if
no penetration occurred (Bagley and Ramsey, 1986; Gelinas,
1983; Russell, 1986). The profound violation of physical
boundaries creates a sense of ongoing crisis for child
victims similar to that reported by both male and female
adult rape victims (Burgess and Holmstrom, 1979). A
similar line of inquiry has examined the impact of
aggression and force on victims. Finkelhor (1986) reports
that the greater the force the worse the trauma. Many
clinicians caution, however, that force does not need to be
explicitly present for a child to be traumatized because
the threat of force may already be implicitly present in
the power imbalance found in adult-child relationships

(Sanford, 1980).

36

A final set of variables that may predict the degree
of trauma a sexually abused child may experience have to do
with disclosure. In general, clinicians tend to believe
that if a child tells that s/he is being abused there is a
greater likelihood that the child will ultimately feel more
empowered and less victimized. The child will also
potentially break generations of silence which. help 'to
perpetuate sexual abuse (National Public Radio, 4/10/84;
Herman, 1981; Sanford, 1980). Surveys of victims tend to
be more ambiguous in their findings about the consequences
of disclosure. Researchers at Tufts University (1984)
found that those who disclosed at a slow pace felt the
least conflicted about revealing sexual abuse. Others have
found no correlation between disclosure and trauma
(Finkelhor, 1979).

If a child does report being sexually abused to a
parent and the parent reacts negatively to the disclosure,
the child's trauma is increased. If the parent reacts with
empathy the child's trauma is not alleviated because
empathy alone does not remove 'the fact that the abuse
occurred (Tufts, 1984). This finding is significant
because most sexual abuse prevention programs teach that
children should tell that they are being abused. The
positive, cathartic consequences of disclosure have been
taken for granted. One prevention specialist has cautioned

against the uniform belief in disclosure (Conte, 1982). He

37
emphasized that disclosure may have negative effects on
some children who either feel guilty for not telling or who
suffer more abuse for the disclosure. These children
appear burdened by both sexual abuse and a social climate

which compels disclosure.

Prevention Programs

Because the effects of sexual abuse are defined as
devastating, there has been a significant mobilization on
the part of social workers, psychologists and others
working with children to prevent abuse. These programs
emphasize teaching children verbal and physical skills so
they can thwart attackers (Colao and Hosansky, 1987).
Almost all programs also advise children to reveal past
abusive incidents. A number of ideas have become central
to programs and literature about prevention. Common themes
are: children have the right to control their own bodies;
children have a right to "say no" to adults who touch them
or want to touch them; children should trust their own
feelings; and if a situation feels bad to the child s/he
should leave (Wachter, 1983). If an adult tries to
convince a child to keep secrets, the child should know
that this means the adult is doing something wrong and the
child should tell a trusted adult about the would-be

secret. Secrets are usually differentiated from surprises

38
which are defined as fun and as things which are revealed
to someone at an appropriate time.

In order to teach children these ideas many formats
have been used. Theatre troupes, such as Illusion Theatre
in Minnesota which pioneered this approach in 1979, present
plays in which children are shown as victims of
inappropriate touch, as victors in vanquishing a potential
offender, and as past victims voicing their experiences and
gaining help from trusted adults. Board games, like "Play
it Safe with SASA” (SASA is a puppet), have been invented
to introduce children to the idea of sexual abuse and ways
of combatting it. Story and coloring books have also
played a prominent role in the prevention field. Books

such as Private Zones, Take Care with Yourself, No More

 

 

Secrets for Me and It’s O.K. to Say No!, all emphasize

 

 

that adults may hurt children and children have an inherent
right to be protected from these hurts or to be given the
attention they need to recover from being abused.
Prevention programs also focus on adults, usually
parents or educators, teaching them about sexual abuse and
then focusing on how to talk to children about the topic
and how to assess whether sexual abuse has occurred.
Particular concern is sometimes focused on differences
among children that might enhance their vulnerability.

Linda Tschirhart Sanford's The Silent Children (1980), for

 

instance, includes chapters on developmentally disabled

39
children, as well as physically handicapped children,
children with single parents and children whose parents
have been abused.

Although the idea of teaching prevention strategies
seems straight-forward, in that most people would say that
children have a right to protection from abusive adults,
programs have faced a number of challenges in constructing
their lessons. First, in communicating the idea that
adults harm children and that they do not have a right to,
prevention. programs call into question the social
relations which exist between adults and children. The
norms of the culture dictate that children should obey
adults and that adults wield a natural authority over
children. Sexual abuse prevention programs tell children
that some adults should not be obeyed. But which adults
should be ignored? In essence this question is something
like: how does one tell the good guys from the bad guys?
Differentiating these two groups has been an ongoing task.
Early* prevention :material focused. almost exclusively on
”stranger danger" which made answering this question easy.
The good people were people one knew; the bad people were
strangers. Simple in formation, this strategy, which has
had its most successful application in the Missing
Children's Movement (Best, 1987), had a major drawback. It
ignored the fact that most children know the people who

assault them. Material such as the film, "Red Light

40
People; Green Light People" which divided the world into
people children could trust - doctors, police officers,
teachers - and those who could not be trusted - people who
might stop and ask for directions - taught children that
adults who had legitimate professional authority over them
would do no harm.

As empirical evidence emerged which refuted these
claims, prevention programs began to shade their
presentations more. Illusion Theatre offered performances
which depicted people close to children, including
relatives, as perpetrators of sexual abuse. Through this
type of work varying portraits of sexual abuse emerged.
Children were taught that many adults were capable of
hurting them and ‘that professional legitimacy or close
relationships did not guarantee that adults were safe.

In addition to teaching children that adults can hurt
them, prevention programs also have taught children how
they are being harmed. What exactly is sexual abuse?
While the answer to this question leads professionals to
differentiate among various forms abuse can take and
nuances of definitions, it is difficult to translate these
subtleties into language that children can understand.
The easiest and most adapted translation has been to talk
about “appropriate" and "inappropriate" touch. Appropriate
touch is touch that a child would welcome, such as a hug

and touch that would not violate a child's "private parts"

41
(Adams and Fay, 1981). In constructing programs which
relate this message, prevention specialists have usually
side-stepped an essential question: is ‘touch that is
sexual always bad? How is a child to understand sexual
play among peers or masturbation? While these are clearly
difficult issues to address, ignoring them can lead to a
confusion about what is sexual and what is abusive.
Rather than a peripheral point, I believe that this
distinction between sex and sexual abuse is a central
undercurrent in the social construction of child sexual
abuse. What is being debated. here is the nature of
children’s sexuality and the boundary between adult and
child sexual experiences. This concern with sexuality and
the way in which it is affected by sexual abuse has been

addressed in the burgeoning treatment literature.

Treatment Issues

The treatment of those involved in child sexual abuse
is varied, but is almost always based on psychological
principles. Pedophiles are frequently treated in behavior
modification programs. Aversion therapy is given so that a
perpetrator can alter his or her avowed sexual orientation
to children. This treatment usually consists of some type
of shock therapy and is based on a system of rewards and
punishments. A. perpetrator will be shown. pictures of

children and if s/he sexually responds, a shock will be

42
administered. Conversely, if a perpetrator responds to
what is defined as an appropriate sexual partner, an adult
woman or man, a reward will be administered (Crewdson,
1988).

Perhaps the most famous treatment program to emerge in
the last few years is the "Child Sexual Abuse Treatment
Program" of Santa Clara County founded by Henry Giaretto.
Begun in 1973, Giaretto’s project is a court diversion
program based on family system theory and is specifically
organized to treat members of incestuous families.
Initially offenders, and sometimes victims, will be
removed from the home. Then, various family members are
given psychotherapy in different configurations. For
instance, if the daughter is the victim and the father the
perpetrator the treatment will take place in the following
units: mother/daughter; father/mother; father/daughter.
Each dyad must focus on issues of betrayal, secrecy and
violation. The point of therapy is to teach the victim
that she is not to blame, to get the father to take
responsibility for the incest, and to examine the mother's
role in not protecting the daughter (Giaretto, 1982). The
program has treated 20,000 cases of incest since its
inception and, as a measure of success, claims that 90% of
the families have been reunited after counseling (Crewdson,

1988).

43

Other ‘treatment. programs focus specifically on
children who have recently been victimized or on adults
who were abused as children. Most of these programs, like
Harborview in Seattle or Incest Survivors .Anonymous, a
national organization offering treatment groups around the
country, center on the victim being able to express
through words, drawings, or play, what they have
experienced. A priority is placed on breaking the silence
around sexual abuse and creating an environment wherein
victims can realize they did not cause their own abuse.

The most notable aspect of treatment programs is that
they attempt to address the psychological impact and causes
of abuse. Couched in the language of psychodynamic
psychotherapy, these programs are dominated by clinicians
who discuss sexual abuse as a loss of boundaries and
appropriate roles between adults and children which produce
profound psychological sequelae for the victims who may be
beginning a lifetime of victimizing or victimization. At
some point treatment issues blend with prevention concerns
as professionals attempt to counteract what they perceive

as a generational phenomenon.

Questions and Plan of.Analysis
The definition of child sexual abuse as a social
problem raises a number of issues for analysis. This

dissertation will focus on the processes and mechanisms of

44

social construction. Specifically, it will examine the
historical context in which sexual abuse was constructed,
the groups which contributed to the "discovery," and the
mechanisms which they used to advance their views. I will
pursue these central questions: (1) How did the existence
of contemporary social movements create a context for the
construction of this specific problem? (2) How did the
rethinking of the family as an institution and its changing
structure influence various constructions about the sexual
violence taking place in American homes? (3) How did the
socially recognized split of reproduction from sexuality
lead to discussions of sexual abuse not as a problem of
genetic defects in future generations, but as an immediate,
psychological problem for the victim?

The second central area of analysis focuses on the
convergence and divergence of the constructions. Ways in
which feminists, clinicians, child protectionists and the
New Right championed, shaped, reflected and opposed
various perspectives on child sexual abuse are key to its
construction as a social problem. Important questions here
are: (1) What view of child sexual abuse is advanced by
each of the claimsmakers? (2) How do the constructionists
discuss the causes of sexual abuse? (3) What do the
"discoverers" of sexual abuse identify as the impact of
abuse on the child and what type of repercussions do they

project? (4) What role did the media play in establishing

45
particular views of sexual abuse? These questions will be
examined from a contemporary point of view.

Part one, "Understanding Child Sexual Abuse: A.View
From the Field and From a Sociological Perspective"
includes this chapter, which introduces the general
perception of child sexual abuse as it has emerged since
1974, and Chapters 2 and 3. Chapter 2 is a review of the
social construction of social problems literature and an
introduction to two central ideas which are discussed in
Chapters 5 and 6 - the media's roles in the construction
process, and the attachment and refutation of stigma to
those who have been abused. Chapter 3 is a discussion of
the methodologies which I have used to gather my data,
including field work, interviews and bibliographic and
documentary research.

Part two, "Social Constructionism Applied to Child
Sexual Abuse: The Creation of a Social Problem“ includes
Chapters 4, 5 and 6. Chapter 4 focuses on the social and
intellectual contexts in which child sexual abuse began to
be perceived as a social problem. Chapter 5 presents the
four constructions of sexual abuse and the claimsmaking
activities carried out by constructionists. Of particular
importance here is an analysis of the psychological effects
of sexual abuse on children, because it is this emphasis on
psychological danger, I argue, which has characterized the

most recent construction of sexual abuse and sets it apart

46
from prior historical discussions of the problem. Chapter
6 explores the processes and mechanisms of constructing a
social problem. Here the claimsmakers central themes are
explored, and the major construct of the four groups - the
damaged child - is discussed.

Part three, ”The Broader Cultural Context: Altering
the Modern Construction of Childhood" is Chapter 7. This
chapter looks at how child sexual abuse fits into a larger
social framework. Specifically, it discusses the ways in
which recent social problem movements which have focused on
children - such as the missing children’s movement, and the
movement against child sexual abuse and physical abuse have
contributed to a rethinking of childhood. Historical
parallels are drawn between the Progressive Era’s move to
protect children from the vicissitudes of work, and from
the social power of the world of money and the
contemporary era’s attempt to protect children from the
dangers of sexual abuse, and from the privileges of adult
social and sexual relations. The chapter also analyzes the
role of sexual abuse prevention programs in providing
children access to sexual information, information that in
the case of sexually abused children had been identified as
constituting a loss of innocence, and of childhood itself.
As a form of socialization into sexuality, I identify
prevention programs as a way of redrawing the boundaries

between adults and children and ultimately of incorporating

47
ideas about sex into the reconstruction of childhood. The
fact that discussions of sex are delivered in an encoded
way, as 'part. of’ a *warning' about danger, illustrates a
continuing' cultural ambivalence ‘toward. children and
sexuality, an ambivalence which is reflected in the

discourses created by the four claimsmakers.

CHAPTER 2

CONCEPTUALIZING A.SOCIAL PROBLEM

Because child sexual abuse is most frequently
discussed as a phenomenon that is protected by a conspiracy
of silence, it is essential to understand the processes
through which various voices came to frame the problem.
This chapter is devoted to understanding how social
problems are constructed through social activities. An
exploration in the sociology of knowledge, the following
pages examine a variety of concepts and literatures,
including: social problem theory; the role of experts in
drawing and keeping attention on sexual abuse; the place of
the media in publicizing the problem; the history of
childhood and child advocacy movements; the medicalization
of deviance; the process of stigmatization; and the
reclaiming of spoiled identities. Taken together, these
literatures reveal the convergence of forces which
contributed to the current understanding of children's

sexual victimization.

48

49

Placin Social Constructionism in Context: Sociological
Approacfies to SocIaI Problems

Since its inception American sociology has been

 

concerned with social problems. This concern reflects the
orientation which framed early sociologists’ conception of
their emerging discipline - a blend of progressive
politics, social activism and scientific method (Lynd,
1939; Smelser, 1988). Over the past century six
perspectives have developed within sociology as approaches
to social problems. They include: social pathology,
social disorganization, value conflict, deviant behavior,
labeling and social constructionism (Rubington and
Weinberg, 1988). Each of these paradigms has a particular
view of society, of the causes of social problems and of
potential solutions. Importantly, the approaches also
incorporate differing views of what constitutes a social
problem. Although this study is based on only one of these
orientations, I will present a brief overview of the other
approaches to social problems so that the distinctness of
social constructionism is clear.

Social pathology, which emerged in the 18803, was one
of the earliest paradigms adopted by American sociologists.
Using a medical model, social pathologists, like
Rosenberg, Gerver and Howton (1964) who studied mass
society in crisis, defined social problems as violations of
moral expectations which were caused by failures in

socialization. Education alone could ameliorate the

50
effects of a sick self or society. If education failed,
the moral order would erode.

Following World War I and a large wave of immigration,
social disorganization theory was born. This theory
focuses on how social change alters people’s expectations
of society, thereby producing crises of normlessness and
cultural atrophy. Because of the rapidity of the changes
they caused, urbanization, industrialization and
technological advances were all defined as capable of
creating disequilibrium for individuals and for society.

Thomas and Znaniecki’s (1927) classic work on The Polish

 

Peasant in Europe and America illustrates this point of

 

view which argues that social problems are caused by a
lack of stasis and cured by bringing the disorganized parts
of the social system back into line. From 1918-1954,
according to Rubington and Weinberg (1988), social
disorganization was the most influential explanation for
social problems.

Value conflict theory, initially found in the work of
Frank (1925), Waller (1936) and Fuller and Myers (1941),
gained popularity after World War II and looks at the ways
in which social problems result from the collision of group
values with social conditions. Through coalition building,
negotiating, or' power disputes, interest groups vie to

have their views adapted by the majority. The lack of

51
value consensus is seen as generating social problems and
is the root cause of social system failure.

The deviant behavior school of thought, gaining
popularity in the 19503, examines violations of normative
expectations. Finding a model in Durkheim’s 1897 study
Suicide, these analyses argue that social problems occur
because individuals’ opportunities are blocked by society.
As a result some people learn to be deviant in order to
gain the rewards that others achieve through legitimate
means. Deviance is identified as disruptive and harmful
to social organization to the degree that it leads to the
unravelling of the social fabric. Classic statements on
this view first appeared in the work of Merton (1939) and
Sutherland (1939). Proponents of deviant behavior theory
believe that only by resocializing those who have accepted
a deviant role and by creating legitimate avenues for
achievement will social problems be alleviated.

Beginning in the 19603 the labeling perspective
started to focus on social problems as processes of social
interaction and reaction. Growing out of the theoretical
work of Mead (1934) and Schutz (1962), labeling theorists
believe what becomes problematic depends on one’s social
location and his/her ability to define others, or to be
defined, as deviant. Those who hold the power to label
gain advantages through the very process of definition.

Those who are labeled either move to secondary deviance-

52
accepting an identity as a deviant individual - or they
seek to alter the label by changing their interactions.

Howard Becker’s book The Outsiders (1963) explored deviance

 

as a process of social interaction and influenced all those
who wrote after him, including' Erikson (1964), Goffman
(1963) and Scheff (1966).

Social constructionism shifts the study of social
problems to a different plane and focuses attention on how
some social situations come to be identified as problematic
while others are ignored (Schneider, 1985). It is based on
the assertion that although social organization inevitably
gives rise to troublesome conditions, these conditions do
not merit the label of social problem until the activities
of groups and individuals create that specific definition
(Hazelrigg, 1986). As objective facts which cause
hardship, inflict harm, or create upheaval - poverty,
crime, or alcoholism, for example - social problems may be
experienced solely as private troubles (Mills, 1967).
Until these troubles are translated into public issues,
their social nature remains obscure, cloaked in the silence
of individual experience and shrouded in the loneliness of
victimization.

According to Spector and Kitsuse (1987:75), leading
proponents of the constructionist perspective, social
problems are "activities of individuals or groups making

assertions or grievances and claims with respect to some

53
putative conditions." In this view, members of a society
are seen as agitating for the recognition of a specific
problem. A problem is given a vocabulary, boundaries, a
framework for understanding causes and effects and
proposed solutions by ”claimsmakers" who help construct it.
The conditions which are described. and. appear* to have
lives and properties of their own, do not adhere naturally
to the problem. They are the products of the claimsmakers
(Blumer, 1971). In later stages of the natural history of
a social problem these vocabularies, boundaries and
frameworks will appear to take on lives of their own and
will be used. to legitimate continued. attention to the
problem. At the start, however, they are used to draw
attention to a situation a number of people feel is

harmful.

The Consensus and Conflict Models of Social Construction
Blumer (1971) was one of the first to identify the
stages by which claimsmakers construct social problems. In
his article, "Social Problems as Collective Behavior"
Blumer posits a five stage process which includes: the
emergence of a social problem; the legitimation of the
problem; mobilization of action with regard to the problem;
and formation of an official plan of action; and,
transformation of the plan. Blumer’s conceptualization is

helpful in that it focuses attention on 'the action of

54

groups and individuals which shape the perception of social
problems and. advances ‘traditional discussions which. had
examined objective social conditions as the causes of
social problems. Yet, in focusing attention on the
collective process of construction, Blumer presents a
unilinear, static, model. He sees social problems not as
the result of contested actions or discourses, but as a
reflection of consensual processes.

Spector and Kitsuse (1987) laud Blumer for his
emphasis on social activities, and criticize him for
ignoring the complexities and struggles inherent in
definitional contests. In place of Blumer’s five stages,
Spector and Kitsuse propose a four stage model. Stage one
is the process by which a private trouble becomes a public
issue. Groups with large memberships, access to money,
resources and organizations are more likely to be
successful. Contested definitions appear, during this
stage representing the activities of opposing groups. As
the claims for the problem are documented, statistics,
narratives and reports will be marshalled in alternate ways
by groups contending for public adaptation of their
version of the problem. This study is an examination of
this first stage.

Stage two is entered when state agencies and other
powerful institutions formally recognize the problem.

Spokespeople for the problem are accorded recognition as

55
”experts." .As the problem becomes increasingly owned by
particular groups and agencies, a bureaucratized approach
to the issue is instituted and the construction of the
problem moves into the next stage.

During stage 'three official organizations begin ‘to
react to the ways in which the problem has been addressed.
Changes in the management of the problem may occur or
alternatives to existing policies may be proposed. As a
problem moves into the fourth stage, individuals become
increasingly disgruntled with the official mechanisms which
have been arranged around the problem. Established
channels are bypassed as challenges to existing
interpretations of the problem become more powerful.

Spector and Kitsuse’s model has become an essential
framework for understanding how social problems are the
products of individuals’ activities. Their focus on the
conflictual aspects of social problem definitions speaks
directly to the interests of those who become claimsmakers
and the ways in which those individuals become vested in
the problems they seek to uncover. Following Spector and
Kitsuse, numerous studies have been conducted which embrace
the constructionist view. Varied in topics, these studies
have focused on such diverse issues as: alcoholism
(Wiener, 1981; Schneider, 1978); battering (Wharton, 1982;
Tierney, 1982); rape (Scully and Marolla, 1984); the

environment (Schoenfeld, Meier and Griffin, 1979); coffee

56

drinking (Troyer and Markle, 1984); hyperkinesis (Conrad,
1975); and epilepsy (Schneider and Conrad, 1983). Each of
these studies examines the process by which a pmoblem is
identified and the social factors which create a context
for claimsmaking activities. In the case of hyperkinesis,
for example, Conrad (1975) argues that the possibility of
labeling certain behaviors as diagnostically indicative of
a medical problem called hyperkinesis, was predicated upon
the activities of physicians, schools, drug companies and
the federal government. Ultimately through the cooperation
and conflict of these groups a social problem was named.

Similarly, and especially pertinent to this study
because of its focus, Pfohl (1977) describes the process of
discovering the physical abuse of children as a product of
particular social forces which allowed for the creation of
the ”battered child syndrome." The social organization of
medicine was the most significant contributor to this
construction because it was pediatric radiologists, a low
status, peripheral group with much to gain from the
labeling of a social problem, who were the first to
identify the physical abuse of children. as a jproblem.
Pediatric radiologists became experts on the topic of
battered. children, capable, through. the jpower' of X-ray
technology, of defining certain injuries as the result of
battering and others as caused by accidents. Although

Pfohl does not pursue this issue, an argument can be made

57
that from these definitions emerge judgments about the
social relationships of parents and their children, and
clues about how American culture differentiates between
legitimate forms of discipline and violence. As will be
discussed in later chapters, similar judgments about
parent/child relationships and the difference between
intimacy and "appropriate" and ”inappropriate" touch became
a focus of activity for those trying to delineate the

parameters of child sexual abuse.

Experts as Claimsmakers

The significance of experts’ claims is not limited to
the case of hyperkinesis or battered children. Experts,
often from diverse backgrounds, emerge in the context of
all social problems (Schneider, 1985). They may include
those who speak officially for agencies, members of
professional associations, representatives of protest
groups and individuals who directly experience the
condition being identified as problematic (Spector and

Kitsuse, 1987). The status of expert is conferred through

the process of claimsmaking. Thus, not only are experts
"discovering" a problem - the idea of discovery being a
claim itself - they are part of its construction.

Expertise about a social problem gives a person the power

to introduce interventions and propose solutions.

58

In their discussion of the battered women’s movement
Loeske and Cahill (1985) point out that experts are part of
the "knowledge class" whose role is to define, interpret
and manage problems experienced by victims. An important
aspect of these activities is the creation of a new
clientele for experts’ services. In the case of battered
women, experts have sought to explain why women become
victims, to explore the rhythms of battering and to
establish a set of patterns for interpreting the reasons
why women stay in battering relationships. Women who are
battered are defined as needing a variety of services from
experts, particularly shelter, counseling and child care
(Schecter, 1983). One additional service which experts
provide battered women and other "victims" is a language

for framing the various dimensions of a putative condition.

Langgage as an Activity in Social Problem Construction
Vocabularies of social problems are created and
contested from all perspectives. The words used to
identify a problem indicate the positions, politics and
world view of a group. Joel Best’s (1987) examination of
the missing children’s movement uses Steven Toulmin’s
categories of rhetorical analysis as a mechanism for
understanding how the claim of a social problem is an
activity of persuasion and part of social construction.

From the specifics of the missing children’s movement, Best

59
builds a general rhetorical model which makes persuasion
central to claimsmaking activities. His contribution is
unique because most social construction research has
emphasized the substance of given issues, but has not
examined how that substance has been expressed. Language
has been treated as an objective condition (Best, 1987).

According to Best, claimsmakers demand that a
particular version of social problems be accepted by making
grounds statements. These statements consist of
definitions about a problem’s domain, thereby setting the
boundaries of the problem and revealing the claimsmakers’
orientation towards the problem, and also shows how
claimsmakers see their audiences, which may be identified
as those who are converted, hostile, or persuadable (Best,
1987). From these considerations Best creates two
rhetorical categories, a rhetoric of rectitude and a
rhetoric of rationality. Rhetorics of rectitude appear
early in the natural history of a social problem and focus
on interpretations of a condition. After the problem has
been legitimated, claimsmakers use a rhetoric of
rationality, which focuses on social policy.

The rhetorical analysis which Best offers is
significant because it makes language part of the activity
which is engaged in when social problems are being defined.
An example of this in the case of child sexual abuse is

found in the varied labels which have become attached to

60
those who have been abused. Those who speak from a child
protectionist perspective or from the New Right refer to
"victims" of sexual abuse. Feminists, and increasingly
clinicians who treat adults, use the term "survivor."
“Victim“ and "survivor" communicate different views of the
meaning of sexual abuse. To be victimized is to be
helpless and acted upon; it also means that one is not
responsible for whatever abuse has occurred. The term
survivor, evocative of the Holocaust, communicates that one
has experienced great danger and endured it. Using the
term survivor depicts strength and personal power. The
words incorporate competing definitions of the problem of
sexual abuse which will be discussed later in this
analysis, but what is important to note here is that the
choice of ‘term. reveals 'much. about ‘the underlying
assumptions of the claimsmakers and their relationship to
the problem being defined. The mass media, which carry
communications and messages, also play a central role in

claimsmaking.

The Media as Claimsmakers

Newspapers, television and films have become major
actors in the definition and packaging of social problems.
Blumer (1971) has stated that the media provide social
problems with legitimacy and an avenue for public

discussion. Gaye Tuchman (1978) has also discussed ways in

61

which the media mold ideas about social problems. Tuchman
argues that newspapers or television are rarely among the
first to identify a social problem because they tend to
take the social world for granted and do not question
existing institutions or social relations. Media do play a
key role, however, in the framing and carrying of cultural
messages.

Framing, as Goffman (1963) noted, turns seemingly
amorphous occurrences into recognizable events, thereby
creating order, context and meaning. It also provides
interpretation and thus structures knowledge. In the
media, information is organized in ways which appear
natural - as if the presentation grows inevitably out of
the events themselves and is not imposed by social actions
or interpretations. The media’s role--particularly
newspapers, news magazines and made-for-television movies-
-in framing child sexual abuse as a social problem, is part
of two larger' media. processes: the documentation and
depiction of family violence in general and the
presentation and portrayal of childhood.

Newspapers have had a leading voice in introducing the
idea of family violence, and therefore child sexual abuse,

to the general public. The New York Times, for example,

 

published 27 articles on child sexual abuse in 1975, 153 in
1980 and 257 in 1985. Increased coverage of the topic,

regardless of actual incidence statistics, created the

62
impression that child sexual abuse was becoming more
prevalent and therefore needed to be identified as a

serious social problem. Like other newspapers The New York

 

m coverage not only reported statistics about sexual
abuse, but also followed specific cases such as that of
Cheryl Pierson, a local high school student who hired a
classmate to kill her father who had been sexually
violating her for years. These types of stories contained
complex events, characterized by danger, violence and at
least one identifiable victim and. villain. They also
illustrated the point that child sexual abuse was reputed
to occur in white, middle class homes - key factors in
promoting a certain definition of a social problem.

Similar formats have been followed in news magazines
such as Newsweek (1983) and Time (1984),which have done a
number of cover stories, as well as feature articles, on
children’s sexual victimization. Like newspapers, the news
magazines have looked at these children from statistical
and anecdotal perspectives. They have been particularly
enamored of sensational cases where the number of victims
is large and the perpetrators are respectable citizens.
For example, the McMartin pre-school case, where 350
children reported sexual abuse by their teachers and the
Jordan, Minnesota case, where 24 parents were arrested for
sexually abusing and torturing their children, received

much attention, because they challenged the role and status

63
expectations the general. population. hold. about teachers
and parents (Crewdson, 1988).

Made-for-television movies have been an additional
vehicle for providing information about intimate violence,
especially battering and child abuse. The most well known
films on family violence - “The Burning Bed" and "Something
About Amelia" each had massive audiences. Both were
presented as entertainment and as education. The non-
fictional "Burning Bed“ told the story of Francine Hughes,
her years of victimization, her killing of her husband and
her acquittal of murder charges in court. "Amelia" was a
fictional portrayal of a young, suburban, white girl,
sexually abused by her father. The film focused on
Amelia’s disclosure of the incest, subsequent family
conflict and ultimate family reunion through the
therapeutic intervention of Parent’s United.

These films, and the multitudes of those like them,
serve to normalize family violence and give audiences a
framework for understanding the dynamics of the problem as
they are perceived by the writers. Made-for-television
movies have become a conduit for creating awareness about
social problems. Recent films have covered such topics as:
teenage suicide, bulimia, homelessness and poverty. A
powerful force, these films in their initial airing are
often tied to public service campaigns so that those who

are affected by a specific problem can get help from a

64

national or local hotline. An example of public
receptivity to these efforts is that after the showing of
”Amelia," a statewide hotline for child abuse and neglect
in Michigan, whose phone number had been displayed on the
screen at the end of the film, received over 100 calls-
many from women over 50 who had not previously revealed
that they had been sexually abused. Crewdson (1988) noted
the same pattern occurring across the country.

Taken together, the efforts of newspapers, magazines
and television films have served to construct views of
sexual violence within families. These views are often
simple, presenting quick solutions to complex problems in
several pages or hours. Nevertheless, the fact that these
problems are being openly depicted in the media means that
the silence about sexual abuse has been replaced with a
number of discourses and that the media have become active
participants in this process. The media’s influence has
not been limited to sexual abuse or family violence,
however. It has also extended to and actively shaped

discussions of children and childhood.

The Media’s Construction of Childhood

During the past four decades infant and child
development have become a focus of psychological research
and popular interest (Mahler, Pine and Bergman 1975).

Attention has primarily been paid to the processes which

65

children undergo on their way to achieving adulthood. This
conceptualization reveals an adultcentric view of childhood
as a means to an end (Speier, 1976; Thorne and Lauria,
1986). It also rests on the idea that children go through
stages of growth, developing gradually and gaining more
information and knowledge as their ability to think
abstractly increases (Piaget, 1954). The content of these
stages and the proper timing of child development have been
disseminated in the academic and popular press, as well as
by television. In many ways, however, the electronic media
in general, and television in particular, have ceased to
merely chronicle the events of childhood. They have
altered the ways in which children experience stages of
growth and the ways in which adults define children within
these stages.

Many of the early discussions of television’s
influence on children focused on violence. Much of the
recent analysis of the media’s impact on children has been
more global in orientation and has been focused on the
perception that childhood is being distorted or destroyed
by the medium. Arguments about the end of childhood, such

as Packard’s Our Endangered Children (1983), Postman’s The

 

Disappearance of Childhood (1982) and Elkind’s The Hurried

 

 

Child (1981), are like those concerning the "death of the
family," and fail to take into account the fact that

shifting historical contexts yield varying experiences of

66
social institutions, such as family, or social categories,
such as age.

Part of the shifting terrain of childhood has been the
invention of computers, video games and 'the continuing
innovations of television which have given children access
to knowledge that historically had been controlled by
adults. Boundaries between adult/child "informational
worlds” have been broken down by media which do not
restrict audience (Meyerowitz, 1985). Through this process
children have become increasingly exposed to the
previously hidden, backstage world of adults. A part of
this world includes sex and violence. As Joshua Meyerowitz
(1985) has pointed out:

Young children are witness to "facts" that

contradict social myths and ideals even before

they learn about the myths and ideals in school.

Children see politicians disgraced, police

officers and teachers on strike for higher pay,

parents accused of battering their children.

Through television news and entertainment,

children learn too much about the nature of

"real" life to believe the ideals their teachers

try to teach them. The result is not only that

they grow up fast, but that they grow up having

an image of society and roles that differs

markedly from that held by children of earlier

generations.

If children today are growing up with different views
of society and parents than those their predecessors held,
they are also coming of age with complicated views of what
childhood itself encompasses. A ‘variety of images of

children exist in the media today among them: child as

prodigy: child as innocent; child as victim, child as

67
technological product and child. as consumer; .Although
some of these images are new and reflect modern post-
capitalist concepts and technologies, many resonate with

older views of childhood.

The Historical Construction of Childhood

Childhood. as a ‘world. separate and. demarcated from
adulthood began to appear in the early middle ages (Aries,
1962). Prior to that time children were considered
"miniature adults," with access to some of the liberties
and choices now relegated to adulthood. The initial
separation of children from adults began as an upper class
phenomenon and later spread to the middle, working and
lower classes. While the idea of childhood as a separate
sphere was emerging, debates over the 1"true nature" of
children, and therefore the content of childhood raged.

In ‘the seventeenth. century' United. States, children
were characterized as inherently sinful, but potentially
redeemable, by parental socialization. By the 18603
children were seen as the redeemers of the culture and
childhood itself started to be viewed as a special, unique
time of life (Wishy, 1968). The early 20th century saw the
emergence of an ideology which depicted children as
precious resources, necessary to insure the future of

society. The idea that children were individuals and that

68

childhood exists an entitlement became central to the
social relations of the past century (Takanishi, 1978).

Support for the emerging view that children deserved
to be separate from adults because of their special
characteristics was based on the idea of childhood
innocence. Initially introduced by Christianity and
gaining prominence in sixteenth century Europe, the
ideological view of children as innocents has been
institutionalized in contemporary America. Innocence is
primarily born of ignorance - both intellectual and sexual.
Ignorance about sex extended both to children’s experience
of their own bodies - which led to negative sanctions
against masturbation - and to sexual relationships with
others (DeMause, 1974). The association of innocence with
lack of sexual knowledge meant that 221. sexuality was
equated with sexual abuse (Calderone, 1984). Thus
innocence became a focal point not only for conceptualizing
and idealizing childhood, and of differentiating it within
the life cycle, but also became a platform for those

advocating child protection (Jackson, 1982).

Child.Advocacy Movements

Beginning in 1875 children became the focus of child
saving movements in the United States (Platt, 1969).
Initially emerging from feminist concerns, upper class

charity organizations and the anti-prostitution and anti-

69

alcohol campaigns of the time, these movements focused on
cruelty to children. In the Progressive Era, as feminism
waned, the idea of child cruelty was refined (Gordon,
1988). Physical abuse, sexual abuse and paid labor became
leading targets of reform as social workers became the
foremost child savers. Concerned with the decaying
structure of family life, social workers sought to protect
children from sexual assault by strangers, poverty
resulting from unemployment and other forms of social
disorganization.

The premise behind child saving movements of this
period was that children needed to be saved because they
embodied the future of society. Numerous campaigns were
launched to ensure that children would be free to play, to
learn, to be nurtured, to be healthy and to not work.
Professions and organizations were created to protect
children’s interests including: Public Health; Social
Work; Social Welfare; Pediatrics; Child Welfare; and Child
Development (Takanishi, 1978; Gordon, 1988). Through the
convergence of beliefs about children’s innocence and the
development of institutional power to protect it, was born
the idea that children have the right to childhood - an
idea that was initially deployed in the battle to eliminate
child labor and later used to escalate the war against

child sexual abuse.

70

Children’s labor was at the center of contention in
the historical reconstruction of childhood from the 18703
to the 19303. Part of a larger process of
sentimentalization which affected both the family and
childhood, this transition saw children move from being
economically productive individuals with a limited
emotional value to being emotionally priceless, but
economically unproductive (Zelizer, 19850. The emergence
of the sacred child and social reforms aimed at
establishing and protecting this sanctity meant that the
state began to assume a major role in organizing childhood
(Platt, 1969).

During the depression of the 19303, state involvement
in regulating childhood diminished. Emphasis on family
violence as a whole also dwindled during this period
(Gordon, 1988). Following World War II social awareness of
issues pertaining' to childhood. was almost absent.
Psychiatric diagnoses replaced social activism.
Interestingly, incest was one form of family violence that
was addressed. Defined as a form of emotional neglect,
incest was "discovered" to be a problem in seductive
mother-child relationships. The role of professionals
during this period. was to protect the privacy of the

nuclear family and to assure conformity to its values.

71
Social Construction and the Medicalization of Deviance

Parallel to the literature on social construction and
important for understanding how child sexual abuse has come
to be conceptualized is the body of literature on the
medicalization of deviance. The medical model has been
significant in shifting the view' of deviance from sin
through crime to sickness.

As a way of managing deviance, medicine locates
problems within the individual, and sees them as caused by
some physiological or organic condition. Blame for deviant
behavior, such as incest, is placed on a person who must be
treated by medicine, particularly psychiatry, in order to
get better. This medical treatment is usually seen as
necessary for both the perpetrator and the abused.

Conrad and Schneider (1982) have created a sequential
model for understanding deviance, and explaining the
development of medical designations placed on deviants.
First, a behavior is identified as deviant without a
medical model imposed on it. Later medical models are
employed and replace designations which have been used by
earlier experts. In the second--the prospecting stage--
medical discovery itself occurs. This usually takes place
through medical journals. The discovery of the "battered
child syndrome," for instance, occurred within the pages of

The New England Journal of Medicine (Nelson, 1984). While

 

this attention legitimates the problem from a medical

72
perspective, it does not necessarily insure public
discovery. Claimsmaking, the third stage, must occur in
order for the problem to be discovered by the public.

As an activity, claimsmaking is most important in the
emergence of new views of deviance, party because it is in
this stage that a designation becomes the province of a
particular medical specialty. Other claimsmakers vie with
medical personnel in shaping the definition of a social
problem. The media may also play a role in this process,
although Conrad and Schneider have pointed out that
television and the press are less central to the dynamics
of deviance than to the emergent phases of social problems.

The fourth stage of deviance designations is
legitimation of the medical view. Here medicine is given
the "deed“ to the problem and may step in as a social
control agent for the state. This process clearly occurs
in child abuse cases where physicians are mandated
reporters. Finally, in the fifth stage the medical
designation of deviance is institutionalized through
bureaucracies, like the National Center for Child Abuse and
Neglect, which give support to medicine, as well as
receiving support from it. Some problems achieve
codification, becoming part of medical and legal

classifications, including psychiatry’s Diagnostic and

 

Statistical Manual.

 

73

Social problems which affect children have been
particularly prone to medicalization. Two features of
childhood as it is constructed in contemporary U.S. culture
make it more likely that the power of medicine will be
invoked either when children perform acts which are
considered deviant or when they are victims of deviants.
These two features are innocence and dependence,
characteristics which allegedly make children vulnerable to
being led astray. Because of their relative
powerlessness, children are identified as in need of
protection from the world of adults, a world which is
marked by access to power, money and sexuality.

Platt (1969) has chronicled the process that occurred
during the Progressive Era when child savers used 'the
juvenile courts to protect children from danger. The court
served as an amalgam of medical and legal interests,
guiding children with the help of the so-called
psychological sciences. As medicine, particularly
psychiatry, has become increasingly important in defining
deviance, models of psychopathology have achieved hegemony.
Conrad and Schneider (1982) have pointed out that a society
which is ideologically committed to protecting children
facilitates the adoption of medical models which are also
"protective and preventive." The interests of medicine and

the interest of children are viewed as coinciding and

74
children’s needs are incorporated into medicine’s expanding

boundaries.

Institutional Power to Stigmgtize

In addition to the power to protect and defend,
medicine, as well as religion and law, has the
institutional power to impose definitions which stigmatize.
Stigma, in the case of child sexual abuse, adheres both to
victims and perpetrators who are perceived to have "spoiled
identities." Goffman (1963), in his classic work Stigma,
described the discredited - who bear visible signs of
stigmatization--and the discreditable--who show no visible
stigmata. Most people who have been sexually abused or who
abuse have discreditable stigmas. Their task is to manage
information about their identities and experiences. Many
choose secrecy as a means of managing stigma.

Simmel (1950) has described secrecy as a way to
conceal information, and create boundaries around events,
behaviors, knowledge and feelings which are identified as
morally untenable by a culture. Additionally, Warren and
Laslett (1977) have pointed out that secrecy is more
frequently employed by less powerful individuals such as
the institutionalized, the elderly, the mentally and
physically ill, the morally stigmatized and children.
When sexual abuse occurs, many children are coerced into

secrecy by those who abuse them, but not all victims remain

75

silentt There are levels of secrecy and. places where
disclosure may take place. The _id_ea of the secret in
relationship to stigma, however, has become a central motif
in the feminist and clinical discourses on sexual abuse.

Feminists view the secrecy about sexual victimization
as one aspect of a patriarchal culture which has silenced
the voices of women and children who have experienced
gender and generational violence (Rush, 1980; Butler,
1978). Breaking a "conspiracy of silence" became a
rallying cry, and a strategy for empowerment for feminists
working in the areas of rape and battering. Concern with
the silence which is imposed on the victims of violence-
initially by individual perpetrators and then by society-
was part of a broader feminist agenda which focused on the
oppression of silence and the necessity of naming. Given
vivid voice by such writers and activists as Adrienne Rich
(1977), the issue of naming was identified first in
phenomenological terms. By breaking the intellectual and
ontological hegemony of men, women could discover what it
meant to be women, not simply in opposition to men, but in
their own right. The dynamics of naming also included an
emphasis on action which was intended to move women beyond
passivity (Lorde, 1980). Learning to act on their own
behalf, women could escape rape attempts, leave battering

relationships, and speak about sexual abuse.

76

From a set of different concerns, clinicians have also
addressed the issues of secrecy and stigmatization. As
psychotherapists these constructionists focused on the
negative psychological effects of keeping sexual abuse
silent (Gelinas, 1983; Bass and Davis, 1988; Meiselman,
1978, Giaretto, 1982). In fact some clinicians have
identified the secrecy surrounding abuse as potentially
more damaging than the abuse itself. The damage is the
result of psychological consequence of stifling information
about events that hurt individuals and families (Courtois,
1988).

Like feminists who worked out of a broader framework,
linking secrecy and naming, clinicians’ analyses also had a
second level of interpretation. Schooled in Freudian
thought, generations of clinicians were taught that
clients’ descriptions of child sexual abuse were stories
about frustrated wishes and desires, not actual accounts of
assaults. Freud (1953) theorized that as part of normal
development processes children longed for sexual contact
with the parent of the opposite gender. He called this
process the Oedipal complex. As a theory, which was a
basis for clinical practice, the Oedipal complex created a
secrecy about sexual abuse, obscuring' the existence of
coercive sexual relationships between children and adults.
To interpret their clients’ reports as true incidents of

incest and abuse, contemporary clinicians had to challenge

77
the dominant professional interpretation about
retrospective reports of sexual abuse.

Recently, Freudian ‘theory' has ibeen challenged from
several avenues. ZFlorence iRush (1977), Jeffrey' Masson
(1984), and Alice Miller (1984), have been leading voices
in questioning Freud’s theory of childhood development and
children’s experience of sexual assault. Rush, a feminist
and a social worker, viewed Freud as a patriarch, silencing
those less powerful than himself. She believed that Freud
ignored the claims of his female patients out of sexism.
Masson, a psychoanalyst and former director of the Freud
archives, examined Freud’s motives for creating the Oedipal
complex and depicted the founder of psychoanalysis as a
moral coward, with an ambivalent relationship to his own
father which blinded him to the realities and impact of
sexual assault. Miller, a psychoanalyst, argued that Freud
could not tolerate the idea that the narratives of sexual
assault he was hearing were true and so created a theory
which treated the accounts as fantasies. Miller accuses
Freud of instigating and theoretically institutionalizing
nearly a century of psychotherapeutic secrecy about child
sexual abuse, thereby contributing t1) the stigma. which
came to dominate the tOpiC.

Due to the stigma imposed. by this convergence of
forces, many whose lives were touched by sexual abuse and

its potentially damaging impact on identities and

78

reputations, attempted to manage its disclosure.
Management of a spoiled identity, however, depends on many
factors, including those who tell, those who hear, and the
setting in which the information is disclosed. There are
people and places where one feels either safe or endangered
in revealing stigmatizing information. From Goffman’s
perspective, the stigmatized individual is 111:3 perpetual
reactive state deciding when, if ever, to acknowledge
his/her failing. The stigmatized are viewed as primarily
powerless, their only hope at overcoming their condition is
to become a "hero of adjustment." According to Goffman,
heroes of adjustment are those who are able to transcend
their stigma and carry on as if they were "normal." Their
normalcy becomes an achieved characteristic which they must
always strive to retain. Having violated social
expectations by carrying a hidden, discreditable stigma,
deviants move beyond the problem only by negating
undesirable traits which make them different.

Goffman’s view of stigma captures a particular moment
in social history - the 19503 - and reflects the periods
broader sociological concern with modes of conformity. As
a way of thinking about stigma Goffman’s work is helpful
because it delineates and then expands the concept. He
provides a description of types of stigma, but more
importantly he allows readers to see stigma as a series of

perspectives one holds in relationship» to normalcy, as

79
opposed to fixed and rigid categories which some always
occupy and others never do. In his work, however, Goffman
fails to account for a perspective which the stigmatized
could potentially take if they saw stigma not as a failing,
but as a source of strength - that of expert and advocate

on their own behalf.

Identity Politics: Redefining Stiggg

The popular social movements of the 19603 and 703
provided a forum for a new type of politics. Personal
conditions which might have caused one to be stigmatized as
sick (homosexuality, for example) or crippled (physically
challenged) became seen as sources of strength and
identity. Instead of handling stigma so that normals could
be protected. and could react in a contained, socially
acceptable manner, the stigmatized began to "speak
bitterness." Management of difference turned to
proclamations of pride, and the politics of coming out was
born.

John Kitsuse (1980) and Rene Anspach (1979) have each
written about the process by which deviants seize the power
to define themselves. Key to this redefinition is a
refusal to accept labels which have been created by
majority groups. Kitsuse has pointed out that:

...deviants have come out to challenge

conventional conceptions and judgments of their

conduct, to question "expert" assessments of
their "disabilities," "handicaps" and devaluation

80
of their various conditions and their attendant
prescriptions for corrective treatment, and to
publicly demand their right to equal access to
institutional resources. Through such activities
deviants have become some of the most active and
visible practitioners of the art of social

problems in the 19703 (Kitsuse, 1980).

By focusing on the demands that the stigmatized make
for legitimacy, Kitsuse expressed a profound alteration in
the power dynamics between deviants and normals. Long
relegated to groups about whom claims could be made, the
stigmatized now became claimsmakers. This is not to imply
that "identity pride," as it is called in the new
literature on homosexuality (Altman, 1982), began in the
19703. Clearly, deviant groups have (previously formed
pockets of resistance to the hegemonic definitions of
majority groups. Groups like the Mattachine Society and
the Daughters of Bilitis, for example, which provided
homosexual men and women with gathering places, literature
and a feeling of community beginning in the 19503, tried to
shift people’s perceptions of the homosexual from that of
pervert to that of an individual with a <iifferent and
potentially equal sexual orientation (D’Emilio, 1983). But
even though organizations such as these were instrumental
in altering homosexuals’ conception of themselves, they did
not demand that the majority group relinquish their views,
and thus, homosexuality remained in the shadow of stigma.

In the 19603 and 19703 various stigmatized. groups

perceptions of themselves and the conditions they endured

81

began to change (Altman, 1982; Shilts, 1987). No longer
simply the victims of misfortunes, these minority groups
began to identify the conditions they experienced as
injustices. In this process of redefinition, the
stigmatized began to lobby for recognition of themselves
not in spite of their differences, but because of their
centrality.

Writing about the physically disabled and former
mental patients Renee Anspach (1979) has examined ways in
which identity politics grew out of the social movements of
the 19603 and challenged pre-existing sociological
frameworks of deviance. Anspach maintains that political
action can create mechanisms whereby the concept of the
self is continually recreated. For those who have been
labeled deviant or defective, political activism based on
identity moves them past a "politics of pity" and towards
self-definition (Anspach, 1979; Ritter, 1976). In the
place of pity those who embrace identity politics demand to
control definitions of themselves and their experiences.
Accommodation to normals is repudiated, stigmatization is
blamed on society, and the formally stigmatized begin to
identify with other oppressed minority groups.

Thus madness emerges not as affliction, but as

creative rebellion, and the disabled emerge not

as passive victims, but as prophets, visionaries

and revolutionaries (Anspach, 1979).

Anspach credits the ability of former mental patients

and the disabled to impose their self-definition on the

82

perceptions of normals to two factors: political actions
and changes in language. Political action on the part of
the stigmatized directly confronts normative conceptions of
the powerless and victimized. By formulating a politics of
resistance, the stigmatized enter into what Anspach labels
"phenomenological warfare" with normals. A significant
part of this warfare is a struggle over language. To the
degree that language is capable not only of expressing, but
of structuring reality, it is a central terrain in the
battle of the stigmatized to reshape perceptions of
themselves and their conditions. This is evident in any
number of social movements and social problems. The gay
liberation movement insisted that the term gay be used
instead of homosexual; the black power movement stated
that, "Black is Beautiful" and demanded that the term
black be used instead of Negro or colored; more recently
those with full blown AIDS have urged that the phrase,
"People With AIDS" be adapted in place of AIDS patients or
victims. Far from simple terms, these words express an
ontological stance and a refusal to be externally defined.

John Kitsuse (1980) has identified the rejection of
external definitions as tertiary deviance. As discussed
earlier, sociologists understand primary deviance as the
process of labeling an activity as deviant. Secondary
deviance occurs when a person who has been labeled takes

on the definition and acts deviant. Tertiary deviance

83
occurs when an individual actively rejects external views
of contamination and creates new views of the self.
Kitsuse writes:
...we might propose the concept of "tertiary
deviation" to refer to the deviant’s
confrontation, assessment and rejection of the
negative identity embedded in secondary deviation
and the transformation of that identity into a
positive and viable self-conception. As an
extension of the natural history of deviant lives
outlined by Lemert, the concept of tertiary
deviance would direct us to investigate
questions of how it is possible for the
stigmatized, the ridiculed and despised to
confront their own complicity in the maintenance
of their degraded status, to recover and accept
the suppressed anger and rage as their own, to
transform shame into guilt, guilt into moral
indignation and victim into activist.
The ability of women who had been raped and battered to go
through the process described by Kitsuse paved the way for
adults who had been sexually abused as children to
reevaluate their experiences and led to the initial

construction of the social problem.

Summary

This chapter has presented an introduction to social
constructionist views and an overview of the particular
social forces which have led to the definition of child
sexual abuse as a social problem. In the next chapter I
will elaborate the various methods I have used to

understand these processes.

CHAPTER 3
DECODING CONSTRUCTIONS: METHODOLOGIES

Introduction

Writing about the practice of ethnographic research
Geertz (1973:9) stated:

...what we call our data are really our own

constructions of other people’s constructions of

what they and their compatriots are up to...

Right down to the factual base, the hard rock,

insofar as there is any, of the whole enterprise,

we are already explicating; and worse explicating

explications. Winks upon winks upon winks.
Geertz has clearly grasped the elusive nature of studying
social realities and activities. The study of social
constructions adds to the problems of doing research
because of the layers of meanings, shifting definitions,
the activities and conflicts that must be decoded.

Undertaking the study of child sexual abuse I was
acutely aware of three methodological issues or problems.
First, in analyzing the construction of a social problem I
was constructing my own version of the constructions-

”winks upon winks.” Because of the difficulties in

deciphering the levels of construction, I needed a research

84

85
method or methods that would honor the complexity of the
topic and allow me access to a number of perspectives.

A second issue in choosing a method was related to the
topic itself. Child sexual abuse, unlike poverty or crime,
seems to be a problem that everyone agrees is clearly
recognizable as an objective condition. Mest people when
asked agree that the sexual abuse of children is wrong;
adults should never have sex with children and when they do
it is a problem. This view is held not only by the
general public or victims, but even by perpetrators of
sexual abuse (Groth, 1985). Given the consensus of
opinion, sexual abuse appears as a single coherent issue
which morally outraged citizens can agree upon and organize
against. This definition, however, hides the complexities
and contradictions inherent in the constructions of the
problem. What is missing is the subjective actions which
create the igga and image of objectivity. The very act of
speaking about a problem is a construct, full of linguistic
choices, moral judgments and metaphorical analyses
(Spector and Kitsuse, 1987). I needed methodologies that
would allow me to gather information about the subjective
claims of those who were identifying sexual abuse as a
social problem.

A third issue in studying child sexual abuse came from
the silence which was identified as pervading the problem.

How could I study a problem whose two main characteristics

86
were described as silence and secrecy (Straus, Gelles and
Steinmetz, 1980)? How could I gain access to a phenomenon
which was identified as invisible? As I began to gather
information about sexual abuse I realized that the words
"secret” and "silent" appeared in the titles of numerous

books and articles such as: Conspiracy of Silence (Butler,

 

1978); The Secret Trauma (Russell, 1986); By Silence

 

 

Betrayed (Crewdson, 1988); and The Silent Children

 

(Sanford, 1980) to name just a few. There was no change in
the use of the terms secret or silent over the course of a
decade of claimsmaking about the extent of sexual abuse in
American society. I came to see the ideas of silence and
secrecy as part of the construction of the social problem.
It seemed that the words silent or secret had to be used to
keep the "discovery" of sexual abuse in a perpetual
emergent phase. Instead of the silence being a barrier to
my study it became a clue to claimsmaking activities.
Trying to work with these issues, I decided to use a
variety of qualitative methods. My choice of field work,
interviews and documentary methods allowed me to look at
child sexual. abuse from a number of vantage points
(Strauss, 1987). It also permitted me to understand the
constructions as narrative forms or as John Van Maanen
(1988) has called them, "tales of the field." Qualitative
research also was particularly well matched to the

theoretical framework of social construction (Berger and

87
Luckmann, 1967) . The blending of both method and theory
allowed me to understand constructions as forms of
discourses which were told by specific actors, with

varying receptions from differently constituted audiences.

Research on Child Sexual Abuse

Studies of child sexual abuse itself have focused on
perpetrators and. ‘victims, sexual. addicts and. .adult
survivors, family dynamics and therapeutic techniques.
Covering a broad array of topics, these studies have been
done by sociologists (Finkelhor, 1984), psychologists
(Courtois, 1988), social workers (Rush, 1980), family
therapists (Minuchin, 1984) and historians (Gordon, 1988).
Through careful designs and meticulous reports, researchers
and clinicians have made public a complicated world of
child sexual abuse. By documenting facets of the problem,
these writers have given voice to a social issue, while
participating in its social construction and providing it
with intellectual legitimacy.

The research that deals with how child abuse becomes
constructed as social reality is scant and mostly addresses
how social policy is enacted. Nelson’s (1984) history of
recent legislation focused on the physical abuse of
children is an excellent examination of how social
problems are made visible and how laws are enacted to deal

with them. More recently, Linda Gordon’s (1988) analysis

88

of the history and politics of family violence, including
incest, pays close attention to the role of social service
agencies in creating and reflecting changing definitions of
social problems. For the most part, however, social
scientists, including those who have written extensively
about family violence, provided an abundance of literature
on sexual abuse itself and ignored the fact that they were
documenting a world of violence that they and their
professions were helping to construct.

By emphasizing the number of abuse cases, the impact
on the victim, the characteristics of the perpetrator,
etc., experts have documented what appear to be the facts
of sexual abuse. Hidden within this objectivity, however,
are 'the social. practices ‘which. shape Tthe (discourses on
sexual abuse. These practices give meaning, shape
parameters and create language, for the condition which is
identified as problematic. A clear example of professions
constructing problems can be found in David Finkelhor’s
(1984:2,3) analysis of how child sexual abuse became a
social problem. He writes:

New, popular attention to this problem can be

ascribed not only to the discovery of its true

dimensions, but a130» to ‘the idea that sexual
abuse is a different sort of problem than was
once thought. We now know that a great deal of
sexual abuse occurs at the hands of close family
members, particularly fathers and stepfathers.

Not uncommonly abuse goes on for an lextended
period of time...

89

Within the same work Finkelhor credits the discovery of the
problem to feminists and those working in the field of the
physical abuse of children, but his argument clearly
assumes the existence of an "objective" problem, a problem
which exists across time and culture and ignores the role
of social scientists in promoting any particular
construction.

My study focuses (Hi the social forces, historical
conditions and claimsmakers who made it possible for child
sexual abuse to be identified as a social problem. I also
examined the contested definitions of the problem where
many of the claims are made evident. I was particularly
interested in the mechanisms which allow a condition to
become identified as problematic, even epidemic, when it is
not clear that the incidence and prevalence of the problem
itself have changed. To guide my research I began by
asking the following question: How did child sexual abuse
become conceptualized as a social problem in the 19703 and
19803? This central question was supplemented by three
more specific ones: 1) How and where did the focus on
child sexual abuse originate? 2) Which groups developed
and defended definitions? 3) What conflicts and strains
occurred among groups vying to have their definitions
adapted by professions and the public? 4) What were the
competing definitions of the problem? To answer these

questions about what Spector and Kitsuse (1987) call the

90
emergent phase of a social problem, I employed a variety of
research methods including field work, documents and

interviews.

Field‘Wbrk

My preliminary research on child sexual abuse was a
six month field study conducted through the Fall and Winter
of 1984/1985. This study focused on the clinical
supervision of 16 therapists working in groups with
children and parents who had experienced interfamilial or
extrafamilial abuse. The therapists were either Masters of
Social Work candidates or Clinical Psychology or Counseling
Program Ph.D. candidates. All had several years of
clinical experience. The supervisor was a psychologist who
headed a sexual abuse program at a local mental health
agency. Located in a local school, the project was a part
of Community Mental Health services. My research in this
group was initially done in the context of a field methods
course and continued after the course ended. Through 50
hours of observation and 5 interviews I was able to
generate "thick description" (Geertz, 1983) of’ a child
sexual abuse treatment program. Additionally, the setting
alerted me to a number of issues which recurred not only in
another field setting, but also in interviews and
documents. These issues included: the "ownership" of

child sexual abuse by mental health professionals; the

91

boundaries drawn between abusive and non-abusive sexual
interactions; the perceived role of mothers, fathers and
children in cases of incest; the secret as a currency of
power which children hold in families; and the clinical
definition of children as developmentally harmed by the
danger of sexual abuse.

While I do not include this first field work directly
as data for this study, the knowledge and vocabulary I
learned in the setting proved invaluable. The issues I
first noticed in the treatment program became analytic
leads as I moved into a second field study. My second
field site was at a local community-based youth service
agency that received a federally funded demonstration grant
to create a sexual abuse prevention program. The project
was organized as a traveling education program, operating
three-day programs out of ten shopping malls and libraries
throughout the State of Michigan during 1986. My
involvement with the prevention project was as a
participant-observer. In this capacity I observed the
design of the program--through the creation of brochures,
public service announcements, posters, fact sheets, book
displays, even a mascot. In order to gain an understanding
of how a prevention project was created, I attended
planning meetings, which were held for three months before
the first program, and the debriefing sessions, which were

held after each program had been staged. To watch the

92
program in action, I attended educational sessions held at
libraries and observed in the shopping malls.

My role as a participant was in several capacities. I
helped with the writing of the original grant proposal in
1985 by providing information on incidence and prevalence
of sexual abuse in Michigan and explaining the available
theoretical frameworks for analyzing these statistics. In
this way I acted as something of a content "expert" in
exchange for access to the field. I also helped with the
distribution of pamphlets at the malls and served as a
relief person for the staff when they needed breaks.
Mostly, however, I observed interactions among the public
and staff at the malls and libraries, and among the staff
at meetings. In this way I was able to get front stage and
backstage (Goffman, 1961) information on the construction
of a sexual abuse prevention program. This was
particularly helpful in that I could learn how information
was managed, and how speech and silence entered into the
presentation of material (Glaser, 1978).

The stated. goal of the prevention. program. was to
educate parents about the risks of sexual abuse so that
they could protect their children. Because I had been
sensitized to issues of danger, secrecy and power in the
supervision group, I examined how these issues arose in a
prevention setting. In particular I looked for the

specific messages about sexual abuse, sexual touch and

93

bodies which were being transmitted to the general public.
I wanted to know if child sexual abuse was always defined
as very harmful to children; if sexual victimization was
perceived as a mental health issue or if it was defined as
a broader problem which was owned by a number of fields,
e.g., medicine or law; and if secrecy about sexual abuse
was defined as part of the problem or as a more complex
phenomenon which included the secret as a potential source
of power for the victim.

An additional point that interested me in these
observations was the focus on parents as the individuals
who were to be educated about sexual abuse. Since most
sexual abuse is perpetrated by parents or close relatives

(Sanford, 1980), I wondered how the project would manage to

communicate this message - at a shopping mall (the new
town square) - while at the same time not alienating its
audience. The answer to this inquiry proved to be

complicated, as I will discuss in later chapters, relying
on the dual assumptions that the individual being educated
was not an abuser and that abusers were quintessential
"others." This depiction of sexual abusers allowed enough
distance to be created between self (the individual being
educated) and others for the prevention message to be told
and presumably heard. It also reinforced the emerging
social construction about the threatening environment which

children experience in the world outside the home--a world

94
made vivid by the convergence of the Missing Children and
Child Sexual Abuse Movements (Best, 1987).

These two sites proved. to be very instructive in
teaching me the "natural language" of professionals working
in the field (Becker and Geer, 1969). Because one program
focused on prevention and one on treatment, I was able to
examine the definitions and strategies being employed at
two of the most pivotal points in the arena of sexual
abuse--trying to insure that abuse would not occur and
helping children and their families recover from past
incidents. By immersing myself in the language and
protocols of prevention and treatment, I was able to
generate theory from the ground up (Glaser and Strauss,
1967). At the same time I was aware of the fact that I was
seeing only one construction - the clinical one - and that
mental health organizations did not have hegemonic control
over the definition of child sexual abuse. in: give me a
wider perspective I looked to documentary methods to help
me formulate a comparative analysis of the social

constructions.

Documents

While working in the field I simultaneously began an
extensive search for library documents. Because this is a
social problem that has produced a vast number of

literatures, I designed a search strategy that would give

95
me access to the various cultural levels on. which. the
problem was being addressed. Initially, I focused on
discovering when sexual abuse began to appear in indices of
professional and popular publications. Secondly, I looked
at the ways in which sexual abuse was framed in these
literatures. Very early in the process I ascertained that
anthropological views of incest varied greatly from
psychological research and sociological inquiries. The
difference was not just one of professional jargon.
Diction reflected. a deeper issue. .Anthropologists, as
Margaret Mead’s (1969) essay on "Incest" in the

International Encyclopedia of Social Science exemplifies,

 

were interested in incest not as a form of sexual abuse,
but as a subject of a taboo that, regulated kinship
relations. This was a helpful definition to discover in
the early phases of my research because it made me aware
that analyses of sex between parents and children or
siblings could yield very different information depending
on how the topic was approached. The contrast of
anthropological views with psychological or sociological
ones also made the current construction of sexual abuse
stand in greater relief and helped me to see the language
of the construction as a powerful constituent element in
the process of claimsmaking.

I wanted to use the documents to map the geography of

the problem. In unearthing the material pertinent to the

96

construction of child sexual abuse I looked for documents
which met some of the following criteria: 1)
identification of child sexual abuse as a social problem
that was gaining notoriety; 2) interpretation of the causes
of sexual abuse; 3) agitation for a particular perspective;
4) adaptation of a language which was part of social
problem construction - e.g., use of words like "epidemic,"
to describe the problem or "shattered" as a descriptor for
the impact on children’s lives; and 5) legitimation of the
problem through the reliance on experts who could document
the parameters of the problem.

I also looked for documents on the subject of sexual
abuse that would negate the social construction of sexual
abuse as a social problem. Since the process of negation
required a definition of what was disputed, I thought the
documents that contested the existence of sexual abuse as a
social problem would provide some of the clearest
explanations of how the problem was identified by those who
were advocating for adoption of a social problem
perspective. They did. These documents were particularly
helpful in cutting through the "taken for granted" quality
that appears in most of the writing on child sexual abuse
which assumes widespread occurrence in the existence and,
definition of the problem. Documents were also helpful in
looking for areas of conflict among the constructionists.

For instance, while feminists analyzed. and. wrote about

97

family dynamics and structures that lead to abuse, the New
Right was analyzing the prevalence of abuse in day care
settings. Through this approach I tried to use the
documents as subjects - capable of telling the story of
social construction activity as consensual and conflictual
processes.

My first searches for documents were done in

professional publications that included; ZEncyclopedia of

 

the Social Sciences; Bibliographic Index; Library of

 

 

 

Congress Catalogue; Public Administration Laws;

 

 

Comprehensive Dissertation Index; Sociological Abstracts;

 

 

Social Science Citation Index; Social Science Index;

 

 

Psychological Abstracts; Historical Abstracts; Women

 

 

Studies Abstracts; Inventory of Marriage and Family

 

 

Literature; and Index Medicus. To search the more popular

 

 

literature I examined: Reader’s Guide; New York Times

 

 

Index; Alternative Press Index; and Television and News

 

 

Index and Abstracts. I searched each of these sources from

 

1970 to 1988 on subjects like sexual abuse of children,
incest, family violence, child pornography, missing
children and sexual abuse prevention.

Other types of documents have also been central to my
study of child sexual abuse. These documents include:
brochures for- prevention and/or ‘treatment programs;
pamphlets that provided safety tips or recovery strategies;

requests for proposals; grant proposals; children’s stories

98

and. coloring' Ibooks; conference advertisements; book
advertisements; and newsletters. I also got data from
television, radio, mass market films and tapes from
conferences. Some of this data came from keeping field
notes on television films about child sexual abuse and new
programs about sexual abuse which have been aired on all
the major networks, Public Television and on National
Public radio which, for’ example, broadcast a four-part
series on sexual abuse (April 7-11, 1984).

Inundated by the amount of material available, I began
to sort out categories of analysis. Aware that discoveries
were social constructs, I looked. to the groups-
"discoverers" - that could be identified as having a role
in labeling child sexual abuse as a social problem
(Glaser, 1978). I labeled groups "discoverers" if they
participated in the following activities delineated by
Spector and Kitsuse (1987): "1) assertion of the existence
of some condition; 2) definition of that condition as
undesirable or harmful; 3) publicization of the assertions;
4) stimulation of controversy; and 5) creation of a public
or political issue over the matter.“ From this analysis I
broadly identified feminists, clinicians, child
protectionists and the New Right as contemporary
claimsmakers about sexual abuse.

Having identified the main actors, I then moved to the

second phase of my documentary research--discerning what

99
historical and social conditions led each group to make
their assertions about sexual abuse. This required a
search, structured like the first, into the growth of the
second wave of feminism, contemporary psychotherapy, modern
child protectionism and the New Right. At the same time,
I began to classify the issues and stances which each of
the constructionists found central to their positions. For
example, in the case of incest, feminists portrayed power
differentials between fathers and daughters as the key to
sexual abuse, while clinicians identified. role reversal
occurring between mothers and.daughters as central. From
these types of issues I formed analytical categories which
created a coherent framework for tracing the discourses
about sexual abuse (Glaser, 1978). I also carved out a
chronology for the activities of claimsmakers and their
influences on each other. In this way I was able to focus
on the dynamic, changing' nature of social construction

activity.

Interviews

After completing much of the documentary research for
the study, I decided to supplement the field and
bibliographic methods with interviews. I had first
interviewed people working in the field of child sexual
abuse when I was observing the clinical supervision group

and prevention programs described earlier. These study

100

informants, five in all, had been active in community work
for at least a decade. Committed to the welfare of
adolescents and children, each respondent gave me insights
into the mechanisms by which one community - Lansing,
Michigan - became aware of child sexual abuse and reacted
to it. Because these interviews had been so helpful to my
grasp of the social problem, and because my documentary
research had aided me in identifying categories of actors
who were claimsmakers, I decided to do more interviews.

The twenty-five people that I interviewed represented
feminists, clinicians, child protectionists and the New
Right. To ensure that I would get informants from all
perspectives, I used a snowball sample, asking respondents
to identify people from a variety of settings whom I could
potentially interview.

In all I interviewed seven feminists, six clinicians,
six child protection workers and six individuals who
represented the New Right. Gaining access to some of the
subjects was fairly easy. When I began interviewing I was
working fer 21 statewide social service agency that
coordinated programs for runaway and homeless youth. At
the time, 1985-1986, a causal link between child abuse,
particularly child sexual abuse and runaway or homeless
adolescents was just beginning to be documented (McCormack,
Burgess and Janus, 1986). As an advocate for homeless

youth I spent a large portion of my days either educating

101

social service workers about the causes and plights of
homeless adolescents or trying to get the youths access to
' services. Because of this experience I had a familiarity
with the network of child protective offices within the
State and in the non-profit sector. I used this knowledge
to approach initial interview subjects. These subjects in
turn put me in touch with other child protectionists.

Feminist subjects were also easy to find. Having
taught women studies courses for several years I was aware
of and participated in a feminist network. Although
segments of this network were academic, a larger portion
was drawn from community activists. Aware of a program
that had been created to teach children physical and verbal
prevention skills - I began my interviews of feminists with
the originators of this project. They, in turn, told me
about other subjects.

Identifying clinicians working in the field was
simplified because they sometimes advertised their
connection to the issue. By using phone book ads - where
clinicians advertised themselves as experts on the
treatment of adult women survivors of child sexual abuse,
and looking' for’ places where clinicians might identify
themselves as potential service providers - a feminist
bookstore, the local newspaper, newsletters, etc., I found
a large number of clinicians and therapeutic organizations

like Incest Survivors Anonymous. Approaching some of these

102
individuals I tried to discern a clinical hierarchy so that
I could interview those clinicians considered to be the
most effective in treating sexual abuse cases.

Representatives from New Right organizations dealing
with child sexual abuse were somewhat more difficult to
find. One lead that proved particularly helpful was the
formation of VOCAL (Victims of Child Abuse Legislation).
In Michigan, VOCAL had strong ties to the fundamentalist
New Right. Desperate to be heard, representatives of VOCAL
were more than willing to talk about the "epidemic of
sexual abuse" - an epidemic they perceived as based in
unsubstantiated allegations. These subjects gave me leads
to other individuals whom I could interview.

The interviews were "unstructured” and intensive
(Oakley, 1981). They had an underlying structure which I
observed, but enough looseness built into them that
respondents could speak about their concerns and views in
their own language (Whyte, 1979). In asking the interview
subjects a combination of broad and specific questions, I
wanted them to reflect on their contributions to the field
and on their construction of child sexual abuse. This
strategy served two purposes-~first it introduced the idea
that attention to social problems is not inevitable, and
second, it allowed me to see respondents as representing
categories of claimsmakers which revealed significant

differences among the four constructions.

103

The interviews lasted for one and a half to two hours
each and were held in either the respondents workplace or
in a restaurant. I took extensive notes during each
interview, transcribing and filling in details afterward.
As the interviews progressed, I recognized that the
narratives that I was recording' were not linear
presentations about social progress being made in
children’s best interest. Rather, they represented intense
conflicts among the constructionists themselves, and with a
variety of social institutions, including the family,

education, medicine and the law.

The Methodological Mbsaic

Field. work, documentary' methods and interviews
provided me with three distinct approaches which fit to
form a whole picture concerning the emergence of child
sexual abuse as a social problem. From the field work I
gained firsthand experience in how definitions of the

problem were agreed upon and ‘then communicated to the

general public. Documents taught me how abuse gained
national attention through the dissemination of
professional and popular literature. II was also able to

discern how and. when definitions emerged and how' they
changed. Interviews gave me information on how individuals
came into the field, how their perceptions of the problem

evolved over time, and how they created a vocabulary for

104
their activities, particularly as they concerned protection
programs.

Through these processes of data gathering, I
identified three dimensions of phenomena which characterize
the discourses on sexual abuse. The first concerns the
specifics of child sexual abuse--for example, how prevalent
is it? Who is involved? Who is at risk? This material
represents a case study of a specific social condition. On
a second dimension is information about the emergent phase
of a social problem. How do contested definitions come
into existence? How are definitions fought about? How do
certain views gain prominence, and. how' do others lose
favor?

The third level is the most general and has to do with
the sociology of childhood. In analyzing my data I was
struck over and over again by the fact that children and
childhood were the subject of most of the material I was
reading, but it was not the voices of children. I ‘was
hearing. It became clear that the absence of children’s
voices in research on childhood or children, was not
unusual. Yet, it was also evident that while I was
analyzing how sexual abuse was spoken about, in studying
abuse, I was also discovering that which was considered a
culturally normal childhood, not just in regard to
sexuality, but also in reference to protection and control

issues, and the boundaries erected between adults and

105
children. In this way my research is like Myra Bluebond-
Langner (1978) whose study of terminally ill children
revealed much, by comparison, about the everyday world of
children who were not ill, and of communication patterns
between children and parents.

These three levels of analysis--sexual abuse, social
problem formation and the social construction of
childhood--emerged from the methodological mosaic and form
a theoretical tapestry which is woven from the data

presented in the following chapters.

CHAPTER 4

HOW CHILD SEXUAL.ABUSE EMERGED AS.A
SOCIAL PROBLEM IN THE 1970!

The definition of child sexual abuse as a social
problem occurred because of a confluence of factors. These
included the emergence of ideologically compatible social
movements, challenges to previously held beliefs about the
family, the split of reproduction from sexuality, changing
views of childhood and the emergence of the New Right. As
single causes probably none of these factors could have led
to the constructions of child sexual abuse. Taken
together, however, they made labeling the problem almost

overdetermined.

E_mg_£gence of Social Movements

Beginning in the mid-19503 the United States witnessed
the emergence of a number of social movements, including
the civil rights, student and women’s movements (Evans,
1979; Fritz, 1979). Marked by attention to injustices and
social inequities, these movements mobilized people by
shifting their perceptions, changing their consciousness
and calling them to action. Discrimination and prejudice

106

107
were no longer seen as natural aspects of social relations
to be endured at any cost (Turner, 1969). Instead, they
were identified as social problems which were possible,
even imperative, to change. Of these movements, it was
clearly the women’s movement, with its focus on gender
inequality and women’s position in the family, which would
come to have the most direct effect on the construction of

child sexual abuse as a social problem.

The Nemen’s Mbvement

As chronicled by numerous historians, including Jo
Freeman (1975), Sara Evans (1979) and William Chafe
(1972), the women’s movement began in the early 19603. One
starting point was the publication of Betty Friedan’s The

Feminine Mystique which identified problems in women’s

 

lives. Friedan was attempting to identify what she called
”the problem that has no name;" women’s vague, amorphous
sense that they were trapped, unable to create meaning or
wield power (Friedan, 1963). Although she did not attend
to issues of race, class, or sexual orientation, which
create different life contexts and therefore alter
possibilities for meaning and afford differential access to
power, Friedan nonetheless called attention to an important
problem in women’s lives: lack of identity. The absence
of identity resulted from the cultural expectation that

women live through men and find fulfillment by caring for

108

homes, husbands and children. A massive negation of self
left many women with lives filled with valium, but bankrupt
of meaning. Friedan’s analysis called for women to
struggle for the right to self-determination, higher
education and paid work (Friedan, 1963). She struck a
responsive chord in many women, some of whom had already
begun to address issues of gender inequality.

On a more structural level Jo Freeman has located the
origins of the women’s movement in two groups that
differed in style, politics and form. The older branch of
the movement had a hierarchical structure, no mass base
and was primarily concerned with the issue of women’s legal
and economic equality. From this first group grew the
National Organization for Women, as well as the Women’s
Equality Action League, and the National Women’s Political
Caucus (Freeman, 1975).

The second group emerged from more radical roots, most
notably the civil rights movement and the New Left.
Finding that women’s subordination was treated as a non-
issue by their male peers, women who had participated in
these movements felt that they were fighting for equality,
freedom and rights for others while they remained
outsiders (Evans, 1979). Having internalized a radical
view not only of the social structure, but also of
themselves, these actors created a mass movement for

women’s rights. Although no one unifying group formed from

109

these efforts, most urban areas and university campuses
spawned consciousness raising groups and grass roots
attempts to change women’s social and. political status
(Freeman, 1975). An important insight of these groups of
young women, most under age 30, was the discovery of the
personal nature of political issues. Far from an empty
cliche or slogan, this idea revealed the fact that
intimate relationships were not comprised of isolated
interactions, private events or atomized emotions. Like
Mills’ sociological insight that private troubles often
veil public issues, the feminist insight served to
illuminate a new 'visionL of the fundamentally' political
nature of intimate relationships. Of particular importance
to these early feminists was the systematic and systemic
domination which men held over women.

Men’s domination of women has been central to most of
the analyses which have appeared during the second wave of
feminism, (e.g., Griffin, 1978; Rowbotham, 1972; Oakley,
1976; Dalla. Costa, 1973). IFocusing' on issues such. as
mental health, medicine, science, politics, reproduction,
household. inequities, economic disparity and. sexual
politics, feminists articulated a theory of patriarchy.
Although. problematic as a concept because it has been
divorced from its historical context and anthropological
concreteness, the idea of patriarchy has nevertheless been

useful and key to feminist writing about male power over

110
women and children (Eisenstein, 1981; Barrett, 1980).
Replacing Marxist attention to social class with an
analysis of sex, Firestone (1970) and Millett (1971) both
define patriarchy as the fundamental, and primary
organizing principle of modern society. Particularly
important to the uncovering of child sexual abuse, and
therefore necessary to explore at length, has been the work
done on the family as an institution and on rape as a crime

of violence.

Feminist Understandings of the Family

One of the earliest, significant statements about
women’s oppression in the family was written by Juliet
Mitchell in 1966. Titled, "Women: The Longest Revolution"

and later published as part of Women’s Estate (1971),

 

Mitchell’s analysis focused (n1 feur' central structures:
production, reproduction, sexuality and the socialization
of children. According to the author these structures
offer a general framework for understanding women’s social
position.

Mitchell argues that production entails the ways in
which work is organized, as well as the manner in which
social relations are articulated in the labor process. The
gender division of labor is part of these relations, which
also reflect differential access to resources, including

money, property, mobility and status. Reproduction, which

111

has been fundamental to men’s control over women, is the
ways in which pregnancy and child bearing are socially
defined. Subsumed under this structure are contraceptive
and child bearing techniques and definitions. Sexuality,
which Mitchell saw as the focal point of contradictions
within western society, includes how sex is defined,
controlled and repressed. Ideas of legitimate and
illegitimate sex, which reveal the degree to which
heterosexuality and gender inequality reinforce and shape
one another, are a central facet of the sexual structure.
Mitchell hypothesized that sexuality was the weak link in
the fusion of the four structures because once sex and
reproduction were separated from each other, sex became
more widely accepted outside of familial relations and the
monolithic unity of the family was rendered vulnerable.

The final structure which Mitchell addresses is the
socialization of children. In any society rearing and
caring for children is socially organized“ :n: is part of
the overall division of labor, which may be accorded
varying arrangements, either public, private or some
combination of the two. Mitchell points out that because
of current child care arrangements the lives of women and
children are inextricably bound. This insight, which
served to underline the shared fates of women and children
would become central to feminist understanding of sexual

violence and its impact on children.

112

Each of these structures is socially defined,
constructed and changeable. Although each can be analyzed
in isolation, it is their "complex unity" which gives the
structures layers of expression and meaning. Particularly
important for understanding child sexual abuse is the way
in which reproduction, sexuality and the socialization of
children are located in the family. This "monolithic
fusion" has given rise to strong ideological systems which
declare that infants be born in wedlock, that children be
raised by their mothers, and that sex occur in marriage.

Mitchell argued that women are defined by the family.
Their task is to maintain the dailiness of family life and
raise children. As the reproduction of children has taken
up less and less time, women’s role as nurturers and
socializers has expanded. Hutchell’s point here has been
echoed. by a number of other writers who have written
extensively about the dramatic increase in concern with
mother-infant attachments appearing at the same historical
moment that women’s physical role in reproduction becomes
less absorbing (Rich, 1977; Barrett and McIntosh, 1982).
For Mitchell the importance of full-time mothering,
requiring intense involvement in children’s development,
acts to perpetuate women’s isolation in the family. Thus,
Mitchell’s analysis locates the source of women’s
oppression in the family and shows how family

organization, far from being preordained, or natural, is

113

socially constructed and organized. Erdlowing Mitchell’s
structural consideration of the family and challenge to its
seemingly monolithic nature, a number of feminists focused
on this most intimate of institutions. Probably no
feminist gave a more dramatic account of women’s link to
children in families than Shulamith Firestone who, in the
Dialectic of Sex explored their mutually reinforcing
oppressions. She wrote (1970:72):

Women and children are always mentioned in the

same breath... The special tie women have with

children is recognized by everyone. I submit,
however, that the nature of this bond is no more

than shared oppression. And that moreover this

oppression is intertwined...we will be unable to

speak of the liberation of women without also
discussing the liberation of children...

Firestone elaborated an analyses of childhood as a
cult which had a structural basis ”in the family and
education. Drawing on the history of the
sentimentalization of childhood, she believed that
children’s inequality stemmed more from their economic than

psychological dependence, but that the former was used to

justify the latter.

The Family as an Expression of the Sex/Gender System

If Firestone’s and Mitchell’s work, along with that of
other writers like Kate IMillett (1971), Nancy Chodorow
(1978) and Dorothy Dinnerstein (1977) revealed the social,
political and historical rootedness of family forms,

perhaps no one gave a richer nor more complex rendering of

114

these social relations than Gayle Rubin (1975). Writing an
essay entitled, “The Traffic in Women: Notes Towards a
Political Economy of Sex," Rubin identified what she called
a sex/gender system and defined it as "the set of
arrangements by which a society transforms biological
sexuality into products of human activity, and in which
these transformed sexual needs are satisfied" (Rubin,
1975). Key to Rubin’s concept, which would come to
provide a foundation for the study of the social
organization of gender, was an understanding of the social
relations of sexuality as they applied to women and, to a
lesser extent, children. Using the idea, first put forward
by Engels (1973), that the Marxist theory of the social
relations of production has a parallel in the social
relations of reproduction, Rubin expanded on Mitchell’s
insight concerning the social construction of gender,
families and sexualities.

Rubin’s theory is centered on an integration of
aspects of Marxism, psychoanalysis and structural
anthropology. Rubin uses these traditions to examine a
system of inequality based on gender and sexual
orientations. It is the social meaning given to biological
categories which interested the anthropologist. According
to Rubin, “Sex as we know it - gender identity, sexual
desire, fantasy, concepts of childhood - is itself a social

product” (Rubin, 1975). Rubin’s work embraced a cultural

115

relativism which permitted her to view all relationships as
organized and determined by human activity. Her theory
posed women’s inequality as a problem of social
relationships. By asking how' women were oppressed .ee
yemee, Rubin produced a systemic analysis of women’s place
in the economy of gender relations. Noting that women are
objects of exchange in kinship systems, and examining the
ways in which heterosexuality enforces women’s tie to men
and reproduces the gender division of labor, Rubin was able
to account for the perpetuation of structural and
relational gender inequality within the institution of the
family.

Like Mitchell, one of Rubin’s main contributions was
to reveal the ways in which kinship systems had lost many
of their historical functions such as production, education
and politics. (Although clearly the family still engages
in activities such as home schooling or cottage industries,
even when they are contested by the state.) In the wake of
such losses these systems have emerged primarily as
organizers of sexuality and gender. Families, in part,
exist to reproduce gender categories and sexualities which
are deemed culturally appropriate (Rubin, 1975). As the
repositories of cultural norms regarding sex and gender the
family emerges as a major locus of women’s and children’s
oppression. This analysis of the family as a place where

inequality exists differed significantly from previous

116
sociological writings which had emphasized the ways the
family' brought men. and. women ‘together‘ in complementary
instrumental and expressive roles (Parsons, 1954).

Just as Mitchell and Rubin were central, but certainly
not lone, actors in making the social nature of gender
clear, and in challenging the perceived naturalness of
current family arrangements, others examined the meaning of

the privatization of family life.

The "Private" Sphere of Family Life

One of the many questions addressed by writers in the
second wave of feminism has been the relationship between
the so called "public” sphere of work and the "private"
sphere of the family (Benston, 1969; Hartmann, 1976;
Rosaldo and Lamphere, 1974). Feminists have asked not only
about the relationship of the economy to the family, but
also have delved into the ideology of privacy which
surrounds the family. This ideology depicts the family as
isolated from other social institutions, and protected from
the alienation which has come to characterize the social
relations of capitalism (Lasch, 1979). Unraveling the
threads of this ideological fabric, feminists have looked
at the ways in which the family is embedded in the nest of
social relations (Barrett and McIntosh, 1982).

Exploring the public/private split wrought by modern

industrial societies, Eli Zaretsky (1976) sketched a brief

117
history and description of the relationship between the two

spheres in his book Capitalism, The Family and Personal

 

Life. Zaretsky who claimed that feminists had discovered
the problem of dual spheres, without providing a thorough
analysis, attempted. to fill this lacunae. His thesis
stated that the rise of industrial capitalism produced a
public world of work that did not allow for the expression
of emotions or the realization of identity. The pursuit of
authenticity, emotion, meaning and self was relegated to
the economically unproductive family.

The main claim of Zaretsky’s argument is expressed in
his belief that ”proletarianization gave rise to
subjectivity" (Zaretsky, 1976). Subjectivity was not the
equal province of men and women, however, it was part of
the gender division of labor (which gave women
responsibility for the personal fulfillment of family
members, but subordinated women’s own needs to that of
every other person in the family. In western industrial
societies the work of personal life encompassed a wide
range of duties including: sexuality, care of children’s
physical and psychological needs, as well as attending to
the "instinctual events" of birth, sickness and death
(Mitchell, 1976; Thorne, 1982). The public/private split
existed for men who dominated the public world of work and

experienced the family as a refuge from that world. Women,

118
however, experienced a fusion of the two worlds because the
family was their work (Pleck, 1976).

Zaretsky chronicles a shift of the family from a
productive unit to the locus of subjective life. This
shift is not only the history of women’s increasing
subordination, nor a documentation of the family’s
increasing isolation, it is also the story of how
capitalism made the search for identity an integral part of
personal life at the same time it commodified and marketed
identity to individuals. Searching for a self, an activity
once tied to production, became a consumption activity
(Lasch, 1979; Birken, 1988).

As Zaretsky makes clear, the boundary between public
and private worlds is, at best, ambiguous. He writes:
”The family is an important material basis for subjectivity
and for psychological life and is part of the economy”
(Zaretsky, 1976). Zaretsky’s ideas were symbolically

important because they represented currents of thought that

were moving out into popular culture. These insights had
several layers of significance for the social
constructionists of child sexual abuse. First, they

identified women as responsible for organizing family units
centered on children’s growth and development. Once again
the link between women and children was examined.
Secondly, the discussion of ways in which identity and

individual uniqueness become important under capitalism,

119
paved the way for an analysis which shows how the
experience of being sexually abused can come to be seen as
central to a person’s sense of self. This insight is
essential because so much of the modern constructions of
sexual abuse are built on the scaffold of identity.
Third, and equally important, is the analysis of the family
as private. As long as the family is perceived as private,
regardless of its immutably social form, what happens
within it is prohibited from public scrutiny. Once this
perception is challenged and the family is seen as an
institution, its fundamentally social nature can be
examined. No longer immune from inspection, the family can
be identified as housing contradictory social relations:
it is both a place of deep intimacy and sociability and of
profound violence and isolation. Awareness of these types
of contradictions led to a broader rethinking of the

family.

Contradictions Within the Family

Critical analyses of the family as an institution were
not limited to identifying the parameters of its
monolithic structure, the power of the sex/gender system or
the boundaries of the public/private sphere. A central
theme of feminist writings has been the density of
experiences within families. Summing up this point of View

Barrie Thorne (1982:10) has written:

120

Because families are structured around gender and

age, women, men, girls and boys do not

experience their families in the same way.

Feminists have explored the differentiation of

family experience mystified by the glorification

of motherhood, love and images of the family as

a domestic haven. Feminists have voiced

experience that this ideology denies: men’s

dominance and women’s subordination within as

well as outside the family, and the presence of

conflict and violence.

As a new way of thinking about the family, gender and
childhood such analyses brought established social
relations into question. Far from the natural structures
they were long thought to be, "intimate institutions" were
shown to have social and historical origins and legacies.
Evidence for this point of view was not limited to
feminists.

One important change in thinking about the family came
from challenges to role theory. Having dominated post
World War II sociological thought, role theory came under
the scrutiny of writers who emphasized structural issues
and historical contexts (Ross, 1979). The broad theme of
the limitations within role theory were also echoed by more
traditional social scientists. Beginning with William J.
Goode’s World Revolution and Family Patterns (1963)
functionalist views of the family as isolated and
harmonious entities were challenged. Goode - expressing an
idea that would be shared by many feminists - identified

coercion, not role integration, as the ultimate basis of

family order.

121

Goldthorpe (1987), writing a history of western
families, and following Morgan (1975), noted that some
family theorists could be classified as pessimistic
abolitionists, such as Herbert Marcuse (1955) who wish to
see the family annihilated because it fits the requirements
of a destructive society too well--others as optimistic
abolitionists like Barrington Moore (1958), who believe
the family is declining because it no longer meets the
needs of advanced industrial societies. The significance
of these arguments lies not so much in the merit of each
position, but in the process of questioning the social
relations which comprise and affect the family and
influence its future direction. This process would
ultimately provide a starting point for those seeking to
uncover what happens behind the closed doors of family
life. Before it was possible to examine intimate violence,
however, it was necessary for violence against women to
become a topic of concern. Much of this work was done

within the framework of the rape crisis movement.

Violence Against Women

Rape is a crime of violence. A simple statement, this
fact rests at the heart of the feminist discussion of a
crime that had previously been identified as sexual in
motivation (Burgess and Holmstrom, 1978). Prior to the

contemporary women’s movement the topic of rape was

122

understood as intellectually belonging to criminologists
(eg. Amir, 1971) who ignored gender as a primary category
of analysis. Culturally, rape was a subject riddled with
misconceptions, surrounded by myths and inculcated with
humor. Women were viewed as causing rape through sexual
promiscuity or provocation“ .A. woman who was sexually
active, who wore "revealing clothing,” or who walked alone
at night was, in popular view, begging to be raped. The
idea of a woman’s responsibility for a crime that was
committed against her, a parallel that does not exist with
other crimes such as murder, was reinforced with the notion
that women wanted to be raped. From this convoluted
perspective, the rapist fulfills the wishes of the victim.
On the occasions when rape was defined as a criminal act it
was not the woman who was violated, but the man she existed
in relation to - either her father, brother, or husband.
Women were men’s property and rape was a crime against this
property (Brownmiller, 1975).

Beginning in the late 19603 the women’s movement
challenged these perceptions. Identifying rape as a
gendered phenomenon, feminists disputed the premise that
rape was an act of sexual passion (Griffin, 1970). Instead
they looked at the violence inherent in the act. By
shifting perceptions, the power dynamic in rape was
revealed; rape was a form of power that men had over women.

Creating this change in definition was not simple. Even

123
women with commitments to feminist causes tended to disown
the topic: "Rape was a sex crime, a product of a diseased,
deranged mind. Rape wasn’t a feminist issue . . . The
women’s movement had nothing in common with rape victims"
(Brownmiller, 1975:l). The woman who voiced this
sentiment later described herself as "a woman who changed
her mind about rape" and along with several other writers
and numerous consciousness raising groups, Susan
Brownmiller helped change many people’s minds about the

subject.

The Feminist Perspective on Rape

In her 1970 article, "Rape: The All American Crime"
published in "Ramparts" magazine, Susan Griffin challenged
prevailing notions of rape. Reiterating criminologist
Menachem .Amir’s research finding 'that rapists were not
aberrant individuals, but "normal" men, Griffin sought to
explain the taken-for-granted quality of rape in American
culture. She argued that rape was cloaked in a "conspiracy
of silence" which permeated the isolation of victims, many
of whom believed they were alone in their experience and
most of whom were convinced they were to blame. Women,
Griffin argued, were socialized to be victims by a culture
which equated femininity with submission. Additionally,
Griffin offered an analysis of rapists that linked male

gender expectations and sexual requirements. In her

124

framework rape was a crime that men perpetrated against
women. Rape was also metaphoric for the pervasive power
which men wield over women in all heterosexual
relationships (Griffin, 1970).

While Griffin set herself the task of naming rape as a
profound violation of women’s lives, Susan Brownmiller
became the leading cultural historian of the topic.

Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape appeared in 1975.

 

Long and painful, it contained 458 pages of unrelenting
descriptions of atrocities which had been committed against
women. Brownmiller’s book was also enormously popular.
Serving notice that rape was a serious concern, she
presented a complex history. Legally sanctioned, pervasive
in war as well as peace, rape represented "a conscious
process by which all men keep all women in a state of fear"
(Brownmiller, 1975).

As part of her extensive analysis Brownmiller made a
brief, fourteen pages, foray into the subject of child
sexual abuse. Relying on the Kinsey reports of the 19403,
Brownmiller stated that between one in four girls, and one
in eleven boys would be sexually assaulted before the age
of 18. Attempting to make these statistics come alive for
her audience, the author employed evidence from the
writings and lives of famous people, including Maya
Angelou, Billie Holiday and Virginia Woolf. Personal

narratives provided a power and a sense of urgency to the

125
topic which statistics tended to obscure. Sounding themes
which would reverberate throughout the next decade,
Brownmiller attributed blame for the invisibility of sexual
abuse to Freudian psychoanalytic theory, the property
relation that exists between fathers and daughters, and
traditional attitudes towards rape.

The general feminist understanding of rape that
emerged at this time was an analysis of power which
recognized the overt and covert nature of rape. Overtly
rape acted to constrain women’s freedom in the social
world. Covertly it acted to limit women’s psychological
world. Rape was not always a present reality, but the fear
of rape was. In part this fear emanated from the
realization that rape was not just a crime of strangers.
Mostly it was a crime of intimates which took place within
the context of an existing relationship, in a familiar
place. It was often difficult for a woman to identify her
experience as rape because the lines between normal
heterosexual relationships and rape were blurred. Men, who
were taught that a woman who says no really means yes,
believed that they had a right to coerce a woman into sex;
they were merely playing by the rules of gender
socialization. Women who were taught that rape was
something that occurred between strangers in a dark alley,
found it difficult to identify the coercion they

experienced in intimate sexual relations as rape. In fact,

126
before it was possible for feminists to analyze sexual
violence between intimates in a concerted way - proposing
theories, offering services - battered women would become a

focus of social problem construction.

gife Battering: The Analysis of Gendered Violence Moves
Inside the Home

Attention to wife battering occurred after the
recognition that rape by non-intimates was a social
problem (Straus and. Hotaling, 1980; Straus, Gelles and
Steinmetz, 1980; Roy, 1977; McGrath, 1979). For feminists
these two constructions were connected by several threads.
First, there was a conceptual relationship ibetween the
violence male strangers exerted over women and the physical
domination that husbands exerted over wives. Second,
following the lead of child protectionists and medical
constructionists, feminists recognized that physical child
abuse and neglect were not isolated events in otherwise
smoothly functioning families. Households which contained
intergenerational violence often included gendered
violence. Third, feminists who began providing services
for the rape crisis movement were inundated by requests for
services from battered women (Schecter, 1983). Organized
to serve those who were raped, volunteers staffing crisis
phone lines and walk-in clinics, were shocked by the number
of women seeking help because they were beaten by their

significant others (Wharton, 1982).

127

Feminists began to identify, battering as part of the
social relations of gender. The power men exerted over
women included, and many felt in some ways was based on,
physical force; if women did not adhere to whatever
normative expectations existed, they could be beaten into
submission (Martin, 1976). Discovering the fact that women
were beaten in intimate environments was a necessary
precursor for uncovering child sexual abuse and provided a
pivotal conceptual link between physical child abuse and
neglect in the family and rape. Battering moved. the
discourse about violence into the home where incest, one of
the first types of child sexual abuse addressed, occurs.
By focusing on the extent of battering, feminists made the
same argument they had made about rape - this is a
commonplace event. The focus on ~the commonality of
intimate violence and its horror - seemingly contradictory
ideas - would also form the basis for feminist claims about
incest. Before incest could be talked about, however,
battering came to be seen as a social problem.

Articulating a social problem perspective on battering
required documentation of its incidence and prevalence,
creation of theories to explain its existence and
mobilization of resources to address the problem (Wiener,
1981). It also required a sympathetic victim; someone whom
the general public could see as a real person, suffering at

the hands of a loved one. The first three tasks would be

128
accomplished by experts. The fourth would be the province
of the media.

Federal Bureau of Investigation statistics have
revealed that 1.8 million women are battered each year and
that a woman is beaten every 18 seconds in the United
States (Council Against Domestic Assault, 1986). Making
these numbers known and creating theories to explain the
prevalence of battering was the project of a number of
people who became identified as experts on the topic,
including professionals such as psychologists,
sociologists and social workers. The primary
constructionists of battering identified themselves first
not as members or representatives of professions, however,
but as feminists who held a particular vision of male
dominance and female subordination.

Feminists’ views of battering have focused on the
social relations of gender which give men power over women.
Linking this power to the division of labor, women’s
dependence on men and the socialization process, feminists
showed ‘the prevalence of‘ physical coercion in intimate
relationships (Roy, 1977; Nicarthy, 1986). One of the
essential processes explored in ‘these analyses was the
pattern established within battering relationships. By
focusing on the rhythms which structure battering,
feminists such as Lenore Walker (1979) were able to create

an analysis of the phenomenon which revealed intimate

129
violence not as an aberrant or one time event, but rather
an everyday occurrence in the lives of many women. Through
this type of construction, feminists also analyzed violence
as an institutionalized phenomenon--one built into the core
of male-female relationships.

Additional theories about women’s experience of
physical abuse came from sociologists and psychologists.
Sociological explanations relied on structural variables
and correlated abuse with poverty, unemployment and the
isolation of the contemporary nuclear family. Studies by
Dobash and Dobash (1979) and Straus, Gelles and Steinmetz
(1980) revealed that violence in the home reaches across
categories of class and race.

Less focused on social structure, psychologists have
been more interested in deciphering the personality of the
assailant and victim. Developing profiles of those who
became involved in battering meant that therapeutic
responses could be offered as solutions to the problem. On
a more complex level a new developmental theory of
battering was designed which looked to a combination of
structural causes,‘ psychological attributes and family
systems (Minuichin, 1984). Integrating feminist theory
with sociological constructs and. psychological analyses
allowed a number of views to speak to each other and

pointed both to the influence of feminist thought on the

130
conceptualization of the social problem and the fact that
feminists did not solely possess the problem.

If feminists shared theoretical ownership of the
problem with rival claimsmakers, such as criminologists and
psychologists, for a longer period 'they were the lone
service providers who were responsive to battered women.
By creating safe homes, statewide and national telephone
hotlines and shelters, feminists were able to aid women in
their attempt to, at least temporarily, escape violent
relationships (Wharton, 1982). As service delivery 'to
battered women became institutionalized, it gained
legitimacy through state sponsorships. Although this shift
meant that more money was available for a variety of
services, it also signaled the rise of an anti—feminist
professionalism, and the diminishment of feminists’ power
to define the social problem (Gordon, 1988). The imprint
of feminists understandings of violence between men and
women in intimate relationships remained indelible,
however, and took several new foci including marital rape,

and child sexual abuse.

The Split of Reproduction From Sexuality

One of the key issues which has adhered to definitions
of sexual violence, whether the problem is rape or child
sexual abuse, is the relationship of sex to violence. As

discussed above, feminists fought mightily to shift

131

professional and popular perception that rape, and by
extension sexual abuse, are crimes of violence, not acts of
sexual passion. As Linda Tschirhart Sanford (1980:122) has
written:

In all forms of child sexual abuse, we find that

sex is not the major motivation. Other problems,

sometimes not too far from the surface, motivate

the crimes; it is not a matter of unmet sexual

needs.
Yet, in the contemporary construction of sexual abuse as a
social problem, the fact that the abuse is sexual is
significant for several reasons. First, sexual abuse and
physical abuse have been identified by feminists, child
protectionists, clinicians and the New Right as separate
problems, with unique properties (Walters, 1975; Courtois,
1988). It is the sexual aspect of molestation that makes
it a distinct entity. Secondly, earlier discussion of
sexual abuse, particularly incest, focused.<n1 threats to
genetic purity and reproductive problems. In these
writings, exemplified by Mead (1969), the concern is not so
much about the individual identified as the victim, but
about the offspring of the victim. In order for the damage
done to the victim to become a focus of concern, the
concepts of reproduction and sexuality had to be split
(Gordon, 1988). This split would interact with another
emerging process--the experience of sexuality as a

cornerstone of personal identity (Weeks, 1985). I will

argue that it would follow that if sexuality could be a

132
basis of identity, damage done to sexuality could also be
a source of identity.

The ability to see sexuality as separate from
reproduction required that heterosexual sex not inevitably
lead to procreation. Technologically, this change was made
possible by the creation of the birth control pill.
Socially, shifts in American culture which date to the
19203 were responsible for the perception. Documented by a
number of historians and sociologists including Weeks
(1985), Plummer (1975) and D’Emilio and Freedman (1988)
these changes in American culture were part of a
redefinition of private and public spheres, of
relationships between the family’ as an institution and
society in general and of boundariesbetween youth and
adults. These scholars perceive the period from 1950
through the 19703 as a time of sexual crisis. Rooted in
capitalist relations which commodified and commercialized
sex, changes in sexual relations between women and men, and
the social movements which created. the context of the
period, these types of changes "make political, issues that
have previously been regarded as scarcely political at all:
questions of identity, pleasure, consent and choices"

(Weeks, 1985:32).

133
Sexuality as a Source of Identity

Prior to the eighteenth century sexuality had been
contested primarily through religious and secular arenas,
with sex in the confines of marriage and family becoming
the dominant and only legitimate form of sexual expression
(Weeks, 1985). During the 19th century secular
institutions such as medicine, psychiatry and education
challenged the power of religion. As a result of this
dispute a new, secularized idea of sexual normalcy and
sexual deviance appeared (Weeks, 1986). Concurrently there
emerged the possibility of creating a subjective sense of
self on the basis of adherence to or deviation from a
sexual category. Michael Foucault (1980), whose three
volume history traced layers of discourses about sexuality
and challenged the notion that repression had been the
western cultural norm towards sexual matters, showed how
identity has become centrally connected to sex. According
to Foucault: "We seek the truth of our nature through
sexuality" (Foucault, 1980:69).

Part of the search for self through sexuality has
occurred through the creation of organizations, groups and
communities based on shared sexual affiliations or
orientations. D’Emilio (1983) points to the proximity of
large numbers of individuals in the same situation; a cadre
of leaders; and a clear oppositional group and pivotal

event, which can serve as a catalyst for bringing people

134

together. The most well-documented creation of a sexual
self through community is the case of gay men and lesbians
who during World War II were able to find pockets of safety
based on shared identities (D’Emilio, 1983). Sexuality as
the basis of identity and experience has also been an issue
within feminism. Called "the sexuality debates," feminist
discussions of sex havve centered on sexuality as a source
of pleasure and as a source of danger. As an attempt to
reclaim sexuality for women, theorists who focus on sex as
a liberatory force, see it as essential to women’s
development of a new set of ethics, principles and morals.
In this analysis, women’s ownership of their bodies and
sexualities empowers them to reject systems of patriarchal
oppression and. to redefine issues like jpornography and
sadomasochism from a feminist standpoint.

Feminist writers who have focused more on the
dangerous aspects of sexuality, have examined the ways in
which being embodied has been a liability to women.
Oppressed both by the commodification and commercialism of
capitalist depictions of women’s sexuality and the
patriarchal ideology which sanctions violence against
women, feminists in this camp see sex as a primary locus
for women’s ongoing subordination.

The importance of this debate, as I see it in
relationship to child sexual abuse, lies in the fact that

it makes sexuality the center of attention and raises

135
issues about how sex has been used to abuse women, and how
it can be used for women to fashion a new identity-
outside the bounds of either violence or reproduction
(Vance, 1984).

The split of reproduction from. sexuality, and. the
evocation of sexuality as the basis of identity both
represent historical moments in the construction of
sexuality. At the heart of this construct is the
recognition that far from a natural phenomenon, sexuality
is a product of social forces. Part of the activity of
construction is the creation and maintenance of difference
and entails delineating boundaries among social categories-
-especially men and women, and adults and children (Weeks,
1986). As a process, the shaping of these boundaries is
documented through the creation of various discourses not
only by feminists, but also by clinicians, child

protectionists and the New Right.

Children’s Rights Movement

One of the "last" social movements to be spawned from
the civil rights and. women’s movements started in the
United States in the 19703 and focused attention on the
rights of children. The children’s liberation movement was
made possible by a core value conflict in western
societies--the prolongation of childhood dependency in the

context of teaching adult responsibility. The modern

136
children’s crusade (Boulding, 1977) focuses on the human
rights which children deserve and need. Unlike the
movements for racial or gender equality where the
oppositional forces were identified as racists or sexists,
those who opposed children’s rights could do it under the
guise of protection: thus, both sides could claim to act
in children’s best interest.

The tension between the rights of children and their
need for protection had, as discussed in Chapter Two, first
come to public attention in disputes over labor earlier in
the 20th century. The result of these Progressive Era
conflicts led to a notion of children’s right to be
protected by adults from exploitative labor practices and
children’s removal from the labor market (Zelizer, 1985).
Saved from having to work, children were mandated to go to
school, where they would be prepared for adulthood. During
the lag period of dependence, children were valued for
their emotional being rather than any contribution or
social activity. Relegated to a secondary status,
children’s worlds were segregated from those of adults.

The children’s rights movements of the 19703 which had
begun internationally in the 19603, defined children’s
domination by adults as a social problem. As Elise
Boulding (1977) has pointed out, the children’s movement in
the U.S. was really two .movements, one which included

children in urban areas who were between eight and

137

fourteen, who had the support of adults and an older group
of adolescents, including those of college age. The fact
that this movement was generated by children meant that it
focused less on the need for protection and more on the
responsibilities and rights which children sought. These
rights which Wald (1979) has labeled liberty rights, entail
children having greater autonomy to make their own
decisions. Including simple decisions about food and
clothing or more complex ones about relationships and birth
control. Liberty rights exist in tension with claims
rights which represent children’s right to be protected,
including the right to be protected from sex with adults.

Many social critics, like Marie Winn (1983) and Neil
Postman (1982), countered. ‘the children’s liberation
movement, arguing that children’s right to protection has
been increasingly encroached upon. Arguing that children
need protection, instead of independence, these critics
have urged that childhood be restored to its "natural"
state of innocence (Elkind, 1981). In this view children
are protected from adults by age of consent laws, and
censorship practices. Sexuality is dangerous to children,
and is solely the purview of adults. Picking up on these
themes and sounding them with great urgency, coupled with
moral fervor, the New Right emerged as a powerful voice in

the discourses on sexual abuse.

138
The New Right

One of the strongest political and religious forces to
appear in American society over the past two decades was
the New Right (Gordon and Hunter, 1977). Based on single
issue campaigns aimed at topics like abortion, busing and
homosexuality, the New Right found its constituency among
Christians, middle class white women and segments of the
Old Right (Weeks, 1985; and Dworkin, 1983). Central to the
New Right’s platform has been a campaign to defend the
famiLy. The family’s need for protection stems from the
erosion it has experienced. since the 19603. Directly
blamed for this erosion is the loss of traditional family
roles where men wield power over women, who emotionally
support them, and children, who revere them (Eisenstein,
1981). Jeffrey Weeks (1986:12) has written:

In the New' Right vision of social order the
family has a policing role. It ensures carefully
demarcated spheres between men and women, adults
and children. It regulates sexual relations and
sexual knowledge. It. enforces discipline and
proper respect for authority. It is a harbour of
moral responsibility and the work ethic. This is
contrasted to the ostensible moral chaos that
exists outside.

The power of the Rights’ position has been in its
effectiveness in creating, sustaining and addressing a
moral panic about the sexual permissiveness of American
culture. Moral panics, as described by Stanley Cohen

(1972), arise from attention given to relatively' minor

problems. These minor problems act as a focal point for

139
articulating cultural anxiety about more extreme problems
which go unexpressed. This dynamic can be clearly seen in
the missing children’s movement which generated intense
concern about stranger abduction--a problem which effected
only 35 children in 1983 while - drawing attention away
from violence within the home (Spitzer, 1986).

The Pro-family movement advocated by the Right drew
strength from evangelical religious sources which sought to
reverse the secularization of American society (Viguerie,
1981). By defining the family as a social problem, a very
different problem than feminists defined, the Right focused
attention on abortion, sexuality, even taxes, as a threat
to social stability. Child sexual abuse--by strangers--was
seen as a problem that had occurred because women had
moved outside of the home and into the workforce.
Children’s vulnerability was a direct result of women’s
abdication of familial roles. Traditional family forms
were identified as protecting children’s innocence; with
the reassertion of natural family roles, children would no

longer be victimized.

Summagy

A number of social forces and changes set the stage
for the particular constructions of child sexual abuse that
began appearing in the early 19703. Complex and layered,

these forces included: a redefinition of women’s role

140
within families, the family as an institution, sexuality as
a source of identity and. childhood. 131 a context of
changing' norms and social movements these altered
definitions have led to a rethinking of the boundaries
between adults and children with sexuality acting as a line
which demarcates the two statuses. As feminists,
clinicians, child protectionists andthe New Right vied to
define the problem of child sexual abuse, each approached
their task from unique, sometimes contradictory
perspectives and assumptions. Each took the breaking of
silence about abuse as their initial objective. The
discourses which interacted with, replaced and created new

silences are the topics of the next two chapters.

CHAPTERS

THE CONSTRUCTIONS OE CHILD SEXUAL.ABUSE
AS.A.SOCIAL PROBLEM

Writing on the history of sexuality Foucault (1980:27)
has noted "there is not one, but many silences, and they
underlie and permeate discourses." All of the
'discoverers" - feminist, clinical, child protectionists,
and the New Right ~ advanced discourses about child sexual
abuse. Each discourse strategy had three narrative
dimensions: first, it tried to break the silence which it
believed permeated children’s sexual ‘victimization - a
silence each group perceived and defined differently;
second, it created its own narratives about the social
problem; and third, it interacted with the other
discourses on points of agreement, conflict and strain, as
each vied to control public and professional perceptions of
the problem. In order to uncover the construction of
sexual abuse as a social problem, this chapter documents
the chronology of the constructions and illuminates and
examines the themes which have formed the narrative of each
discourse. The concrete facts of constructionist activity
is drawn from documents, field work and interviews.

141

142
Child Sexual Abuse Becomes a Social Problem

Children have always been abused and adults have
always exhibited ambivalence towards children. (DeMause,
1974; Gordon, 1988; and Boswell, 1988). Public and
professional attention. to ‘the 'treatment of abused
children--including battering, neglect, abandonment and
sexual abuse - has been less consistent and coherent and
has been dependent on other social forces and practices.
Gordon (1988:26) noted this pattern:

Born as a social problem in an era of a powerful

women’s rights movement, the 18703 campaign

against child abuse and wife-beating have tended

to lose momentum and support, even to disappear

altogether, when feminist influence is in

decline.
As Gordon’s documentary history made clear, attention to
children’s sexual victimization has been strongly linked
to, and dependent upon, the first and second waves of
feminism.

In its first documentation, between 1880 and 1910,
sexual abuse of children was conceptualized as a problem of
poor, usually immigrant, families, where men wielded
considerable power over women and children (Platt, 1969).
During the 19203 perceptions of sexual abuse shifted.
Strangers, rather than family members, were identified as
the leading source of children’s sexual victimization, and
from the point of view of adults, children became culpable

for 'their own sexual abuse (Gordon, 1988). No longer

victims, children were the new perpetrators. Writing on

143
children’s role in sexual assault in 1937, Bender and Blau
stated:
These children ‘undoubtedly' do .not deserve

completely the cloak of innocence with which they
have been endowed by moralists, social reformers

and legislators...these children were
distinguished as unusually charming and
attractive in their outward personalities. Thus

it was not remarkable that frequently we

considered the possibility that the child might

have been the actual seducer, rather than the one

innocently seduced (Bender and Blau, 1937:512).
Clearly, Bender and Blau believed children had some
responsibility for sexual abuse. This stance was not
unusual at the time and reflected cultural beliefs that
either denied the existence of abuse altogether or
castigated children for sexually enticing adults (Forward
and Buck, 1978).

As society began to reframe andthen ignore sexual
abuse and family violence in general, sexologists, applying
medical models, focused on adult sexual experiences. Part
of the documentation of sexual behaviors, fantasies and
desires included depictions of sexual interactions between
adults and children. Most notable of these accounts were
the pathbreaking Kinsey reports of the 19403 and 19503.
According to Kinsey (1948), at that point in history, one
in sixteen girls was sexually abused during childhood.
Weinberg (1955) also studied sexual behavior. He found an
extremely low rate of father—daughter incest, placing the

number at one or two cases per million households. When

attention did focus on sexual abuse at this historical

144
juncture, it was on child molestation outside the home.
None of the work by Kinsey, Masters and Johnson or other
sexologists in the 19403 and 19503 led to either a public
reaction to sexual abuse or to a definition of a social
problem (Herman and Hirschman, 1977; Russell, 1986).

In 1969, child protectionists, in the form of
investigators for the Children’s Division of the American
Humane Society examined police and child protection
reports, and discovered that between 80,000 - 100,000
children were sexually abused each year (DeFrancis, 1969).
Recognized by social service workers as a low estimate
because of social class bias - upper or even middle class
cases of incest were frequently under-reported. - ‘these
numbers were nevertheless a more realistic appraisal than
the one in a million estimate that had been widely quoted a
decade before (Russell, 1986). DeFrancis’ report is
generally considered the starting point of the modern
"discovery" of child sexual abuse (Brownmiller, 1975;
Thomas, 1985). Two elements made DeFrancis’ findings
significant — he revealed what was defined as a widespread
incidence and prevalence of sexual abuse and indicated that
emotional damage was created by sexual victimization. Six
more years would pass, however, before feminists, the
initial "discoverers," would begin to develop an arena for

naming sexual abuse a social problem.

145

The Feminist Construction: The Discourse on Violence

As discussed in Chapter 4, Susan Brownmiller wrote a
history of rape in 1975 and included a brief discussion of
child sexual abuse. Several facts about Brownmiller’s
analysis were essential for later discussions of children’s
sexual victimization. Brownmiller wrote from a well-
defined feminist perspective, linking the abuse of women
and children, thereby bringing children’s experience into
an already existing social movement which had the
attention of claimsmakers and the media. Another important
aspect of Brownmiller’s work was her analysis of child
sexual abuse as a form of rape. Since rape was defined as
devastating, this dramatic, and debated characterization
meant that sexual abuse could, in this discourse, only be
understood as harmful (Sanford, 1980; Ward, 1985).
Brownmiller’s framework also signaled the fact that, for
feminists, of all perspectives - liberal, radical or
socialist, the discourse on child sexual abuse would be a
discourse about violence, and the silence it would break
was one about men’s use of force and sexual coercion to
maintain social control and order within the family. Other
claimsmakers’ definitions would later converge on the issue
of harm done to the child and would produce a unique aspect
of the modern "discovery” of child sexual abuse - the
emphasis on and construction of the psychologically

victimized and "damaged child."

146

Brownmiller’s perceptions of children’s victimization
were based, in large part, on the work of Florence Rush
(Brownmiller, 1975). A social worker by training, Rush did
extensive historical research on child sexual abuse which
she began to publish in 1977. In a now well rehearsed, but
then heretical and revolutionary argument, Rush stated that
Freud had created the oedipal theory so as to deny the
existence and extent of sexual abuse among his patients.
Rush saw Freud’s rejection of what he called the "seduction
theory" as a move to protect men’s power over women and
children (Rush, 1977). The twin ideas of sexual abuse as
rape and patriarchally induced silence formed the basis of
feminist constructions that were to follow (Butler, 1978;
Bass and Thornton, 1983). Brownmiller’s analysis became
the initial narrative which other discourses would
reverberate and echo or rebuke and muffle.

Beginning in 1978 a series of books and articles were
published which revealed the widespread occurrence of
sexual abuse and its frequently traumatic aftermath. Four
major works, now identified as classics in the field,
(Courtois, 1988) were distributed that year. These books

were: Sandra Butler’s Conspiracy of Silence, Karen

 

Mieselman’s Incest, Louise Armstrong’s Kiss Daddy

 

Goodnight and Forward and Buck’s Betrayal of Innocence.

 

Emerging from feminist (Butler and Armstrong) and clinical

(Forward and Buck, and Mieselman) perspectives, these

147

writings sounded similar themes: child sexual abuse,
including incest, was much more prevalent than previously
documented; ,patriarchal social structure Ihad. produced. a
systematic silence about the problem; children who were
sexually abused by adults, particularly parents,
experienced a form of betrayal which caused them, as they
grew up, to mistrust intimacy and avoid relationships.

Armstrong’s compilation of personal narratives, _I_<_i_se

Daddy Goodnight, was the first publicly shared account of

 

personal experiences of sexual assault. Followed closely

by Katherine Brady’s Father’s Days (1979), Armstrong’s book

 

marked a turning point in the sexual abuse literature. In

such works as Daddy’s Girl (1980) by Charlotte Vale Allen,

 

Voices in the Night (1980) edited by Toni McNarron and

 

Yarrow Morgan, and I Never Told Anyone (1983) edited by

 

Ellen Bass and Louise Thornton, victims come forward to
speak about sexual abuse in their own words. These
narrative, confessional accounts, acted as a powerful
catharsis and frequently were directed toward others who
had been sexually abused. The power of this form of speech
is illustrated by Katherine Brady (1979:211) who wrote in
her conclusion:

I’ve learned a great deal by telling my story. I

hope other incest victims may experience a

similar journey of discovery by reading it. If

nothing else, I would wish them to hear in this

tale the two things I needed most, but had to

wait years to hear: you are not alone and you
are not to blame.

148

Personal accounts of sexual abuse were deeply tied to
the feminist belief in revealing the political nature of
individual experience (Evans, 1979). Aumh. the feminist
understanding of the political/personal connection inherent
in sexual abuse was also evident in the way in which they
described the problem and advocated solutions. My
interview subjects who came from a feminist perspective
were deeply concerned with issues of power, patriarchy and
sexuality - issues they identified as deeply private and
overarchingly public. One woman who had worked in the
anti-rape and battering movements stated:

In looking at male power over women it is clear

that women and children are in positions of

subordination. Because of this they (women and

children) find themselves dominated and afraid.

They have the same experiences of a patriarchal

culture.

All of the feminists I interviewed asserted that
American culture legitimates male jpower over women and
children. One woman commented:

Almost 30 years ago the Kinsey report made it

clear' that. many female children ‘were sexually

abused (one in four women had stated that they

had had a sexual experience with an adult by the

age of 12 (Kinsey, et. al). No one paid

attention. It’s just too normal an event so the

society doesn’t pay attention - it would be like
explaining why American families watch so much
television - it’s just there.

Like constructionists from the clinical and child
protection perspectives, feminists also pointed to the

ordinariness of men who sexually victimize children. A

feminist

149

who had become very active in sexual abuse

prevention programs noted:

Society gives men permission to rape children and
women. When I teach kids how to be safe I have
to find a way to communicate to them that sexual
abusers aren’t monsters or even strangers.
They’re people they see everyday - grandfathers,
fathers, uncles, priests, policemen. It’s the
ordinariness of the perpetrators that makes this
such a problem.

Feminists perceive the commonplace nature of sexual

abuse to rest on the powerlessness of children relative to

adults and the secrecy of sexual abuse:

Family cultures are based on speech and touch.
Adults are bigger and stronger than kids are.
They can coerce children into secrecy by
threatening them or even by telling the kid that
it (the sexual abuse) constitutes a special
relationship between the two of them that
shouldn’t be talked about because the mom or

other siblings will be jealous.

In keeping with the emphasis on secrecy and silence

found in the feminist discourse the feminists I interviewed

all stressed the importance of believing children’s account

of sexual abuse. These are the kinds of statements I

heard:

*

Credibility is the most important gift we
can give children. Just to believe their
version of reality is a tremendous advance.
When we first started to work in this area in
1980 no one said they worked on incest issues-
it was taboo - it was like it didn’t exist. But

now (1986) we believe children are being sexually

150
abused and so we trust their accounts of what
daddy is doing to them.

* Children don’t lie about sexual abuse. How could
they? They can’t have the sexual knowledge
unless they’ve been abused. How else could they
know what an adult male looks like or tastes like
or what color semen is?

Part of the feminist insistence that children be
listened to and believed emanated from a concern about the
long-term impact of sexual abuse. Many of these women had
been victimized as children and/or as adults and defined
these events as the most powerful one's of their lives:

I’ve been doing work in the area of family

violence for nine years. I was abused by my

grandfather and when I grew up I vowed that I

wouldn’t be a victim anymore. I think that I

will be scarred for life, but I see being

sexually abused as similar to being burned. By
working with kids today I can soothe the burn-
it’s almost like a salve.

An interesting, and frequently neglected aspect of the
feminist discourse on sexual abuse has been the impact of
violence cum adult female sexuality. The feminist
prevention expert I talked to who had a background in
feminist theory and psychology, discussed this issue at
length:

People today are more aware of diverse

sexualities. It’s no secret that many women are

lesbians and many men are gay. One thing I’ve
thought about a lot in the past couple of years

is how feminism has opened us up to talk about

sexuality in a totally different way then we have
before. All of the discussions about pleasure

151

and danger and the complexities of sexual
identity are very interesting. But one thing I

wonder about is how all of this violence - and
not just sexual abuse, but rape and battering too
- affects women’s sexuality. Don’t you think

many women are lesbians today' because of the
violence they’ve experienced? II do and I think
many of these women, and I guess heterosexual
women too, struggle with sexuality. I don’t mean
to downplay the fact that sexual violence is
violence, but it also is sexual, so it has to
have an impact on how we think about sex and how
and who we are sexually.

Linking the Feminist and Clinical Discourses

Feminist concern with the impact of sexual abuse
helped to focus attention on self, identity and the
psychological suffering that most victims reported. These
concerns provided a link between the feminist and clinical
constructions of sexual abuse. Both groups strongly
advocated recognition of the negative, prolonged impact of
sexual victimization, which. the personal narratives
documented. And, if the victims’ accounts of their abuse
helped feminists make the connection between the personal
and political, they also fit with therapeutic belief in the
”talking cure" which rests on the telling of one’s story.
This shared framework forged a strong link between portions
of the two discourses.

An additional tie existed between feminist and
clinical discourses. This connection arose partially
because some feminists were also clinicians working with

adult women who reported both current and past experiences

152
of sexual violence. These clinicians developed an analysis
of gender/generational inequality. Judith Herman, a

psychiatrist who wrote Father-Daughter Incest (1981:4)

 

represented the clinician as feminist. She wrote:

Father-daughter incest is not only the type of
incest most frequently reported, but also
represents a paradigm of female sexual
victimization. The relationship between father
and daughter, adult male and female child, is one
of the most unequal relationships imaginable. It
is no accident that incest occurs :most often
precisely in the relationship where the female is
most powerless. The actual sexual encounter may
be brutal or tender, painful or pleasurable; but
it is always, inevitably, destructive to the
child.

Herman’s feminist and clinical orientations informed each
other and organized her analysis. This mutual influence
was echoed by a feminist clinician I interviewed. Having
spent ten years in practice, this Ph.D. Psychologist

observed:

My graduate program prepared me to work with a
variety of problems and issues, but I was never
prepared for the number of clients I began to see
who had been sexually abused. I talked to my
colleagues and found out that they too were
seeing many women who were telling stories of
sexual abuse. Although my clinical training
didn’t prepare me for this - I guess I would call
it an onslaught of sexual abuse survivors - my
feminism did. I was able to use my clinical
understanding to understand the psychological
issues and a feminist framework to analyze why so
much sexual abuse occurs in American society.

A second version of the connection between feminists
and clinicians were feminists who became clinicians because
of their belief that women were being maltreated by the

Freudian influenced fields of psychiatry, psychology and

153
social work. Feminists who became clinicians brought an
analysis of patriarchal social structure to their work and
writings about child sexual abuse. An example of this
point of view is documented by Susan Penfold and Gillian
Walker (1983:156) who wrote:
Freud’s theory of infantile sexuality both
reflects and reinforces the assumption that
incestuous feelings are within the child and
influence adults. The little girl incest victim
is portrayed as seductive, aggressive,
manipulative and lying.

Jean Baker Miller, a noted Psychiatrist who had

written the pathbreaking Towards a New Psychology of Women,

 

commented in a discussion of sexual violence:

The reality is that we all were taught Freudian
ideas. I never heard of incest in my own
training - except for learning that Freud made
that mistake, then recovered a year later and
reconstructed his theory. Because we were well
trained, we never believed stories of incest when
we heard them...The change has come from women
pressing on the profession, and from a few
heroines within the profession. They struggled
hard - often with a lot of courage - to challenge
their colleagues and question longstanding
theories which everyone honored (Herman, 1984, p.
8).

Male centered knowledge, according to these feminists, had
produced a world view in which women and children’s
experiences were either invisible, or where women and
children were seen as causing men to act in violent ways,
such as sexually abusing children (Rich, 1980). Not all
feminists claimsmakers were clinicians, however, and not
all clinical claimsmakers were feminists. A purely

feminist, anti-clinical discourse emerged within a broader

154
context of exploring male violence against women and
children.

The framework for feminist analyses of sexual abuse
was primarily taken from analyses of other social problems
- particularly rape and battering. Based on the study of
power and inequality, the work of these claimsmakers grew
out of their emphasis on what was perceived as the violence
toward women inherent in heterosexual relationships
(Griffin, 1971; Ward, 1985). Constructions from this
perspective put institutionalized power and violence at the
center of their work. In addition, they defined the family
as a rmflitically charged, oppressive institution, resting
on patriarchal social relations (Ward, 1985). The very
structure of the family was seen as leading to the
domination of children and creation of an environment where
intrafamilial sexual abuse occurred.

Feminist discussions of extrafamilial abuse were
framed by expanding this analysis and looking to the ways
in which adult power and childhood powerlessness are
features of all social institutions (Butler, 1978). By
framing their construction in the language of domination
and subordination, feminists unravelled the ways in which
sexual victimization is seamlessly woven into the fabric of
everyday life. This view tied the institutional,
structural power men have over children--who are seen as

fathers’ property-~and gender socialization processes which

155
sanction aggression in boys, and blur, even erase, the
lines between violent behavior and normative male behavior.
Elizabeth Ward (1985:4) captures this point of view in her

work Father-Daughter Rape:

 

Father-daughter sexual union is implicitly
sanctioned, from the Bible to the latest movie-
star marriage. When this is integrated with the

fact that an enormous number of girl-children are

raped by men within their own families, then the

reality of existence for the daughter becomes
plain. To be born female is to be a (potential)

rape victim, from that moment on. Girl babies

are raped. Girl toddlers are raped. Girl

children are raped. And grown women are raped.

From the feminist discourse, several central claims
emerged: men sexually abuse large numbers of girls; far
from being aberrant, this is a commonplace aspect of
women’s oppression in a gender stratified society; and
sexual abuse is, at best, negative and worst, tortuous, for
children. These claims were frequently discussed and

debated in the clinical discourse.

The Clinical Construction: The Discourse on Trauma

While feminists were focusing on child sexual abuse as
a distortion of power and a form of rape, and victims were
beginning' to (document their' experiences, clinicians
attended to the family dynamics which they believed
produced incest. The role reversal of daughters and
mothers — where mothers were jphysically or emotionally
absent from their families and daughters became their

mother’s replacement in the household division of labor and

156
in bed - became the central paradigm for clinically
understanding child sexual abuse. As a therapist focusing
on child and family issues told me:

We (a local social service agency) see many
families where the daughter has essentially
become the mother. Sometimes I think it’s real
erie when the daughter looks so much like the mom
- it’s like the father/husband sees them as the
same person. He’s blurred the boundaries between
the adult and the child and then he acts on his
distortion. He puts the daughter in the mom’s
role in the family system.

Two foci of the clinical literature have been: the
analysis of presenting symptoms which act as clues that a
client has been sexually abused; and the construction of a
traumatic stress theory for understanding the immediate and
lasting effects of abuse (Courtois, 1988).

Symptoms which act as indicators of abuse are wide
ranging and inclusive. Lists usually consist of the
following types of "problems:"

Unusual knowledge and/or interest in sexual acts

or terminology in relationship to the child’s age

and developmental stage; increased fears or needs

for reassurance; regression, such as returning to

thumb sucking, baby-talk, crying excessively,

withdrawing into fantasy worlds; running away

from home; skipping school; use of alcohol or

drugs; sudden loss or increase in appetite;

enuresis; complaints of pain around the genitals;

and pregnancy; National Committee for the

Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect, 1981).

These signs of behavioral, physical or emotional changes
were intended to help clinicians identify the hidden sexual
abuse victim. Physical abuse, was believed to have clear,

readable signs of maltreatment - signs that were, however,

157
sometimes misinterpreted or ignored when they were
attributed to the family - which made it a medical problem.
Sexual abuse, in contrast, was seen as a problem which
required therapeutic decoding. One clinician who worked
with children who were in the process of revealing their
sexual abuse experience for the first time commented:

Physical abuse is easier to document because you

can see it. In cases of sexual abuse you have to

get kids to talk and that’s difficult. It’s

important for clinicians to be able to assess

sexual abuse cases. SI always look for feelings

of: shame, fear, a sense of guilt, self-

destructiveness, insecurity and isolation. These

are symptoms of a lot of problems, but I see them

so often in sexually abused children that that’s

what I think of first.

Part of the therapeutic decoding was in finding
analogous traumas from which to make comparative
generalizations, and construct diagnostic categories. The
feminist rape crisis movement and feminist clinicians who
treated rape victims had embraced the idea that sexually
assaulted women had psychological experiences which matched
those of concentration camp survivors, accident victims,
natural disaster victims and war veterans who had "Post

Traumatic Stress Disorder." Bearing the medical legitimacy

of Psychiatry’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (American

 

Psychiatric Association, 1987), Post Traumatic Stress
Disorder was identified as:

...the clinical manifestation of problems
associated. ‘with 'trauma induced. during’ the
catastrophe and represented by the post-traumatic
stress reactions.

158
Post Traumatic Stress reactions are a:

set of conscious and unconscious behaviors and emotions
associated with dealing with the memories of the stresses
of the catastrophe and immediately afterwards (Figley,
1985; Courtois, 1988).

The complex of symptoms associated. with. Post Traumatic
Stress may include:
recurrent and intrusive recollections of the
event; recurrent nightmares; a vivid sense of the

event recurring again; inability to concentrate;
feeling of estrangement and detachment from

others; constricted emotional responses;
restlessness, nervousness, irritability and
emotional lability (American Psychiatric

Association, 1987).
The use of the Post Traumatic designation, and language for
child sexual abuse cases was widely adapted by clinicians,
family violence scholars, the New Right, child
protectionists and feminists. In the trauma construction,
sexual abuse is understood as a catastrophic event, with
serious repercussions throughout the victim’s life cycle.

As a ‘victim/client focused..narrative, the clinical
discourse embraced many of the post World War II
developments in psychological theory. John Bowlby’s (1958)
theories on attachment, separation and loss, as well as
Heinz Kohut’s (1971; 1977) development of Self-Psychology,
and the work of the British Object Relations School
(Winnicott, 1965; Fairbairn, 1952), riveted attention on
the quality of relationships between infants and/or
children and their caretakers. Clinicians used these

theories of ideal development to measure the psychological

159

state of sexual abuse victims. Conceptualized as a
developmental issue, child sexual abuse became a problem of
the self, and of identity. (This was clearly seen in the
creation of the identity of "survivor" that was constructed
by a joint effort of feminists, clinicians and the mass
media and that will be discussed in Chapter 6.) All of the
clinicians I talked to spent a greatdeal of time thinking
about the impact of sexual abuse on a developing sense of
self. Their concerns were voiced in the following
statements:

* The problem of incest is the hurt of the secret.
It creates a self-concept based on the idea of
badness. As an adult if a person never deals
with the abuse she becomes a shell of a person, a
person without a sense of self.

* When parents are the abusers the amount of trauma
a child experiences is greatly increased. Not
only is the child physically violated, but its a
psychological violation as well - a betrayal.
This can lead to a fragmented sense of self for
the sexually abused child.

* The most severe cases of sexual abuse I treat (a
therapist working in a community setting) are
complicated by the fact that the mother is
somehow involved. Not necessarily that the

mother is doing the sexual abuse, but somehow she

160

is permitting it to go on. Some of these
children are so shattered by the absence of
parental care that they become multiple
personalities. We used to think that there were
very few multiple personalities in the country.
As we uncovered layers of sexual abuse we also
began to recognize more and more multiple
personalities and the relationship between the
two.

* Sexual abuse is a sign of a maladaptive life on
the part of the perpetrator and the entire
family. It produces maladapted kids who, without
treatment, will grow up to produce more
problematic children and families. Entire
generations of families are psychologically
ruined by this.

* Sexually abused children are stigmatized and
isolated. They get coerced into silence. As
they develop they have a sense of themselves as
damaged. They blame themselves and grow up
believing something is terribly wrong with them.
They have low self-esteem and have impaired
capacities to form meaningful attachments.

To legitimate claims of trauma, as well as other

issues, feminist, clinicians and subsequently, child

protectionists relied on the expertise of the emerging,

161
academically recognized and often federally funded study of

family violence.

Family Violence Research

Early in the 19703 sociological and psychological
research into family violence became popular, after having
been ignored for decades. Examining the sociological
literature, O’Brien (1971) had reported that between 1939
and 1969 there was not a single article with the word
violence in the title published in sociology’s leading
journal on the topic of marriage and the family. Until the
women’s movement and the battered child’s movement made
violence within families visible, scholars took their
analytic category of the companionate marriage not as an
ideal type, but as a description of reality. Starting in
the 19703, however, family violence became a topic of
extensive theory and research. By the end of the 19803
several new academic journals and many newsletters had
appeared devoted primarily to violence against women and

children including: Victimology: An Internat ional

 

Journal; Child Abuse and Neglect; Response; Connections:

 

 

 

In the Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse; and The
Interpersonal Journal of Family Violence, to name a few.
Tied to this literary explosion came a wide array of

empirical research, and social service programs, on

162
battering, physical abuse, marital rape and child sexual
abuse.
David Finkelhor, whose work has been influenced by
pioneering family violence scholars Straus and Gelles, was
the first sociologist to systematically focus on child

sexual abuse. His 1979 book, Sexually Victimized Children,

 

was pathbreaking in the documentation and understanding of
abuse. Conducting a study of 796 college students,
Finkelhor discovered that 19% of women and 9% of men had
been sexually abused before they were 13. In this and
subsequent work (1984; 1986) Finkelhor elaborated an
analysis of gender socialization, social isolation, income
and generational inequalities linked to child sexual abuse.

Another major figure in sociological research of
family violence, Diana Russell, has produced the most
systematic and generalizable survey of women sexually
abused as children (1986). Russell’s findings reinforce
those of Finkelhor and speak to the widespread incidence
and prevalence of sexual abuse and the social factors which
put girls at risk. Importantly, Russell’s study is widely
quoted and treated by others in the field of sexual abuse
as objective evidence of the conditions of a social
problem.

As exemplified by Finkelhor and Russell, family
violence scholars participated as claimsmakers in the

discovery of sexual abuse. This was true to the degree

163

that they were not only documenting the existence of
sexually abused. children, but were advocating and
reinforcing the view that the abuse of children be
identified as a social problem. Designing research agendas
aimed at procuring government support also made
sociologists claimants in the activity of social problem
construction (Finkelhor, 1986).

Part of the sociological claim. about child sexual
abuse was that it shared characteristics with other forms
of family violence, but differed in some ways because of
the unique form of trauma. induced by sexual assault
(Finkelhor, 1985; Tierney and. Corwin, 1983). Battered
women were seen as the victims of gendered violence caused
by traditional socialization practices, male aggression and
dominance and family roles. Physical abuse of children was
identified as a problem of generational inequality, which
was confounded. by the fact that adults had. culturally
legitimate power over children that was sometimes
maintained by physical force.

Unlike physical discipline, sexual interactions
between adults and children in contemporary American
culture, were never part of legitimate social relations.
Sexual abuse was therefore viewed as a different, more
extreme problem than physical abuse. Children’s sexual
victimization was defined as a psychologically

devastating, socially isolating, physically coercive event

164
which occurred primarily at the instigation of adult
relatives within the home. Sociologists used their
research on this population to document the extent of the
problem, to identify its legacy within families (which was
seen in the generations of sexually abused children within
individual families) to propose research agendas and to
offer policy solutions (Russell, 1986; Finkelhor, 1986).
The work of these scholars served as claims and found its
way into the claimsmaking activities of the other
constructionists, including child protectionists who viewed

children as an endangered population.

The Child Protection Response: The Discourse on Childhood

The world which family violence researchers were
documenting was not unfamiliar to child protectionists who
had a long history of intervening on behalf of children
and who had been instrumental in uncovering the physical
abuse of children. Emerging from the tradition of early
20th century child savers, these child advocates came
primarily from the fields of social work, public health
nursing and pediatrics. In the 19603, along with pediatric
radiologists, child protectionists had found widespread
physical abuse of children which they had identified as the
”battered child syndrome" (Helfer and Kempe, 1968; Pfhol,
1977). Treating physically abused children and their

families, child protectionists began to hear many accounts

165

of sexual abuse. In Lansing, Michigan this connection
between physical and sexual abuse led in 1975 to the
creation of a Community Mental Health project focused on
treating the entire family system. The Lansing model was
based on the highly publicized Parents United model which
had been developed in California by Giaretto and diffused
throughout the country.

When I began to interview individuals who had been
prominent in the field of child sexual abuse in Lansing
over and over again I was directed to three women who
initiated and then ran the Community Mental Health Project.
A child rights activist, a psychologist and a family
studies expert, these women each made significant and
lasting contributions to how child sexual abuse is dealt
with by local community structures. In my discussions with
each of them I was interested in how they understood
children’s sexual victimization and how that understanding
served as the underpinning for services.

According to the activist, who in the mid—19703 was
working with physically abused children:

The earliest documentation of incest in Lansing

was in 1976-1977. Then in 1977-1978 there was a

dramatic increase in the number of incest cases

reported. These cases were reported by the
children themselves. We (the treatment team)
made a conscious decision to believe the
children. At the same time we also decided to
view incest and extrafamilial child sexual abuse

as primarily mental health problems. I was

particularly concerned that the entire family

enter treatment and that whatever rupture had
occurred within the family be healed. The key

166

here really wasn’t the relationship between the
perpetrator and the victim - even when the
perpetrator was the father. The key was between
the mother and the victim. The mother’s ability
to bond with child was a clear indicator of how
much trauma the child would continue to
experience.

These views were echoed by the psychologist who added
other dimensions of concern:

Children who are sexually abused in the home are
frequently put in a position where they
experience role reversal - they must become the
mother. These families are dysfunctional and
cause their family members to be destructive
and/or victimized. I’m concerned that we are
moving toward a formula in sexual abuse circles
that says - kids who have been fondled are not as
bad off as kids who have experienced anal or
vaginal penetration. I think that a child who is
fondled by her father is in a bad family
situation and that this type of family also needs
treatment.

The family studies expert made the same points about
dysfunctional family units and the importance of treating
whole families. She gave an interesting perspective on
victims and perpetrators:

Adolescent perpetrators and victims have tended
to be ignored - particularly perpetrators. Part
of this is that adolescents are seen as sexually
charged individuals who do some experimentation.
Because we’re uncomfortable with this we tend to
try to ignore adolescent sexuality altogether.
This is going to backfire on the mental health
profession - we’re going to have adolescent
victims who grow up to experience other types of
family violence e51 adolescent perpetrators who
grow up to be the agents of that violence.
Adolescents may be in the process of separating
from their families, but they still need to be
treated with the rest of the family.

As evidenced by these experts, child protectionists

viewed family’ problems as interrelated, and focused on

167

incest. They did not embrace the feminist definition of
incest as a crime of rape. In fact feminists and child
protectionists frequently disagreed not only on
definitions, but also on. the treatment of perpetrators
within a therapeutic as opposed to criminal context. The
definition of individual families as pathological was a
definition which overlapped with the clinical construction
and pointed to the use of a medical model and a belief in
the idea that abuse occurred in sick, dysfunctional
families. Placing sexual abuse outside of normal patterns
produced by gender socialization and male dominance, led
child protectionists to see the family as a therapeutic
client or patient (Giaretto, 1982). This view allowed the
protectionists to provide services - a cure - to sexually
abused. children and. their families within ‘the existing
framework of social service agencies. One woman I
interviewed who had a master’s degree in public health and
a bachelor’s degree in nursing and who worked in a local
multi-service agency voiced a unique perspective on child
sexual abuse:

I see the community as the real client in cases

of sexual abuse. How are these families going to

function as good citizens and decent human

beings if we don’t treat them? We have to look

at the myths that have made us blind to sexual

abuse and I mean incest especially. We only

thought sexual abuse occurred in Appalachia and

in low income families. Now (1986) we know it

happens everywhere to anyone. Only by facing the

reality can we heal individuals, families and

communities. Social service agencies are the key
to treating and eradicating sexual abuse.

168

Availability of services in turn helped to legitimate
the claim that sexual abuse was a social problem and aided
the establishment of an industry catering to professionals
who treated victims. Books, toys, games and anatomically
correct dolls comprised the basic commodities of this
market which emerged rapidly and with great success
(Crewdson, 1988).

While protectionists enjoyed the popularity and
legitimacy accorded. mainstream child welfare endeavors,
they also experienced a significant conflict in their
claimsmaking activities. In uncovering the physical abuse
of children in the late 19603 and early 19703 child
protectionists had aligned themselves with physicians
(Nelson, 1984; Kempe and Kempe, 1984).? The profession of
medicine had been unambivalent about the problem of
battered children and had benefited from the influx of
patients (Pfhol, 1977). Sexual abuse proved to be a
different type of problem for several reasons. First,
unlike jphysical abuse, sexual abuse frequently occurred
without leaving physical signs. Those symptoms which
sometimes appeared - including anything from rectal tears
to venereal disease - were mostly overlooked or attributed
to other causes. Without a clearly delineated physical
dimension, sexual abuse was defined as outside the
professional boundaries of most medical specialties.

Secondly, the one specialty within medicine that could

169

have addressed the dynamics of child sexual abuse,
psychiatry, had. been at the forefront of the cultural
denial of the problem since the 18903. Psychiatry
symbolized the convergence of social forces which had acted
to silence children’s sexual ‘victimization (Rush, 1977;
Masson, 1984; Finkelhor, 1984). The role psychiatry has
taken in the construction of child sexual abuse as a social
problem has been debated from within the profession.
According to Roland Summitt (American Psychiatric News,
March 18, 1988:18), an oft quoted psychiatric expert on
child sexual abuse:

Child sexual abuse has divided psychiatrists

since the beginning of psychiatry, and it has not

been along analytic, behavioral, neurological or

biochemical lines...Psychoanalysts, for example,

are not more resistant to believing that sexual

abuse has occurred than are other psychia-

trists...peop1e who don’t consider themselves
psychoanalytically or psychodynamically oriented,
people who ordinarily are indifferent or reactive

to Freud still accept the elementary assumptions

of psychoanalytic theory when confronted with a

suspected sexually abused child.

.A third mitigating factor which prevented physicians
from participating in claimsmaking activities about sexual
abuse until relatively late was the nature of the problem
itself. While physicians had rarely been accused of
physically assaulting a patient, some physicians had been
accused of sexually abusing patients. Many analyses of
these assaults had used the paradigm of incest to explain

the process of physician/patient sexual interactions

(Penfold and Walker, 1983). Given this configuration, it

170
is not surprising that the medical response to child sexual
abuse was slow. In fact, while other professions began
focusing on sexual abuse in conferences and workshops in
the 19703, it took until 1983 for the American Medical
Association to have a conference focused on the topic of
sexual abuse (AMA, 1988).

Medicine’s limited reaction to the problem meant that
protectionists had 103t a strong’ partner in the
construction process. For the social problem itself the
absence of medical legitimation meant that a powerful force
of’ political lobbying and. organization was absent
(Newburger and Bourne, 1978). Although political, medical
and legal forces did ultimately join forces to advocate
for the sexually abused child - primarily in debates about
children testifying about abuse in front of accused
perpetrators - there was never the sustained, integrated
approach to sexual abuse that occurred for physically

abused children (Nelson, 1984).

The New Right: The Discourse on Sexuality and the Family
As feminists, clinicians and protectionists focused
on abuse of children, the New Right also began to mobilize
on behalf of the young. Conceptualizing sexual assault as
one element in contemporary society’s degradation of

traditional moral values, The Child Protection Alert, a

 

newspaper of the Christian Voice Foundation, an evangelical

171
New Right group, gave the following description of what it
defined as "the war on children" in 1985:

The war on children is a battle that is currently

raging across this country. If you already know

that, if you already understand the true torture

and suffering than do not read this section.

However, most Americans do not realize how

terrible child abuse is. They do not believe

that the pain and the death are real. If you are

one of those people who is not convinced that

children in America are suffering not only from

hunger and cold, but from real physical pain and
death at the hands of those who should be showing

them love, then read this whole article and read

the footnotes (Child Protection Alert, 1985).

The vision of the endangered child pervades the New
Right’s discourse on child sexual abuse. Torture and/or
death, were presented as almost inevitable outcomes both
of incest and abuse by strangers. Abuse within families
was defined by the New Right as the worst kind of violence
that occurred in society. Part of the power of incest
rested in its generational continuity; a legacy identified
by the right as a form of "parasitic aggression." Like
clinicians, the New Right believed incest emanated from the
mother’s absence in the family due to social or work
obligations which gave unspoken permission for a sexual
relationship between the father and daughter (Data Center,
1981). Interestingly, the father was depicted as a past
sexual abuse victim who had been deprived of a "wholesome"
family in which to grow up and learn appropriate cultural

norms about parent-child interactions (Viguerie, 1981). He

was the victim and the mother was the perpetrator. This

172
theme of the father’s being victimized. and. mother not
protecting her children came up frequently in my interviews
with representatives of the New Right. A member of a local
church organization seemed to be speaking for many on the
Right when she said:

Women work so much today because they want the

material rewards which come from economic

success. It’s like they care more about what
they wear and how nice their cars are then they

do about their husbands and children. Everyone

knows that men need help when it comes to

children. If the husband/father has had a past

that included sexual abuse he is likely to do the

same to his children. The wife has to act as a

brake on his potential to abuse. He can’t help

but repeat what he has learned.

.A major topic in the New Right’s discourse has been
its emphasis on sexual abuse within day care centers.
Child care outside of the home led, in the eyes of the
Right, to increased vulnerability to child pornographers,
child molesters and child stealers. By linking these
types of abuse together, the perception of a child in
danger in the world outside the home was heightened. The
New Right labeled all forms of child abuse moral
perversions, and day care centers came to represent the
bankruptcy of American values (Viguerie, 1981).
Symbolizing the desertion of mothers from the family, day
care centers were identified as focal points for the abuse
of children. When the McMartin story appeared in 1983 and

employees of the day care center were charged with sexually

abusing hundreds of children over a ten year period, the

173
New Right seized upon it as evidence of normative
conditions in the industry and demanded child care centers
be closed (Crewdson, 1988).

Emphasis on day care abuse pitted the New Right
squarely against feminists’ understandings of children,
child abuse and day care centers. Feminists viewed the
problem of sexual abuse as an issue of inequality; the New
Right defined. it as a crisis wrought by the day care
industry. Because the Right’s focus was an attack on the
women’s movement, whidh it perceived had encouraged women
to leave the home, and therefore had made children
vulnerable, feminists responded directly against these
claims by producing a number of articles for the feminist

press, including Off Our Backs (1986), and Sojourner

 

 

(1987). According to feminist-clinician Linda Sanford
(1987:13):

...the focus on child sexual abuse in day care is
really a backlash against women’s rights, and
particularly working women. It’s been
interesting to me as a clinician in the field for
12 years that all along we knew there was child
sexual abuse on military bases. We also knew
that many pedophiles gravitated toward Big
Brother, Little League, Boy Scouts, different
kinds of organizations where they could have a
lot of access and a lot of power over kids. And
we never talked about closing down those kinds of
organizations.

While feminists published in their own newspapers, the
New Right had access to the mainstream media, including
television stations they owned. Day care abuse cases

became common place on news programs and specials. The

174

McMartin case, for instance, was not only publicized for
weeks on television network news programs, in the large
urban presses, but also was given special 15—20 minute
segments on programs like "20/20," and the "Phil Donahue
Show.” Incest cases rarely received the same amount of
attention - although Katherine Brady, author of Father’s
Eye did appear on Phil Donahue with her parents and
discussed her father’s sexual abuse of her - as more public
incidents of sexual abuse did. A perception was created
that more children were abused outside the home, than in
the family. This perception remained despite the American
Humane Society’s estimate that only 1.5% of reported cases
of child sexual abuse occur in settings li_k_e day care
(Freedman, et. al. 1987).

Part of the Right’s analysis of children’s sexual
victimization was integrated into discussions about, and
agitation for, the plight of missing children. This public
concern began in 1979 with the disappearance of Etan Patz-
a six year old New York boy abducted on his way to school.
It was heightened by the first of the Atlanta child
murders, which would ultimately result in the death of 28
children; and the abduction and murder of Adam Walsh in
Florida. In the wake of these events New Right and media
attention increasingly focused on the kidnapping of
children by strangers. As estimates of the problem

escalated - the number of missing children in 1981 was

175
placed at between 1.3 and 1.8 million - the New Right
joined forces with the federal government to identify a
”new” social problem - stranger abduction (Spitzer, 1986).

Most notable about what became known as the Missing
Children’s Movement was the series of erroneous ideas and
facts that formed the basis of the claim that there was a
problem. First, the number of missing children was
inflated by collapsing statistics on runaway, homeless and
missing children (Schneider, 1987). Second, although the
information disseminated by various authorities, like the
National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, argued
that stranger abductions formed the bulk of missing
children cases, in fact the vast majority of incidents were
kidnappings by non-custodial parents in divorce cases
(Schneider, 1987). Stranger abductions accounted for only
35 of the F.B.I. investigations into missing children
reports in 1981 and 56 investigations in 1985 (Spitzer,
1986).

Even in the face of these small numbers, the
perception of an epidemic of child abductions was fueled by
placing pictures of children, presumed missing, on grocery
bags, utility bills and milk cartons. From this campaign
came a mass effort to fingerprint children, put computer
chips in their teeth, and other varieties of tracking
devices. The Michigan Department of Education along with

the state’s Attorney General’s office created a "Child Find

176
Kit" which it described as ”invaluable should your child be
missing." Offering to distribute the kit to all children
in schools, the department also gave parents advice on how
to create their own kits. According to the Education
department, a kit should have:
A recent clear, color photograph of your child
(take a new one at least once per year);
fingerprints and footprints; birth certificate;
photograph of all scars, birthmarks, deformities;
dental and medical records; lock of hair;
physical description, including height, weight,
color of eyes and hair; sample of handwriting; a
recording of the child’s voice; and a complete
family history - paternal and maternal.
(Michigan Department of Education and the Office
of the Attorney General, 1985).
The Missing Children’s movement effectively marketed these
types of safety techniques and established an overarching
belief that children were endangered outside the home and
that their activities had to be controlled by adults. This
was true despite an Pulitze Prize winning expose written
for the Denver Post in May, 1985 which received national
television and newspaper coverage, and revealed the fact
that the Missing Children’s Movement’s claims about
abducted children were a fabrication (Denver Post, 1985).
Ironically, at the same time that evidence mounted that
children were not in great danger of stranger abduction,
the Department of Health and Human Services began funding
Missing Children Demonstration Projects around the country.

Wishing to clarify the "facts" of missing children,

the Office of the U.S. Attorney General organized a

177
commission to investigate the plight of these children. In

its 1986 report entitled, America’s Missing and Exploited

 

Children: Their Safety and Their Future, the commission
described the number of victims, reported types of abuse
committed and provided profiles of abductors. The Justice
Department’s report energetically supported the need for
strong families to protect children from potential dangers.
Although the commission recognized family violence, even
acknowledging that many children run away because of
incest, the New Right interpreted the commission findings
as a mandate to keep children safely in the home, away from
strangers who might harm them.

In the Missing Children’s Movement the New Right found
the perfect chord for sounding the themes of endangerment
and terror which it saw as central to the victimization of
children and the moral decay of the family. Reflecting

these concerns, the New Right’s Child Protection Report

 

states:

50,000 children are...presumed to be victims of
stranger abduction, a crime of predatory cruelty
usually committed by pedophiles, pornographers,
black market baby peddlers or psychotics bidding
desperately for parenthood. Only a few cases are

solved . Even fewer stranger abducted children
are recovered alive (Child Protection Alert,
1985).

By linking the problems of sexual abuse, stranger
abduction, child pornography and child murder together,
the New Right was able to argue for the protection of

children within the sanctity of the family. In particular,

178
child pornography, which had been mentioned by one of the
child protectionists I interviewed was discussed at length
by all five of the subjects from the New Right. Their
concerns were highlighted by the following comments:

* Children are not being cared for by their
mothers and are being exploited in
pornographic films, books and magazines.
Children who are exposed in this way are
lost to prostitution and drug abuse.

* Child pornography is a vast industry in the U.S.
and internationally. Sexual abuse and "kiddie
porn" come from the same problem - the
disintegration of family values in America.

* Pornography is a growing problem in cities and
suburbs. Children are being kidnapped and used
in pornographic videos. Their lives are ruined
before they even begin. How are we going to
protect the children from this kind of filth?

Part of the New Right’s argument about pornography and
abduction - things that were believed to happen outside of
families - was aimed at what they saw as the exaggerated
emphasis on incest which feminists, clinicians and
protectionists had produced. Fighting the assault on the
family, a number of New Right evangelical Christian groups
organized chapters of Victims of Child Abuse Legislation

(VOCAL) (Crewdson, 1988).

179

It was no accident that the Right chose VOCAL as the
acronym for its campaign against “exaggerated claims" of
sexual abuse - claims which they literally believed were
voiced too loudly. Wanting a different, "more reasonable"
form of speech to be heard, 120 chapters of VOCAL were
organized throughout the United States. The central claim
of the chapters was that children liee about sexual abuse
in order to gain power over their parents. Far from the
victims the "leftist" media had portrayed, children were
viewed by VOCAL members as malicious perpetrators of a
contemporary witch-hunt (Crewdson, 1988) . VOCAL members
marched on state legislatures across the country to make
the public aware that their membership - comprised mostly
of wives whose husbands were accused of sexual assault-
were the true victims of sexual abuse.

The New Right’s membership identified the emphasis on
incest, and the conviction of “innocent" fathers in such
cases, as part of a broader feminist and leftist agenda to
destroy the American family. Paul Weyrich, one of the
founding members of the New Right, identified the feminist
and leftist analysis of incest and other forms of family
violence as anti—family. He wondered:

Who is behind the anti-family movement? ...those

who do not believe in God, hardcore socialists,

economic opportunists eager to make a buck from

pornography, abortion, etc...and women’s libbers

who want a different political and cultural order
(Viguerie, 1981:191).

180

At the heart of the attack on the family was
children’s usurping of adult authority and power. This was
expressed by a member of the Michigan Chapter of V.O.C.A.L.
I interviewed who was outraged by the degree of legitimacy
being given to the children’s reports of sexual abuse:

Children are believed when they talk about what

adults do to them sexually. And children lie!

We all know children lie - every day. But we

still have this social environment now that says

children don’t lie about sexual abuse so they
should be taken seriously when they state they’ve

been abused. Look at all the power that gives

them over their parents. It’s a situation where

- ”Daddy better not deprive me of anything or

I’ll accuse him of assaulting me." People think

kids aren’t calculating or they don’t realize the

power they’ve been given? Look at all the men

who have been falsely accused of sexual abuse-

and I include my husband in this - the epidemic

isn’t about sexually abused children. It’s

about honest men - falsely accused.

In order to combat the attack on the family (military
language is frequently used by the New Right to describe
this situation) forces from the New' Right created the
Family Protection Act which they then attempted to pass
through Congress. Drafted by Robert Billings, Executive
Director of the Moral Majority and introduced by
conservative Senators Paul Laxalt and Jake Garn, first in
1979 and again in 1981, the Family Protection Act aimed to
restore the family, solidify parental authority and create
a climate where traditional moral values could be pursued
(Schulman, 1981). This agenda could be carried out by:
reinstating prayer in school; eliminating abortion rights;

prohibiting minors from purchasing contraceptive devices;

181
curbing academic freedom; prohibiting homosexuality; and
removing women from the workplace (David, 1986). Although
this act never passed, the various concerns which it
addressed have remained central to the New Right’s platform
in the 19803 and have been addressed as single issues

rather than through an integrated program.

The Mess Medie’s Constructions of Child Sexual Abuse: The
Discourse on Feelings and Facts

While feminists, clinicians, child protectionists and
the New Right began their claimsmaking activities in 1975,
it was not until 1984 that the mass media focused on the
problem and became claimsmakers. (How this problem made
the transition between the two worlds - profession-
al/academic and public/mass media - will be covered in the
next chapter.) According to an article published in Parade
Magazine (1985:16):

When they come to write the history of the

decade, the scribes will surely pinpoint 1984-85

as the period in which America recognized child

sexual abuse as a serious nationwide problem.
The author’s evidence for attention to the problem relied
on the McMartin Case, the Jordan, Minnesota Case, Senator
Paula Hawkin’s revelation that she had been sexually abused
as a child and a report from the Federal Department of
Health and Human Services.

The Health and Human Services report was important

because it solidified the perception that a social problem

182

existed. The report emphasized: the large number of
abused children (one in every four girls; one in every nine
or ten boys); the amount of incest committed in families
(77% of reported sexual abuse cases); the proportion of
perpetrators who were sexually abused as children; and
evidence that sexual abuse happens in all social classes
and is usually kept secret by the sexually abused child
(Department of Health and Human Services, April 1985).

The government report had followed widespread coverage
of sexual abuse on television, in newspapers and in
magazines. In September of 1983, _'I‘i_me magazine featured
child sexual abuse as a cover story; Newsweek followed in
May of 1984. Reports also appeared in ‘£i£e_ magazine

(December, 1984), Psychology Today (May, 1984), Parade

 

Magazine (July, 1984) and Family Weekly (June, 1985). Many

 

newspapers did a week long series on child sexual abuse.

For instance in Michigan, both the Detroit Free Press and

 

the Lansing State Journal published series on incest (July
15-19, 1985). National Public Radio broadcast a week long
series on child sexual abuse in April of 1984. On
television, "Something About Amelia" aired in January of
1984, followed by ”Kids Don’t Tell" in March of 1985.
Several more films aired in 1985, as did an after-school-
special about child molestation in 1986.

Concentrated media attention created the perception

that a new, shocking social problem was appearing. This

183

perception was widely shared even among "experts" - for
instance, not one of my interview subjects - people
actively working in the field - had any awareness of sexual
abuse as an ongoing problem, with a social history. Given
this ahistorical vision perpetuated by the media, an image
was promoted of modern family disintegration and
increasing danger--mostly outside the home. The perception
grew that something was changing in the social world that
made children vulnerable to adults, particularly strangers
in new, sexually violent ways. Television and radio
coverage of the "epidemic of sexual abuse" was very
important in creating a homogenized view of the problem.

Examples from programs that were first broadcast
between September of 1984 and May of 1986 show how sexual
abuse was being constructed by the media in its (public)
emergent phase. On September 14, 1984 Phil Donahue devoted
a program to child sexual abuse. The guests that day were
Senator Paula Hawkins - identified as a sexual abuse

survivor; Elizabeth Holtzman - a District Attorney from New

York and Roland Summitt - a psychiatrist specializing in
child sexual abuse. The picture of sexual abuse painted
that day was of a dramatic, desperate situation. For

instance, Summitt reported that in Florida there was a
gonorrhea epidemic among two year olds. Paula Hawkins
stated that after she revealed that she had been abused she

received 10,000 letters from peOple around the country-

184
most of these letters chronicled years of sexual abuse and
of silence.

In December of 1984 Morning Edition — a radio program
broadcast on National Public Radio-featured a report on
sexual abuse. Interestingly, this program not only dealt
with the "tragedy” of sexual abuse but also attended to its
social construction. Featured on the program were Judith
Herman - the feminist psychiatrist, Edward Dramond - a
media critic and Steven Ronald a reporter based in
Minneapolis. In a wide ranging discussion each individual
focused on the media’s role in creating the perception of a
social problem. Herman stated:

The media has seized on day care centers as a

focal point of abuse because it’s safer to talk

about than abuse within the family... The
ground work for this movement began in the rape
crisis and battered women’s movements, but the
trend of focusing on abuse only developed when

the media began reporting about child sexual

abuse.

Dramond, the media critic pointed out the fact that
the news media, which he believes is fundamentally
conservative, but is usually considered liberal, had to
start reporting on sexual abuse because of pressure from
the women’s movement. This thought was also expressed by
Ronald, the reporter, who credited ‘the film "Something
About Amelia" "with forcing and enabling news organizations
to deal with incest."

A segment of the ABC television news program "20/20"

was devoted to sexual abuse of children in January of 1985.

185

This piece, entitled ”Why the Silence?”, was clearly
focused on sexual abuse as tragedy. Using the McMartin
case as an organizing point, experts like Kee Macfarlane
and Roland Summit, gave long descriptions of how to
identify and then treat sexual abuse victims. Macfarlane,
who was the primary therapist working with the young
victims in the McMartin case said:

Every child who is sexually abused gives off

silent signals. These signals include:

incessant crying, acting out behavior, fear of
adults and nightmares.

Summit addressed treatment and cultural issues by
saying:

Children get over sexual abuse when someone

believes them. Parents need to believe their

children. What we are seeing (the number of
sexual abuse cases) is not an aberration. It is
something that has been going on for all time.

We have a chance, the privilege now to hear it

or we can believe it is a fraud being perpetrated

by some zealots. I think we’re privileged.

Another aspect of child sexual abuse was explored on
Larry King’s syndicated talk show in May of 1986. Among
King’s guests for this program were an incest survivor who
was suing her family for $600,000 - charging that incest is
a type of fraud; Fred Berlin an Associate Professor of
Psychiatry from Johns Hopkins University and Sam, a
perpetrator of sexual abuse. The sexual abuse of men was
discussed at length and Dr. Berlin declared that "men are

the most silenced of all victims." Perhaps the most

interesting and revealing aspect of this show was that

186

people from around the country could call and talk to
experts about sexual abuse. One call came from a woman who
said she felt "that I might have been sexually abused by a
doctor when I was between the ages of five and seven." The
response to this caller was inunediate and without
equivocation: "If she thinks it happened, it happened."
Other discussions that night focused on the "fact" that
incest is not a sexually motivated event; Child sexual
abuse exists in epidemic proportions in the U.S.; and boys
are more stigmatized by the taboo of sexual abuse.

Ann Landers, the popular newspaper advice columnist,
also provided a forum for sexual abuse to be discussed.
During the past several years she has published a number of
correspondence from readers struggling with sexual abuse.
Lander’s advice has directed parents to educate their
children about sexual abuse, to realize that relatives are
the most frequent perpetrators of abuse and. to remove
victims from ‘the home. The letters Lander’s receives
about sexual abuse includes a wide range of problems and
views. The letters tend to be from children, adolescents
or young adults who are currently being victimized; experts
in the field who want to share advice on prevention or
treatment; and people who have either molested children for
people who have ben sexually abused who want to use their
experiences to either disagree or agree with particular

pieces of advice. Not only does Lander’s column, as well

187

as her sister’s "Dear Abbey,“ give people a way to speak
out about sexual abuse, it also provides newspapers with a
consistent source of bold faced headlines about sexual
abuse: "Don’t Stay in. a House with Sexually .Abusive
Fathers;“ "Sexual Molester Often Close Relative of Child;'
and "Information the Best Defense Against Abuse" are just a
few examples of the headlines used in Lender’s column in
1984 and 1985.

Not all the claimsmakers were pleased with this deluge
of media attention. Feminists, particularly radical
feminists, who had received negative press for their
activities during' the jprevious decade, reacted. strongly
against the mass media’s attention to child sexual abuse,
fearing that the media would distort its perspective. In
addition, feminists were outraged. at 'the fact that the
popular media sometimes relied on perpetrators of sexual
abuse to educate children about prevention strategies.
Occurring in both the print media and on television, the
use of offenders as experts gave men who abused children
(the perpetrators who were quoted were always men), control
over the definitional process, making sexual abuse a
problem for male perpetrators to solve (Off Our Backs,
1986).

An additional concern of feminists was that the media
did not present sexual abuse as a problem based on gender

or generational inequality. Clinical or child

188
protectionist perspectives were more amenable to the
media’s view of the problem which focused on individual
problems and solutions. Feminist solutions to sexual

abuse rested on empowering children and reducing adult

 

power. Clinical and child protectionists responses were
aimed at restoring a protected, sentimental childhood to
abused children or helping adult survivors grieve the loss
of childhood (Courtois, 1988). Neither of these strategies
put forth by clinicians or child protectionists required a
realignment of adult-child relationships; thus, they were
compatible with mainstream media reports which spoke about
protection and control of children, rather than power.
Regardless of the media’s perspectives, their roles in
bringing child sexual abuse into public view have not been
disputed. The mass media have acted as a forum for the
discourses on sexual exploitation, as well as many forms of
sexuality. As such, media have served as a modern,
technologically advanced confessional, allowing discourses
on sexuality to become public. Foucault (1980) has argued
that in Western societies everything about sexuality
needed, by cultural dictate, to be confessed endlessly and
denied energetically. Such is the case of child sexual
abuse which is focused on almost everyday in the media-
either in newspaper reports about specific cases or in
documentaries or special series on television, and

especially on television talk shows. There is usually a

189
two-fold focus and tone to these reports. One aspect of
the reporting is the negative judgments which define child
sexual abuse in general. A second feature concerns the
types and amounts of details which are provided. This

reporting requires, and instructs, the reader or viewer

 

both to think and feel that sexual abuse is awful, while
absorbing many details about the sexual encounter. A good
example of this phenomenon can be found in the Lansing

State Journal (July 15-19, 1985). Running a five day

 

series called, ”Incest: Society’s Shame" the Journal used
the following paragraph as a lead each day:
Sexual abuse of children by family members is an
ancient, worldwide evil that continues to this
hour. This is the (#) in a series of the horror
called incest.
This introduction was followed by a specific description of
an abuse case, like the following:
I don’t believe my father ever had intercourse
with me, said Frances who is now 45. It was more
touching, fondling and rubbing.
The instruction about the horror of incest, followed by
details of an assault displays a cultural ambivalence
towards children’s sexual abuse - the desire to hear all
within the confines of feeling outraged. The feeling gives
permission for the knowledge, and requires no action or
plan for social change. Outrage is simply enough; feeling
becomes social action.

The dual message about feelings and facts was the main

characteristic of the media’s constructions of child sexual

190

abuse as a social problem. No matter how much attention
was given to the problem, stories on sexual abuse still
bore the label of ”shocking" or "secret.” In 1989, for
instance, following five years of extensive coverage of
sexual abuse in. all :media, reports on sexual abuse on
television news programs still begin most often with the
phrase, "shocking' news tonight” (For example, ABC
Eyewitness News, January 15, 1989). Given the incidence
and prevalence of sexual abuse and the documentation of how
commonplace it is, the label of shocking can be seen as a
claim that the media make about the problem. The label of
shock is most often affixed when the perpetrator is an
authority figure, a prominent community leader, a priest, a
school principal, a boy scout leader, not a family member—
so that it is the violation of the perpetrator’s role that
seems more shocking than the sexual abuse itself.

The medias’ attention to sexual abuse is parallel to a
phenomenon Sherry Turkle observed in her study of computers
and the self: ”What disturbs is closely tied to what
fascinates and what fascinates is deeply rooted in what
disturbs" (Turkle, 1984:33). Part of what has disturbed
and fascinated claimsmakers in the modern construction of
sexual abuse has been the short and long term effects on
the victim. Concern over impact on identity has
characterized all of the discourses, has been central to

each narrative, and has led to the creation of prevention

191
programs aimed at eradicating sexual abuse. Chapter 6
examines this convergence of view points, the construction
of prevention programs and explores the emergence of the
”damaged child" which allowed child sexual abuse to move
beyond the boundaries of professional concern to the

popular culture.

Summagy

This chapter has provided an overview of claimsmaking
activities about sexual abuse during the 19703 and 19803.
Focusing on the feminist, clinical, child protectionists
and New Right constructions, I have traced the emergence of
each discourse, the analysis of sexual abuse presented in
each narrative and some of the sources of conflict and

agreement among the claimsmakers.

CHAPTER 5

THE PROCESSES 0" CONSTRUCTION: THE POLITICS
Ol' IDENTITY, INNOCENCE, DAMAGE AND DANGER

In 1975 professional and political groups began to
identify child sexual abuse as a social problem. By 1984
children’s sexual victimization had become a recognized
”fact" within popular culture (Finkelhor, 1984). The
processes by which sexual abuse moved from the interest of
experts to the province of the general public were
complex. The messages delivered were simple. This chapter
focuses on the ways in which the activities of claimsmakers
produced the perceptions and evidence of a problem and
created an environment in which the "putative condition"
could be recognized by a large audience (Spector and
Kitsuse, 1987). Through the cooperation and conflict of
feminists, clinicians, child protectionists and the New
Right four claims emerged as central constructions; these
claims widened the arena in which child sexual abuse would
be considered a problem. The themes were: the large
number of victims; the persistent, damaging affects of
sexual abuse on the identity of the victim; the need for
sexual abuse prevention programs; and the loss of childhood

192

193
entailed when abuse takes place. Each of these themes
helped to create a sense of urgency and legitimation around

child sexual abuse as a social problem.

The Issue of Numbers

Part of the process and. politics of constructing
modern social problems has rested on estimating or
predicting the number of people affected by a troublesome
condition (Spector and Kitsuse, 1987). Simply counting the
number of individuals experiencing a condition, however,
does not automatically create the label of a social
problem. Many people may experience a condition and not
have the label "social problem" used to describe their
reality, as has been historically the case with
psychological or emotional abuse of children. In other
instances, a relatively small number could be affected by a
condition that is considered a social problem — like
missing children (Best, 1987). Because the relationship
between numbers and social problems is not linear, the
issue has tended toward confusion both within sociology and
the popular press (Manis, 1974). In their approach, social
constructionists have been clear that definitional
processes are the most fundamental means of creating
beliefs that a problem exists. From this perspective,
numbers are important only to the extent that a number of

groups make claims about a condition (Schneider, 1985).

194
Counting Sexually Abused Children
Studies done on child. sexual abuse are invariably
concerned about numbers (Kempe and Kempe, 1984; Finkelhor,
1986). John Crewdson’s (1988) work serves as an example of
the use of numbers to legitimate the idea that sexual abuse
is a social problem. Crewdson entitled the second chapter

of his popular book, By Silence Betrayed, "Numbers" and

 

began his account of "the epidemic of child sexual abuse"
by quoting a survey done by the Los Angeles Times in August
of 1985:
At least 22% of Americans...have been victims of
child sexual abuse, although one-third of them
told no one at the time and lived with their
secret well into adulthood (Crewdson, 1988:24).
Crewdson claims that the method used to acquire this data-
a random phone survey - produced significant results
because the respondents represented a diverse, ordinary
population with a high rate of sexual abuse. These
findings were significant for another reason. (If all the
books written on child sexual abuse during the 19803

Crewdson’s was the only one to receive a front page review

by the New York Times Book Review thereby giving it

 

notoriety and legitimacy. Crewdson was hailed for having
brought national attention to the "tragedy of children’s
sexual victimization” (New York Times Book Review,
February, 1988).

Similarly, Diana. Russell, writing for' a more

professional audience, reported that in her interviews of

195
930 women living in San Francisco she had found a large
number who had been sexually abused during childhood. In
her account of the study, Russell (1986:10) wrote:

One of the most shocking findings of our

probability sample is that 16% of the 930 women

had been sexually abused by a relative before the

age of 18, and 4.5% had been sexually abused by

their fathers before this age. If we extrapolate

from this 16% figure to the population at large,

it means that 160,000 women per million in this

country may have ben incestuously abused before

the age of 18, and 45,000 per million may have

been victimized by their fathers.

Russell’s study, emerging from the family violence
perspective, has been ‘widely cited. within. the clinical
literature because of the quality of her method and the
recording of a 16% incest incidence rate which was 4%
higher than any previous report - indicating an urgent need
for clinical services (Courtois, 1988).

Numbers have been important to child sexual abuse
researchers and. claimsmakers not only' because they are
interpreted as revelations of how extensive the problem is,
but also because they have been used to legitimate requests
for services and to agitate for policy changes. In 1985,
for example, the child protectionist’s National Committee
for the Prevention of Child Abuse (1985) issued a report on
sexual abuse based on a national incidence study. The
results of the study showed that reports of sexual abuse
had increased 35% during 1984. Spokespeople for the

National Committee credited the media with the jump in

reports and simultaneously claimed that the 35% increase

196

was "just the tip of the iceberg" (Lansing State Journal,

 

February 17, 1985). Because the reports of sexual abuse
increasing and actual number of cases increasing was
frequently seen as the same issue and left unaddressed, the
perception of a growing problem was fostered. Clarifying
how to interpret the numbers was not in the best interest
of claimsmakers since the association between large numbers
of victims and a large problem was strong.

Like child protectionists, feminist claimsmakers have
also entered the discussions about numbers, primarily on
the topic of incest. Elizabeth Ward, for example, in

Father-Daughter Rape, defined the rate of incest as "epic

 

in proportion" (1985:3). Many other feminists have also
noted what they defined as a high rate of incest, over 4%
of the female population (Herman, 1981; Butler, 1978; Bass
and Davis, 1988). Herman’s 1981 estimate of a 12% incest
prevalence rate, the highest rate Ibeing' quoted. at the
beginning of the decade, became the most frequently quoted
among feminist writers and was used as evidence of an
objective problem (Russell, 1986).

Although some variations exist in the statistical
information provided by feminist authors and researchers,
the interpretation of the numbers do not vary. Feminists
claim that the rate of incest in the United States is
epidemic. This epidemic exists because it is part of the

fabric of’ male power over‘ women and. children (Butler,

197

1978). These numbers were used to show that incest
reflects a "normal” pattern in a culture characterized by
gender and. generational inequality. The feminist
construction of incest, and of extrafamilial sexual
molestation, rests on identifying the common occurrence of
the crime and the uniqueness of the impact of child sexual
abuses.

Statistics used by the New Right to support their
claims about child sexual abuse as a social problem have
been less consistent than those used by other claimsmakers.
In part, this reflected the New Rights’ ambivalence toward
sexual abuse reports made by children in nuclear families.
Support and credibility were more readily given to children
who reported abuse in day care centers. Incest reports
gained credibility only if the parents were identified as
sexually permissive, that is, if they believed in
reproductive freedom, sex education, etc. (Levitas, 1986).
Children were often not believed if they disclosed sexual
abuse when their families were identified as moral and
clean (David, 1986). This was a point of dispute among the
claimsmakers because the other three perspectives argued
that. wholesome, jpatriotic, religious families--rigid. and
authoritarian in structure--frequently were the sites where
sexual abuse occurred and where children’s accusations

needed to be heard.

198

A second reason why the New Rights’ statistics on
sexual abuse varied more than those of other claimsmakers
was because numbers were reported by collapsing categories
of victimization into each other. Statistics on the
prevalence of child pornography, child stealing and child
sex rings were frequently given together with estimates of
child sexual abuse so that it was impossible to separate
out the number of children involved in each report
(Spitzer, 1986). The logic of presenting all statistics on
"child exploitation," a logic which no other claimsmakers
followed, was to make clear that American culture had
created a war on children, and women (Schlafly, 1986).
According to the New Right this war was being waged by
feminists and those on the political left who believed that
women had a right to work outside the home and to create
more equalitarian relationships within families (Gilder,
1982). Women’s abdication of their roles as wives and
mothers created a situation where 1.3 to 1.8 million

children were assaulted each year (Spitzer, 1986).

Numbers as a Rhetoric of Rectitude

Debates about the actual number of children who are
sexually abused each year in the U.S. continued throughout
the 19703 and 19803 (Russell, 1986; Bass and Davis, 1988).
It remained unclear if reports of sexual abuse increased

during the past decade because of changing social

199

conditions which have made it easier to report abuse or
because the actual incidence increased (Finkelhor, 1986).
Unable to resolve this debate, it is important to
understand the beliefs about the meanings of numbers, and
the explanations and interpretations of the numbers put
forth. by ‘the claimsmakers, as jpart of ‘the rhetoric of
social constructions. As such, statistics were important
to child protectionists because they used numbers to
advocate for increased funding and programming for
children’s services; feminists saw the numbers as evidence
of men’s common misuse of power. Clinicians initially used
numbers to question claims within the therapeutic world
that sexual abuse was rare, appearing epidemic only because
of fantasies about sex and not because of any real events;
clinicians later used statistics to estimate patient
populations and to legitimate the need for a
therapeutic/medical approach. The New Right used
statistics to support the claim that the structure of the
family and society was eroding.

Discussions about numbers are part of a rhetoric of
rectitude about child sexual abuse (Best, 1987). According
to Best, this type of rhetoric is employed in the emergent
phase of a social problem as claimsmakers reveal their
understanding of the issue. But the use of numbers to
identify a problem was only one level of activity; a second

level of rhetorical work occurred when the claims about the

200
numbers of sexually abused children became focused on how

these children were affected by sexual abuse.

gonstructin the Damaged Child: The Link to the
Sentimental C ild

As feminists, clinicians, child protectionists and
the New Right constructed their discourses on child sexual
abuse their definitions converged in one central
overarching way: each argued that sexual abuse created
persistent, negative effects on children’s psychological
development (Gelinas, 1983; Courtois, 1988; National
Committee on Child Abuse Prevention, 1985; Child Protection
Reports, 1985). Built on the cultural belief that children
have value because of their emotional worth, the emergence
of what I define as the "damaged child" was a major part
of each discourse and marked a unique construction of
sexual abuse in the 19703 and 19803. Importantly, defining
sexual abuse as psychologically devastating also allowed
the construction of a simple message about sex between
adults and children: it is always harmful to children.
The idea of the damaged child allowed the definition of an
existing social problem to be adapted by a wide audience
and created a message for the media to carry about the cost
to identity.

Identity has become a focal point of social concern
and activity in modern society (Bellah, et al., 1984).

Interest in the idea of identity and self based on personal

201

choice, individuality, consumption and meaning took on
importance during the period before and after World War I
and became even more significant following World War II
(D’Emilio and Freedman, 1988). According to Heinz Kohut
(1977) the therapist responsible for creating "Self
Psychology" - one of the most popular forms of
psychological theory and practice in the United States
today (Eagle, 1984) - the cultural and political
disintegration produced by World War II, was mirrored in
the psychological fragmentation created in individuals
(Kohut, 1977:6). Some, most notably Christopher Lasch,
(1979), have described the growth of a "culture of
narcissism" which replaced an emphasis on self—sacrifice,
delayed gratification and familial centeredness during
this period. Yet, it was in these post war years, Bellah,
and his co-authors point out, that the growing organization
and predictability of social life created a sense of order
and structure which was paralleled by a proliferating sense
of personal disorganization and disintegration. Thus the
increased interest in the self and the concomitant sense
that the self was more fragile than ever before grew in
tandem, and created an emphasis on therapeutic narratives
(Bellah, et al., 1985).

Part of the concern with the idea of self is reflected
in the cultural construction of standard accounts of

personhood. It is now considered not just a poetic

202
aphorism that "the child is father to the man(sic)," but
rather a statement of certainty: childhood experiences
produce adult identities (Erikson, 1959). Such teleogical
beliefs have led to a perceived homogenization of identity,
with various experiences have been categorized according to
the personalities they produce.

Much of the recent emphasis on social problems has
been cast in terms of the effect of childhood or adolescent
experiences on adult identity (Schneider and Kitsuse,
1984). Additionally researchers have sought to predict
personalities that might be at risk for various problems
given current behavior and sense of self. Examples of
"high risk youth" abound, not just in the abuse and neglect
literature, but also in discussions of anorexia, bulimia,
suicide, running away, drug use and homelessness. These
accounts are based on ideas about the shared
characteristics of abused children, their problems and
their psychological development. All these analyses
combine to create a sense of controlling social problems
and treating their consequences, which include altering the
behavior of those who abuse - so that they do not abuse
again - and of the young children who are abused - so that
they do not continue patterns of victimization. In these
ways experts and ordinary citizens can understand how the
individual actors in the abuse story are constituted,

where the boundaries between self and other are maintained

203
or violated, and how social institutions create, sustain,
or violate these boundaries. Through these annalyses the
text about sexual abuse is made readable.

The focus on identity, coupled. with the split of
reproduction and sexuality and the belief that sexuality is
central to the self, has created an emphasis on the impact
of sexual abuse on personality. All of the claimsmakers
posit damage done to the child as devastating. As
discussed in the previous chapter this message has also
been carried consistently by the media. For example, a
report on the McMartin day care case carried on an ABC news
broadcast ended with the reporter commenting that the
abused children would. be "damaged for life and never
recover from the traumatic affects of sexual abuse" (Groth,
1985). Similarly, Ward, writing from. a jpopular, non-
academic feminist perspective has labeled "the crippling
effects of...childhood rape experience" (Ward, 1985:140).
And Diana Russell (1986:11/12) writing on incest stated:

Incestuous abuse is an important social problem

because of the intense suffering and sanctions

and long term effects that result from it...Two

of our survey findings - that incestuous abuse is

so much more widespread than heretofore thought

possible and that there is a strong relationship

between experiences of such abuse in childhood

and adolescence and later experiences of

victimization - suggest that millions of American

girls are Ibeing’ socialized. into ‘victim. roles.

Other research suggests a connection between

incest victimization and drug abuse,

prostitution, suicide, mental illness, self-

mutilation, alcoholism, running away from
home...and later becoming a mother who is less

204

able to protect her daughter from incest
victimization.

Many of the assertions about the devastation of sexual
abuse have been linked with a loss of childhood. Because
it imparts sexual knowledge, sexual abuse is thought to
constitute a loss of innocence and therefore to break down
one of the most significant boundaries between adults and
children (Jackson, 1982). The loss of childhood is, of
course, a metaphorical one, and is a loss of the
sentimental childhood of contemporary constructions
(Zelizer, 1985). Sexually abused children are not given
the status or power of adults because of their experience.
Being neither adults, nor "true" children, sexually
victimized children are given a new status - that of victim
or survivor of abuse - on which to build an identity.

The identities created by claimsmakers for sexually
abused children were not uniform. Sometimes even when the
same terms were used, a different phenomenon was being
described. Feminists and clinicians have both championed
the term "survivors“ while child protectionists and the New
Right discussed "victims.” Part of the difference in the
labels was due to the fact that feminists and clinicians
usually write, speak about or treat adults who were abused
as children. They are literally dealing with survivors of
a past experience. Child protectionists and the New Right
have focused almost exclusively on children who were still

in abusive situations. The difference between the choice

205
of the term "survivor” or “victim,” however, is complex.
When examined closely, the word choice reveals levels of
claimsmaking activities about how the self is constructed,

how sexuality is defined, and how the family is viewed.

gonstructing the Survivor: now Child Sexual Abuse Shapes
Identity .

Writing the introduction to her work The Courage to

 

Heel, Ellen Bass (1988:13) noted:

I first heard that children were abused in

1974...there were no groups for survivors of

child sexual abuse then. The word "survivor" was

not yet in our vocabulary...
The word survivor had initially been used earlier in the
19703 by a group of feminist activists in Washington, D.C.
who labeled themselves "survivors of rape" (Aegie, Winter,
1979). Defining rape as a profound victimization, the
women sought a means by which they could express a more
powerful relationship to their violation without erasing
the fact of the event from their lives. Feminists sought
to come to grips with. a dialectic between speech and
silence (Lorde, 1978). They neither wished to be silenced
about rape, nor did they wish to label themselves solely as
victims. In searching for a way to speak about their
assaults, and to give voice to their terror, the women came
to see themselves as hearing witness against the

patriarchal culture which fostered male domination over

women, thereby sanctioning rape (Russell, 1980). The

206

application of the term "survivor" to identify the
experiences of women who had been sexually abused as
children was an easy transition. Since the same paradigm
was used to understand rape and sexual abuse, the term
”survivor” was simply transferred from one event to
another. In this linguistic choice, however, feminists
made a commitment to adults whose abuse occurred in the
past. The experiences of children currently being abused
was not captured either in the term “survivor" or in the
adult-centered feminist politics that emerged around sexual
victimization, and produced a national network of incest
survivor groups.

During the 19803 many organizations for incest
survivors started around the country. One of the most
reported-on groups is "Incest Survivors Anonymous,"
(I.SLA.) a twelve step self-help program, like Alcoholics
Anonymous, dedicated to helping women recover from sexual
abuse (Bass and Davis, 1988). According to I.S.A. a victim
is a person who is abused and who may assume a victim role,
being continuously revictimized from childhood through
adulthood. A survivor is a victim of incest who is taking
steps to recover (Incest Survivors Anonymous, 1987). A
broad array of abusive experiences is addressed by I.S.A.
because their definition of incest is not limited to
violations by relatives. I.S.A.’s idea of incest is more

inclusive and covers everyone a child might be entrusted to

207
or might trust. This includes friends, family and anyone
with institutional power such as: ministers, military
personnel, police, executives, lawyers, or therapists.

A second national organization, VOICES (Victims of
Incest Can Emerge Survivors) in Action started in 1980.
VOICES in Action gives referrals for therapists and other
social services. It also provides members with a "survival
kit" which includes resource material and a subscription to
the organization’s newsletter. Like many organizations,
VOICES in Action provides specialized services, in their
case for "multiple personalities, those abused by priests
and those who experienced sadistic abuse" (Bass and Davis,
1988).

The word "survivor" in organization titles and for
individual identities has a powerful effect. Not only
does it give a more assertive attribution to the person who
has experienced rape, or abuse, it also places the idea of
sexual assault and the personhood of those involved into
particular historical contexts and sociological categories.
Importantly, the construction of the "damaged child"
partially relied on the association of child sexual abuse
with other tragic or devastating events. Using the term
”survivor," claimsmakers entered the narratives of child
sexual abuse into a broader 20th century discourse about

destruction and endurance.

208
The Survivor as a Twentieth Century Discourse

Historically, those who are considered survivors have
lived through a particular event or series of events which
threaten their lives. Events such as the Nazi holocaust,
the bombing of Hiroshima, or experiences such as
imprisonment during war, living more than five years with
cancer, or seven. years with. AIDS, are ones which. have
warranted the appellation of "survivor." Each of these
events may seem unsurvivable because they are physically
difficult to endure. Therefore, the first meaning of
”survival" is a literal one; it simply means to continue
functioning until the conditions which challenged a
person’s existence are removed" But surviving is not
merely a biological phenomenon.

As an idea and an identity, "survival" includes
several dimensions. First, it requires consideration of
what makes survival possible. Is there a special quality
which allows some to survive while, in some circumstances,
most perish? What must a person do to survive? Are there
unusual conditions, characteristics and attitudes which
engender survival? And having once survived, what
responsibilities rest with the survivor? Must one bear
witness, repress memories, or numb emotions? Is there a
moral imperative to survival? Given these questions about
the survivor identity, it is necessary to explore the

historical significance which lies in the feminist choice

209
of the term "survivor" for those who have been sexually
victimized. More than a simple word choice, this is a
political stance and a claim about the horror and damage of
sexual abuse.

The prototypical survivor of the 20th century is one
who has survived the Nazi holocaust in a concentration
camp. Survival in this context has been explored by a vast
number' of scholars including 'theologians (Ostow, 1982),
historians (Wang, 1984), psychiatrists (Krystal, 1984) and
sociologists (Horkheimer, 1947; Adorno, 1973). Although
each writer has sought to answer a complex set of questions
about human nature, aggression, community and the
bureaucratization of genocide, at its heart every inquiry
has confronted a common concern: how is it possible to
survive a situation where all »the trappings of
civilization have been ripped away and where humans have
committed the grossest atrocities against other humans?
What impact does the past have on the physical, mental and
social adaptation of those who survive? The larger
philosophical question *which. informs 'these writings is:
how can meaning be created out of seemingly meaningless and
random events? These questions have been asked about the
adult and child survivors of the camps and have generated
two literatures on survivors that apply to child sexual

abuse.

210

Survivors of Nazi concentration camps ranged in age
from the very young to the very old, and subsequently the
sequelae for individuals differed according to whether the
prisoner was old enough to have an established identity and
life which was being disrupted or if s/he was a child with
a forming and easily fragmented ego structure (Krystal,
1984). The literature on adult survivors, which includes
the work of Bruno Bettelheim (1979), Victor Frankl (1975),
Robert Jay Lifton (1979), Henry Krystal (1984) and Klaus
Hoppe (1984), among others, describes the devastation of
having all previous life structures removed and norms
changed. Humiliation, torture, starvation and loss
pervaded the lives of concentration camp inmates. To
survive these conditions, people employed a variety of
devices. Chronicled and categorized by Joel Dimsdale these
strategies included:

differential focus on the good; survival for a

purpose; psychological removal; emotional or

environmental mastery; will to live; active or

passive hope; group affiliation; regression;

fatalism; and surrender“ (Dimsdale, 1980).
In an environment which restricted all other choices and
means of control, prisoners had the ability to construct an
attitude towards their experience and to behave in
accordance with this attitude.

Many of the writings which emerged from the holocaust,

like the personal narratives which emerged about sexual

abuse, gained their' power’ because of the attitudes of

211

strength and hope they expressed. But physical survival,
which Bruno Bettelheim (1979) points out could only be
ensured by the activity of a liberating army and not by the
inmates themselves, is only one form of survival. It is
the middle step of a triad which includes imprisonment and
aftermatht The facts of imprisonment in concentration
camps have been well documented both in books and in films
such as ”Shoah." Those of the aftermath have generated
much interest and dispute. Part of the debate about the
impact of concentration camp life has focused on whether or
not the effects were universal and led to a "survivor
syndrome” or if the effect rested on previous levels of
psychological functioning and adaptations. Klaus Hoppe
(1984), who conducted a thorough review of the holocaust
literature, reported that there were eight common psychic
aftermaths of Nazi persecution in concentration camps. The
eight aftermaths were:

anxiety, combined with phobic and hypochondriacal

fears, nightmares and insomnia; disturbances of

cognition and memory; chronic reactive depression

accompanied by survivor guilt, psychic numbness

and regression; psychotic like manifestations; a

persistent sense of heightened vulnerability;

disturbances in the sense of identity, of body

image and of self image; permanent personality

changes; and psychosomatic symptoms and disorders

(Hoppe, 1984).

The creation of a survivor syndrome, which has
alternately been designated as "concentration camp

syndrome," “chronic stress syndrome,“ or "psycho-traumatic

stress syndrome," was an attempt to label and contain the

212

aftermath of an extreme life event. Need for a label came
from a variety of sources. The German government sought a
means by which some holocaust victims would be compensated
for the crimes committed. against them. 11 retribution
process required a standard. means for identifying the
impact of the camps on individuals. By constructing a
syndrome, individual cases could be measured against a
norm. (In actuality the issue of retribution was complex
and clouded. Many who had suffered enormous losses and
horrible brutality were judged to have pre~existing
conditions and not the survivor syndrome. These people
were denied any remuneration for what they had suffered
(Dimsdale, 1980).

An additional group who felt a need to identify
patterns in survivors was the psychiatrists, psychologists
and social workers who began to see this population in
their therapeutic practices. Holocaust survivors presented
therapists with a unique set of issues, ones that would be
mirrored by many incest victims a generation later. Here
was a group of people who were suffering the effects of
massive psychic trauma inflicted by hostile forces. Their
pain came not from fantasies about aggression, but from
real, overwhelming, environmental circumstances. Having
been trained, for the most part, to understand the role
fantasy plays in sexual and aggressive impulses, the

psychotherapeutic community needed a tool for analyzing the

213

effects of the all-too-real holocaust (Gyomroi, 1963). As
a conceptual paradigm, the survivor syndrome offered
therapists a mechanism for framing the consequences and
treating the survivors. Not all therapists eagerly
embraced the idea of a syndrome. According to Jack Terry
(1984) the designation of a survivor syndrome is an
unconscious form of exploitation because it denies the
individual his/her own experience through the process of
generalization. Terry was also deeply concerned with the
tabula rasa nature of the arguments put forth by syndrome
advocates. In effect, they argued that the pre-trauma
personality of the survivor had no impact on how the camps
were experienced. Countering this notion Terry writes:
"An external experience cannot. be independent of one’s
personal history if it is to have effect" (Terry, 1984:
485).

Even those who have argued against a generalizable
syndrome affecting' every survivor' agree that those who
emerged from the camps did so after experiencing a rare
kind of trauma. As such, this population offers
psychological theorists an opportunity to examine the
psychic consequences of severed attachments, loss,
vulnerability, inability to mourn and resiliency in a
specific context. From this context, theory and research
about other events and different populations have been

amassed including work on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Lifton,

214
1979), the Korean and Vietnam wars, disasters such as the
Buffalo Creek flood and the potential disasters of nuclear
winter. In focusing attention on how external events cause
internal disintegration, this literature: has provided. a
rich source of understanding of the impact of trauma on the
self and mechanisms of self preservation. A clearly
related, but different literature has appeared on the child
survivors of the holocaust.

According to Robert Krell, who has been documenting
the life events and responses of this group, a child
survivor, is:

any Jewish child who survived in Nazi-occupied

Europe by whatever means whether in hiding, or as

a fighter in the camps. To be considered a child

the survivor should have been no older than 16 at

the end of the war (Krell, 1985).

Like the adult prisoners, children were exposed to a world
that was organized around brutality and unrelenting
terror. These children suffered ‘the deprivation of a
stable environment, a constant caretaker and a predictable
routine. Research conducted both prior to and after World
War II has focused on the necessity of these elements for
child development (Bowlby, 1969). Classic psychoanalytic
literature shows concern with the impact of a single event
which would deprive a child. of nurturant care (Freud,
1951). Young concentration camp survivors raised a number

of challenges in the application of such theories since

they represented a group which had been denied the needed

215

components for attachment and had suffered a multitude of
traumas. Paralleling ‘the questions child. sexual abuse
researchers would later focus on, holocaust experts
wondered how these children could function psychologically
after such massive assaults and what specific mechanisms
had allowed them to survive. Answers to these questions
can be found in writings done about the children in the
years immediately following liberation. A second source of
information is interviews with these children, now grown
and able to gauge and articulate the impact of the
holocaust on their subsequent development.

Young children, studied soon after their imprisonment
ended, reported having survived the holocaust through a
combination of behavioral and psychological adaptations,
assertiveness, emotional numbness and self-reliance
(Moskovitz, 1985). The children also stated that they
compartmentalized the trauma so as to deal with it
incrementally (Krell, 1985). In their post-War experiences
child survivors felt "stigmatized, damaged and different"
(Moskovitz, 1985:402). Their greatest desire was to be
considered normal.

Adults who were in camps as children state that they
currently have problems with: insomnia, insecurity,
depression, loneliness, chronic anxiety, desperation,
chronic pain and psychic disorganization (Krystal, 1984;

Chodoff, 1980; Moskovitz, 1985). A psychiatric evaluation

216

of these adults reveals an assessment none made of
themselves: they "all possess a considerable intellect in
addition to a set of intuitive skills which are often
staggering" (Krell, 1985:399). While the legacy of the
holocaust varied for individuals, it has uniformly been
identified as the most significant, formative life event
for adults who spent their childhoods imprisoned in
concentration camps (Krell, 1985).

The holocaust provided. a 'two-fold legacy for
claimsmakers who constructed child sexual abuse as a social
problem. First, it showed that children could survive
horrible social environments and remain psychologically
intact (Moskovitz, 1985). I believe that awareness of this
fact--that adults mistreat children and children survive--
provided a context in which clinicians could stake a claim
about sexual abuse and find legitimation. Secondly, the
creation of the survivor syndrome provided a framework for
identity and a vocabulary that initially feminists, and
later clinicians would use to describe the experience of
sexually exploited children.

Using the "survivor" designation clearly places child
sexual abuse within the confines of some of the most
traumatic events in human experience. This construction is

found in an article published in the New York Times in 1987

 

entitled, "Terror’s Children: Mending Mental Wounds" which

reported that:

217

...the psychological scars of terror and

turbulence in childhood can impair emotional and

intellectual growth. Symptoms, often disguised,

can emerge years later. The research has also

found that children terrorized in radically

different ways - from wartime atrocities to
family violence - share certain remarkably
similar symptoms of lasting emotional pain. The

new evidence that trauma, even a single brush

with it, can lead to serious long lasting

problems has led to a plan to extend the
psychiatric diagnosis of “post traumatic stress
disorder“ to children (Coleman, 2/24/87:15).

Evidence that the survivor identity has become adapted
by a large number of claimsmakers can be found in
conference announcements, magazine articles, television
shows, professional literature and newsletters. In 1988,
for example, the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect
and the Children’s Hospital National Medical Center co-
hosted a conference called the "National Symposium on Child
Victimization." Every workshop on adults who were sexually
abused as children used the word ”survivor” in the title
(Children’s Hospital Division of Child Protection, 1988).
In the television film "Something About Amelia" a social
worker tells the mother that Amelia must get treatment so
'she can stop being a victim and become the survivor that
she can be."

The widespread usage of "survivor" is notable for
several reasons. Most feminist claims about sexual abuse
were not so widely adapted. The term "rape" for example,

which was the basis of the survivor identity, was not

assumed by other claimsmakers and remained part of the

218
feminist paradigm for labeling child sexual abuse.
Additionally, the fact that sexual abuse was considered

analogous to tragedies meant that the claims and

 

constructions were made on the basis of the worst cases of
sexual victimization. Even though there is a continuum of
behavior considered sexual abuse (Russell, 1986) including
anything from exhibitionism to penetration, the general use
of the term "survivor” erased the different types of abuse
and varying responses of children. This homogenization of
experience and identity made sexual abuse appear as a
single problem, with one outcome - trauma.

Perhaps more importantly, the focus on the damaged
child meant that the only culturally appropriate response
to children’s sexual victimization had to be negative. Any
ambivalence about sex between adults and children or
children as sexual beings was erased. The contention that
any pleasure could be experienced by children in this
situation was disowned by all the claimsmakers (Data
Center, 1981; Berliner, 1985). Ironically, the insistence
on the inherently destructive aspects of sexual abuse
insured that the problem be taken seriously for the

psychological harm it did, but that nothing structural be

 

done about it. A psychological problem requires a
clinical, therapeutic/medical solution. Thus, a: feminist
claim about sexual abuse was adapted, without the feminist

politics or solution to empower children and change the

219

gender and generational inequality within families (Gordon,
1988). The "epidemic" numbers of sexually abused children
were used to expand the boundaries of medical (i.e.,
clinical) claims and legitimate the need for more
professional and psychological services. As Lucy Berliner
(National Conference on Child Abuse and Neglect, 1985)
noted:

Sociologists and family violence scholars might

provide the numbers, but we (social workers) put

the meat on the bones - its egg problem because

we EEEEE the victims.
Feminists, social workers, psychologists and other
clinicians claims about the damaged child combined with
the New Right’s and protectionists’ emphasis on children’s
victimization to produce a concern with eradicating sexual

abuse and led to the creation of prevention programs across

the country.

Sexual Abuse Prevention Programs: Claims About Touch and
SeIf Concept

In the modern construction of sexual abuse, prevention
programs began to appear in 1978 and. became the main
industry associated with the problem (Illusion Theatre,
1985) . Organized initially by child protectionists and
feminists, prevention jprograms took. as 'their focus the
delineation of appropriate and inappropriate touch, the
rights of children to say "no" so as to control their

bodies and the issue of secrecy (Colao and Hosansky, 1985).

220

An additional task that prevention programs assumed was
defining for children the constitutive elements of sexual
abuse and teaching parents how to recognize if their
children had been abused (Adams and Fay, 1981; Freeman,
1984). As guides for defining, talking and hearing about
abuse, prevention material acts as a cultural primer about
child and adult social relations and gives a clear
delineation of the discourses.

Prevention programs sound common themes, whether it be
in live presentations, theatre productions or written
material. The commonality is not the result of
serendipity. It is the outcome of careful planning, design
and analyses of what constitutes a "good" prevention
program. Writing in the premier volume of "Preventing
Sexual Abuse" Carol Plummer, a noted prevention expert,
provided a checklist of elements which constitute a
successful prevention program. These included:
recognition of the ”atrocity" of child sexual abuse;
inclusion of legal, medical, social service and educational
professionals; interaction with media coverage; and
adaptation of "films," coloring books, curricula, plays,
etc., to help adults tell children about sexual abuse
(Plummer, 1986:1-3).

The central themes of prevention programs are the type
of touch that constitutes abuse and the right of children

to have physical and emotional boundaries with adults.

221

Attempting to define sexual abuse and distinguish between
non-abusive and abusive touch, as discussed in Chapter One,
prevention programs produced a series of dichotomous
distinctions between "good" and "bad“ touch. "Red Light
People, Green Light People;" "Feeling Yes;" "Feeling No;"
were among the dualisms created for children (Perennial
Education, Inc., N.D.). Adults were taught to help their
children differentiate between “appropriate and
inappropriate touch" (Colao and Hosansky, 1985).

While all claimsmakers aided in the construction of
these categories, the language used to differentiate types
of touches varied. Describing the New Rights position on
the topic, the American Christian Voice Foundation (1985:6)
published the following advice to parents:

Every human is the keeper of their body. We have

a right to say who and how others may touch or

look at our body. "Good touches" (those which

are morally acceptable) make me feel good, safe

and loved. Examples of "good touches" for a

child might include a good night kiss or a warm

hug, being gently tickled or bounced on mommy’s

knee, holding hands or riding piggyback with

daddy. "Bad touches" (those which are morally
unacceptable) leave an uncomfortable feeling, not

the feelings of love, respect and safety that

”good touches" bring. "Bad touches" might

include a pinch, a hard slap or a touch in a

private area. Any place normally covered by a

swimsuit is off limits for touching...

The New Right’s means of assuring that immoral touch
was prevented came through the creation of various child-
find or protection kits. As documented previously, child

protection kits generally included: a picture of a child;

222

fingerprints; footprints; a lock of hair; and dental x-rays
(Child Protection Alert, 1985). None of these products
insured that children would be safe and in fact they could
only be useful after' a child. was sexually abused. and
missing - a rare combination. The various kits were more
important in that they created an appearance of action and
they maintained the power between adults and children. In
this strategy' parents were still charged. with ensuring
children’s safety.

By contrast feminists’ prevention programs, which
invariably included physical and emotional training, did
not use a language of morality. Instead, discussions among
feminists centered on children’s rights and used a language
of power. Feminist prevention programs were created on
the notion of equality, skills and empowerment. As the
founder of a feminist prevention program explained:

We learned a lot from the rape crisis movement in

the early ‘703. We learned how to fight back and

how to say no. When we (the members of a

collective organized against rape) discovered how

many of our members had been sexually abused as

children we began to think about our children and

the community’s children, about how to make them

safe. We thought we could teach them the skills

we had learned...

In order to teach children how to protect themselves,
many feminist programs taught children self-defense.
Consisting of verbal and. physical skills, self-defense

classes were one of the solutions feminists had used to

teach women how to prevent rape. Since sexual abuse of

223
children was conceptualized through the same paradigm, it
made sense to utilize the same solutions. Adapting some of
the strategies was not easy, as Tamara Hosansky and Flora
Colao (1985:4), founders of the first self-defense classes
for children in New York City, explained:

Imparting information in a way that children

could grasp and use meant learning how to view

the world from a child’s perspective. In

addition, we had to challenge not only the

traditional ways in which children are taught
about personal safety, but society’s view of
childhood and childrearing as well. We had to

set aside our preconceived ideas and open

ourselves to learning from children.

All of the prevention programs I gathered information
about included a clinical discourse, either as a subtext or
a main point, about building self-esteem and feelings of
self-worth in children. Positing a direct link between
feelings about the self and victimization, this narrative
exhorted parents to teach children their value so they
would be less vulnerable to sexual abuse. Linda Sanford
(1980:13) noted:

Child sexual abusers manipulate the self-concept

of the child victim. The offender will choose a

child who seems insecure and will hold out the

promise of eternal love and friendship if the
child will only cooperate with him. How solidly

the child likes herself will determine her
vulnerability to the offender’s promises.

Claims About Adult Authority and Children’s Power
According to prevention program rhetoric, children’s

self-esteem and their right to control their bodies rest on

224

the right to say no to adults. To refuse adult authority
is a radical idea if pursued to the conclusion that
children need ‘geye£_ obey adults, particularly parents.
Through sexual abuse prevention programs children are
taught to say no when they feel ”uncomfortable" with
adults’ orders. To maintain adult authority, the right to
say no is not presented as a universal one and this is one
reason why incest is talked about in prevention programs,
but rarely used as examples of when a child should disobey.
One prevention specialist who had been working in the field
for seven years thought about this problem and noted:

You want to communicate to the kids that they

shouldn’t listen to adults who tell them to get

in cars with them or who want to put their hands

down their pants. But, you still want them to

take out the garbage when they’re told to. You

have to be careful to not undermine parents’

power in the eyes of their kids. It’s tricky.

Trying to maintain parents’ authority and educate
children is only one aspect of prevention programs and of
power issues between parents and children. Programs also
aim to teach children not to keep secrets. As noted above,
secrets are designated as had information and are
differentiated from. surprises which. are good. pieces of
information, withheld until they can be revealed at the
appropriate time. Because secrets are a way in which
sexual abusers get children to collude in maintaining

silence, thereby perpetuating abuse, prevention programs

have seized on secrets as an important concept (Sanford,

225
1980; Gordon and Gordon, 1984; Wachter, 1984). Children
are charged with breaking the secret of sexual assault and
ending their abuse by enlisting a helpful adult - a
teacher, a nurse, a parent (Pall and Streit, 1983).

Not addressed in prevention programs is the potential
power that children can gain over adults if they maintain
the secret. In cases of incest, children have the power to
disrupt family relations and cause a rearrangement of
existing family structures (Herman, 1981). This issue is
dealt with in some treatment literature - cast as an
exaggerated sense of power and responsibility on the part
of the victim - but is not examined in terms of what this
type of power means in actuality for adult/child
relationships.

A second issue that tends to be ignored. by some
claimsmakers, but is addressed by clinicians and the New
Right, is children’s false assertions of sexual assault - a
breaking of silence of a different type. As witnessed by
the McMartin day care and Jordan Minnesota cases, children
can wield power over adults by accusing them of sexual
abuse (Crewdson, 1988). This power has been noted by
others, particularly the mass media, and relies on a social
climate where children are believed when they talk about
sexual abuse ("60 Minutes," February, 1988; Crewdson,
1988). Accusations of child sexual abuse have become part

of some divorce cases where they are debated within

226
custody disputes. Originally interpreted as an issue of
whether children as a group lie or do not lie about sexual
abuse (Kempe and Kempe, 1984), the broader social issues
were overlooked: children had a new chip in their power
relationships with adults. VOCAL (Victims of Child Abuse
Legislation), the New Right group, has urged that children
not be believed when they claim sexual abuse and has fought
to get power back firmly in the hands of adults (Lansing
State JOurnal, February 17, 1985; Crewdson, 1988). Other
claimsmakers have largely kept silent on the issue,
focusing instead on how to interpret and react to signs of

sexual abuse.

A Model Prevention Proggg

In order to sort out some of the complexities of
Prevention Programs I did a year-long field study of a
small demonstration project that had been funded by the
Department of Health and Human Services. Beginning in the
Fall of 1985, through the Fall of 1986 I observed the
creation of this program, its implementation and its
demise. Because the Prevention Program was not based in a
school, or an accessible agency, it had to be structured so
that it could be presented at public forums. The Project’s
administrators decided on two settings - shopping malls and
libraries. These public areas were excellent settings in

which to observe how parents and children were taught about

227
appropriate and inappropriate touch; the right of children
to say no to adults; and the secrecy of sexual assault.

Three target groups were identified by the Project’s
staff - two social workers and a psychologist as in need of
education about child sexual abuse: key community leaders
- including ministers, politicians, teachers and boy scout
and girl scout leaders; service providers - people already
working with children and families; and parents.
Interestingly, children themselves were not a target
audience. In fact, plans were made to divert children’s
attention from the program content so that they could be
occupied while their parents learned.

In ten shopping malls and libraries throughout
Michigan the Prevention Program was given separate space so
that a didactic session on sexual abuse could be held.
Literature displays were created for each setting and
always included: pamphlets that listed the myths and facts
of sexual abuse; an information sheet on missing children
and one on runaways; academic and popular books on sexual

abuse such as Russell’s The Secret Trauma, Finkelhor’s

 

Child Sexual Abuse, Rush’s The Best Kept Secret; and

 

coloring and storybooks on sexual abuse. A videotape-
"Touch" - produced by Illusion Theatre on the tOpic of
sexual abuse prevention was shown repetitively. Each
person who attended a session or who stopped in the malls

or libraries to talk was given a packet of material

228
comprised of information about sexual abuse, with tips on
prevention. Book stores in each mall prominently displayed
their sexual abuse offerings during the program and
libraries featured their collections.

Children were entertained by a large duck while their
parents gathered information. The duck - named Quacky-
was the Project’s mascot. Standing six to seven feet tall,
'Quacky” tended. to frighten children. under five, while
those over five approached without trepidation. Balloons
were given to each child and in each mall children could
register to win a prize when they approached the display.
On average two hundred adults were given packets of

information in each setting.

Discussing Sexual Abuse in Public Setting;

Every person who attended a session on sexual abuse
was taught about the damage done to abused children and
were given information about how to prevent abuse.
Although incest was mentioned, the focus of the information
was on assaults by strangers or authority figures such as

police officers or neighbors. The avoidance of father-

daughter incest - prominently visible in the books on
display - was particularly apparent. Both the
professionals working at the display - all with social

work or psychology backgrounds - and those approaching for

information distanced themselves from the topic. Across

229

the state these types of questions were asked and

statements made:

*

Me and my friends are Christians and we are very
much interested in sexual abuse prevention in the
community. How do you get communities to pay
attention to all these old guys who are molesting
our children?

I’m worried about missing children. I want to
get one of these kits I’ve heard about on T.V. so
I can fingerprint my kids before they go back to
school in September.

Don’t you ‘think that by ‘talking' about sexual
abuse all the time we just give people ideas
about going out and finding vulnerable children
to attack?

Lawyers are programming children to lie about
sexual abuse in custody cases. It’s wrong.
They’re tearing apart families.

I feel so bad for these kids who have to talk
about their being sexually abused. It’s
difficult for adults to talk about the details of
intimate contact. Think of how hard it would be
for a child.

Children are being harmed by current discussions
of sexual abuse. I just came by (a mall in the

lower part of Michigan) to tell you that what you

230
people are doing is hurting children because you
keep talking about things that hurt them instead
of things that make them happy.

* I was abused as a child and I wish there had been
programs like this one around so I would have
known who to talk to and that I wasn’t alone.

* Do abused children always grow up to sexually
abuse other children? II hope not, this has to
stop somewhere.

* Why do we give these people therapy when they
should go to jail? Molesters are criminals.
They need to be punished for what they have done
or they’ll just keep doing it.

These were representative questions that were asked
and statements that were made in each of the communities.
They illustrate some popular perceptions of the problem and
several fundamental beliefs that the general public, at
least in parts of Michigan, seem to hold about sexual abuse
- that children are endangered, but talk. may' make the
problem too visible and may become a problem in its own
right; and that child molesters could be family members,
but they are always talked about as distanced, others-
alien from the daily lives of most people.

The failure on the part of the Prevention team to
discuss incest in a more forceful or direct way intrigued

me, particularly because they were willing to display books

231
like Finkelhor’s, Russell’s and Rush’s. I asked the
project director why he had not made incest a more central
focus of the didactic program. His reply was instructive:

We want to maximize the number of people who will
participate. Even though you and I know that
most sexual abuse cases occur in families that’s
a difficult thing to say in a shopping mall or a
library. These are places a family goes together
- particularly the mall. I can’t get up there
and say - "you’re relatives are sexually abusing
your children, especially your daughters," people
would think I was trying to undermine their
families or that I was saying things that
children shouldn’t hear. So I try to get across
a slightly different message - children need to
learn what abuse is so they can be protected.
That way even if it’s a family member who is
doing the abusing maybe the child will learn how
to talk about who is abusing them and what’s
being done. I also have a hidden agenda here-
I’m hoping some of these adults will remember
their own sexual assault experiences when they
were children and disclose them to a friend or
therapist. I want to see everyone who needs
services get them. '

During' the jpresentations many' questions were asked
about how to recognize symptoms of sexual abuse and how to
identify perpetrators. Consistently, the staff emphasized
the idea of good and bad touch and the need to believe
children who said they were sexually abused. A strong
child protectionist perspective was evidenced while some
knotty problems, like incest, were overlooked or
diminished. An issue not addressed in this program or
others of a similar type was who a child should talk to if
s/he was abused by a parent. The message that is always
taught in prevention programs is that if a child is being

abused s/he should confide in a parent which for some

232

children means confiding in either the person who is the
perpetrator or the spouse of that person. Complicated
social relations are overlooked. Communication may not be
as liberating as it is portrayed in prevention programs.

One of the experts I interviewed - a prevention
specialist - who had just returned from a week-long
intensive workshop on prevention - noted another problem in
protectionist prevention strategies:

Today we emphasize that children should disclose
the fact that they are being sexually abused. We

tell them what to say - ”someone is touching me
in a "private zone," or some statement like that.
We teach them who to tell - a trusted adult-

like a parent, teacher or the policeman at the
corner. We believe that we’ve created a safe
environment for children to discuss their
assaults in, but I feel like we’ve created
another set of problems. What happens to the
child who feels unable to talk to anyone? Who
has no sense that anyone is trustworthy and so
won’t disclose to a single person? Haven’t we
added another burden to this child’s problems? A
child who can’t talk in an environment that
declares itself open to such information is seen
as guilty of another type of crime of silence.

Issues like the ones raised by the prevention expert
make clear that child sexual abuse and its constructions
are not simple problems, but are complex and. must be
understood from a variety of perspectives. Simple
formulas, like disclosure is always good are not enough.
They observe more than they reveal. Part of the complexity
of child sexual abuse is that the struggles around its
constructions are only one piece of a large process which

is restructuring the social relationship between adults and

233
children. This restructuring is the focus of the next

chapter.

Summagy

As feminists, clinicians, child protectionists and the
New Right advanced an argument about the numbers of
sexually abused children, they also created an image of a
damaged child, devastated by the aftermath of sexual abuse.
This construction of the damaged. child is one of the
central claims of the modern ”discovery“ of sexual abuse.
Sweeping in its characterization, the claim came out of
feminist activities, but wrought clinical solutions,
thereby individualizing the problem of sexual abuse and
making it primarily a psychological phenomenon. Prevention
programs were created out of the desire to eradicate the
harm done to children in sexual abuse cases, thereby
eliminating the damaged child. This rendering of and
response to child sexual abuse fits with other currents in
contemporary American society in that it avoids issues of
power, inequality' and. social structure, in favor: of’ an

emphasis on "private troubles" (Bellah, et. al. 1984).

CHAPTER 7

RECONSTRUCTING CHILDHOOD: PUTTING CONSTRUCTIONS
ABOUT CHILD SEXUAL.ABUSE IN CONTEXT

Child sexual abuse is only one of the social problems
affecting children which has received widespread attention
in the 19703 and 19803. As part of social activity that
has scrutinized problems like physical abuse, abduction and
pornography, the social constructions about child sexual
abuse are part of a wider reconstruction of the social
relations of adulthood and childhood. Focusing on
children’s sexual victimization raises other, larger
questions about the nature of childhood, of sexuality and
of the family. It also brings to the forefront questions
about adulthood because inevitably, a reconstructed
childhood leads to a reconstituted adulthood. This chapter
examines the ways in which the constructions about child
sexual abuse have shaped and reflected these broader
themes. In particular, it explores: the sentimental child
as an historical phenomenon; the loss of childhood as a
central concern within modern society; the reshaping of
childhood; and the shift in adults’ relationships with
children. Finally, I briefly consider the strengths and

234

235
limits of social constructionism as an approach to social

problems.

The Sentimental Child

As discussed previously, from 1870 to 1930 the value,
and. therefore the treatment of children in the United
States changed (Zelinzer, 1985). During this period
children from all social classes lost their economic
utility. Once active participants in family and community
economies, children became prized for their emotional value
as opposed to their labor power. As emotional beings,
children were segregated into private worlds where they
were to be nurtured, loved and educated by their parents.
The sacred child was an ideological construct which also
included the sentimentalization of the family. Children’s
need for care - and the protection of their sanctity - fell
to women who were defined as naturally endowed
childrearers. The reification of women as mothers and of
children within the family and home obscured their
powerlessness in other institutions, most notably in a
capitalist society, in the economy.

Concerns with emotional well-being came to dominate
20th century discourses about children. Alternately viewed
as threatened by or a threat to adults, children were
identified as in need of molding, or other types of social

training or control. Empathy and understanding, not harsh

236

discipline or corporal punishment, became the foundations
of modern child development theories. These theories posit
that children who are cared for will grow to be
psychologically healthy, economically productive adults.

Ideas about children’s need for empathy and nurturance
stand in stark contrast to earlier modes of childrearing.
Lloyd. DeMause in classifying stages in ‘the history of
childhood has noted variations in childrearing techniques
that have evolved over time. According to DeMause
treatment of children can be classified in the following
categories and stages: 1) from earliest history to the 4th
century - the Infanticidal Mode where children were sold
into slavery, thrown into rivers, maimed, potted or buried
in trenches; 2) from the 4th - 13th century - the
Abandonment Mode where children were sent to wet nurses
and/or to other households as apprentices, and frequently
beaten to destroy the evil within; 3) from the 14th - 17th
century - the Ambivalent Mode where children were thought
to be like clay, in need of molding; 4) the 18th century-
the Intrusive Mode where children were “prayed with but
not played with, hit but not regularly whipped" (1974:52).
Children were no longer viewed as intrinsically evil, but
were socialized to feel guilt; 5) the Socialization Mode-
from the 19th to the mid-20th century - where children were
trained into appropriate behavior and interaction; and 6)

the Helping Mode - mid-20th century to the present-

237
children are empathized. with and. nurtured so ‘they can
develop their full human potential.

Most of the modes which dominated history depicted
children as evil and took actions, that today would be
considered abusive, necessary for taming and breaking
children’s wills. Following DeMause other scholars have
also turned their attention to documenting historical
variations in childhood (Skolnick, 1976; Boswell, 1988).
These studies reveal that far from the innocent, dependent
characterization of modern times, childhood has most often
been a period of abuse, abandonment and terror. DeMause
himself (1974:43) argued:

...the sexual abuse of children. was far' more

common in ‘the jpast than 'today...the child in

antiquity lived his earliest years in an

atmosphere of sexual abuse... ,

Boswell (1988) in his recent history of child abandonment
corroborated DeMause’s analysis and accumulated. massive
evidence that children from the Middle Ages to the
Renaissance were treated harshly, and in ways which would
clearlyibe given the label social problem today. From
these historical accounts emerge pictures of childhood as a
varied experience dependent on many social forces,
including the existence of social problem movements and
child saving campaigns.

The emphasis on children’s need to learn and to be
protected created a social context in which children who

were not nurtured or cared for could be seen as victimized.

238
Children’s need for protection emerges from their perceived
innocence. The evil child of past periods was replaced by
the innocent child of present constructions. As ideas
about innocence grew so did ones about victimization.
Thorne (1987) has noted that innocence is frequently evoked
as a means to "cut into structures of blaming." Thus
children’s innocence is used as a way to communicate that
they are not responsible for certain types of experiences-
particularly sexual ones. The innocent child is also an
ignorant child who is endangered by knowledge. To the
degree that children lack information they are identified
as childlike. This emphasis on the ignorant child has
given rise to the sentimentalization of the pre-television
child and to a broader discourse about the loss of

childhood.

The Loss of Childhood
When children are sexually abused the following type
of claim is frequently made:
Children who have been exploited and sexually
abused have missed childhood. It is a source of
pain, with feelings of abandonment and
ambivalence towards love relationships, the
psychological and economic toll is immense (U.S.
Department of Justice, March, 1986:8).
As discussed above, part of the perceived loss of a
childhood is a loss of innocence. Lack of sexual knowledge
is one of the socially defined characteristics which make

children innocent (DeMause, 1974). A second loss is the

239

loss of trust children experience when adults abuse them.
Finkelhor and Browne (1985) creating a traumagenic theory
of sexual abuse have discussed the emotions children feel
when they are betrayed by adults. Children, particularly
if they are abused. by a .parent, lose the ability to
unquestioningly trust adults. This is identified as part
of the process of losing the status of child, which
includes a reliance on adult authority and. protection.
Childhood, however, is not a universal entity. Experiences
of children vary across place and time and are as much a
product of social constructs as social problems are (Aries,
1962; Pfhol, 1977). What is lost is a particular
construction of childhood.

Ideas about the loss of childhood in the 19803 have
not been limited to the discourses about sexual abuse. In
fact, a growing body of literature has examined a cultural
loss of childhood (Winn, 1983; Postman, 1982; Elkind,
1981). In these accounts, the loss of childhood occurs
because of the amount of knowledge children have acquired
about sex, bodies, violence, money, death and/or deception
(Winn, 1983). Knowledge replaces innocence, as children
and adults come to inhabit the same "informational worlds."
There is no longer a backstage world of adulthood from
which children are protected (Meyerowitz, 1985). Shared
knowledge with adults, in these analyses, robs children of

childhood.

240

Sexually abused, missing and battered children take
on symbolic importance in narratives about lost childhoods.
The negative consequences of sexual abuse serve as
evidence for the damaging effects of entering an adult
world and not experiencing a culturally normal childhood,
which includes a particular psychological state and social
status (Jackson, 1982). Thus, specific analyses of
sexually victimized children become generalized and are
used as metaphors for all children.

Concerns about the loss of childhood have not only
centered on the impact on children, but have extended to
other age groups. During the 19803 a number of social
problems affecting adolescents and adults have been brought
to public attention. Problems such as teenage pregnancy,
(often dubbed "children having children") suicide and
eating disorders are frequently attributed to child sexual
abuse, which has robbed individuals of the "right to
innocence." The etiology of many problems is traced to
early, traumatic experiences, especially sexual
victimization. Writing on multiple personality disorders
Jean Goodwin (1985:2), an expert on incest noted:

Recent research is identifying a growing number

of factors linking the syndrome of multiple

personality disorder to child abuse. Putnam, et.

al., in a survey’ of 100 ‘multiple jpersonality

patients...found that more than 90% of those
studied had been abused during their early years.

241
McCormack, Janus and Burgess (1986:388) writing on runaways
described the link between sexual abuse and runaway
behavior:

Compared to the general population, much higher

rates of childhood sexual abuse are noted in

studies of specific populations, including
runaways. An estimated 9-12% of American youth
between the ages of 12-17 runaway from home at
least once and running away as a sequelae to
sexual abuse is now recognized as a growing
social problem.
Seeking explanations for culturally disturbing behavior of
adolescents and adults in childhood problems is not new.
Neither is the concern with the tarnishing affects of
children’s accumulation of knowledge. Both trends can be
traced to the 18603 and the beginning of entertainment
within children’s culture (West, 1988).

As claims about children’s inherent innocence became
legitimized the need to teach children innocence
disappeared. The moral sermons which had been so prevalent
within children’s culture before 1860 were replaced by
half-dime novels with western or detective themes
(MacLeod, 1975). Almost as soon as they were published
these books were attacked by Anthony Comstock and other
conservative, religious representatives who viewed them as
criminal. Part of the concern of the conservative forces
was that children were being exposed to sexuality, "the
root cause of criminal, antisocial behavior" (West,

1988:16). Over the next one hundred and thirty years

debates about children’s exposure to aspects of culture-

242
both child and adult-raged. Whether the medium was books,
comics, radio or television the contentions centered on the
same question: could. children’s emotional harmony and
growth be helped or hindered by elements of popular
culture? Although simple in its phrasing, it is the legacy
of this type of debate which is now found in discussions

of the sexually-abused child.

What is a Real Child?

In The Safe Child Book: A Common Sense Approach to

 

Protecting Your Children from Abduction and Sexual Abuse,
Sherryl Kraizer, one of many self-help books for parents
published on this topic, listed the following signs as
evidence a parent should look for to know whether a child
has been abused and thus, no longer childlike:
Inappropriate displays of affection or explicit
sexual acts; sudden use of sexual terms or new
names for body parts; uncomfortableness or
rejection of typical family affection; depression
and withdrawal; a sudden change in personality
(Kraizer, 1985:112).
According to this point of View, most often found in
protectionist literature, any sexual knowledge or act on
the part of a child is a potential indicator of abuse. In
these writings, adults own sexuality and. the right to
sexual behaviors. Children’s sexuality is identified only
in the context of a problematic condition, resting with

strangers who both abduct and abuse children, thereby

making children vulnerable.

243

Kraizer, and. other sexual abuse experts, raise an
additional question about whether or not sexually abused
children need therapy - thereby bringing the clinical
solution to bear when prevention plans fail and using the
clinical framing of the problem to legitimate programs.
She writes:

Parents often consider therapy unnecessary for

child sexual abuse victims, particularly boys.

Parents say things to me like "Let’s let him

forget it. He doesn’t seem upset to me."

Everything we know about child sexual abuse tells

us that its effects are long lasting and

devastating (Kraizer, 1985:115).

Kraizer’s treatment (and prevention) strategies, like that
of all of the claimsmakers, focuses, on the damage done to
the child’s developing sense of self (Wachter, 1984; Pall
and Streit, 1983). This self is innocent and dependent on
adults for protection, treatment and interpretation of
experience.

Attempts to identify and then treat children believed
to have been sexually abused, have frequently centered on
how they touch or play ‘with anatomically correct dolls
(Berliner, 1985). Assuming that sexually abused children
play with the genitals of the dolls and/or engage them in
sexual activity in ways that non-sexually abused children
would not play, the dolls were meant to confirm the
existence of abuse. These dolls have been at the center of

many treatment programs and have been used in court

proceedings to identify cases of sexual abuse (Lansing

244
State Journal, July, 17, 1985). The idea that abused
children would have the dolls engage in sexual activity was
based simply on the assumption of adults that sexually
abused children did not play like "normal" children. This
is a significant claim because play is considered a central
mode of communication for children (Basch, 1984).

Prior to 1986 no comparative studies of known sexually
abused children and non-sexually abused children had been
done to see, if in fact, the two groups did play
differently. To remedy this situation the federal
government issued a request for proposals to elicit studies
on how non-sexually abused children play with anatomically
correct dolls (Department of Health and Human Services,
March, 1986). These studies discovered that non-sexually
abused children also engaged the dolls in sexual play, and
while there were variations in play across populations,
they did not correlate with experiences of sexual abuse.
Most significant about the dolls is ‘what ‘they' revealed
about adult expectations that sexually abused children are
different. One clinician who had worked with sexually
abused children and frequently appeared in court to report
on findings, often used anatomically correct dolls as an
indicator of abuse. She described her feelings about the
use of dolls:

Anatomically correct dolls and even games are

basically good ideas. But, I think they’ve been

overdone. There’s too much focus on how the kids
play with dolls and. we don’t know' enough to

245

interpret nuances in play yet. We should just

let the kids use the dolls as a medium to discuss

the abuse. Instead, anatomically correct dolls,

which cost about $60 a piece, have become an

industry. It’s no longer clear who is being

helped here... And who is to say that sexual

play is, of necessity pathological? Why wouldn’t

it in some ways be healthy?
If it has been difficult to separate non-abused from abused
children -‘to tell what the fundamental differences are-
it is perhaps because at the core of this issue rests
another, deeply nested issue: in a culture where children
have information about sex what separates children from

adults?

Redefining.Adult[Child Relationships

Efforts to prevent and treat child sexual abuse raise
a number of tensions in adult/child relationships. Because
these programs deal with issues about sex they serve as
processes of socialization into sexuality. This
socialization varies among constructionists - from the New
Right’s sense of sex as morally dangerous to the feminist
sense of sex as violence - but each construction
nevertheless includes instruction about what children
should know about sex. As such, attention to sexual abuse
has served as a mass means of sex education - teaching
children about body parts and sexual acts. Thus, the focus
on sexual abuse, from all the claimsmakers, has,
ironically, served as a way to give children access to

sexuality. In the attempt to protect children from sexual

246

abuse so that they do not lose their childhoods the
claimsmakers provide knowledge about sexuality, a knowledge
which had previously been limited to adults. Sexual
knowledge, which marked sexually abused children, and made
them non-children has become part of normal childhood. The
boundary between adults and children is redrawn, with some
ideas about sex given more freely to children.

This socialization into sexuality, done within
discourses on danger, but not ones about pleasure, allows
cultural ambivalence about children and sex to be
expressed, while at the same time sanctioning children’s
knowledge about sexuality. Because sexual knowledge is
imparted as a part of socialization, the process of
teaching about sexual abuse has a measure of safety, since
socialization is the category through which children’s
experiences are most easily and eagerly understood (Thorne,
1986). Through sexual abuse prevention programs,
educational institutions and families find a way to
incorporate knowledge of sexuality into childhood under the
guise of protecting children’s innocence. The very
knowledge that defined a loss of childhood becomes a
strategy for protecting innocence. A.Shift occurs in the
definition of innocence which now is understood more as a
physical state - a child who is not abused is innocent; a

child who is abused is damaged - than an intellectual one.

247

Changing perceptions of children and sexuality cause
disruptions in social relations. Mary Calderone (1984:133-
4), an expert on the issues of pediatrics and public health
has written:

Just as acceptance of Galileo’s facts required a

revision of everyone’s perception of the solar

system, so now the acceptance of the validity of

the sexuality of infants and young children

requires us to conceive of and to perceive them

with a vision entirely new. This constitutes a

paradigm shift of the first importance.

The paradigm shift which Calderone discusses is not limited
to children, but also affects adults. If children and
adults are not ideologically separated by sexuality in the
ways in which they have been for the past two hundred
years, how are boundaries between the two maintained? A
more basic question and one that emanates from these
concerns is: Why are there boundaries between adults and
children?

Boundaries between adults and children are clearly
needed to protect infants and to care for them at a point
when they could not care for or protect themselves. As
children get older, however, and particularly as they
become capable of more abstract and sophisticated thought,
the need for care and protection is much more variable.
Recently social critics have begun to question the ways in
which children are protected or kept out of productive work

(Boocock, 1976). With the growing economic problems which

have particularly affected women and children, the idea of

248
the economically useless child may have outgrown its
utility (Zelizer, 1985). Ironically, with the increasing
number of working poor and homeless, adults may find
themselves dependent on children’s contributions to family
economies in order to survive.

The reconstruction of adulthood and childhood is also
being contested in other arenas. One area where there are
some powerful parallels is in the constructions around
reproductive technologies. Surrogacy, artificial
insemination, in vitro fertilization and other advances in
reproductive technology have fundamentally altered how
connections between parents and children are thought about.
Genetic relations are no longer simply natural, or clearly
delineated. Fatherhood and motherhood are actively being
reshaped. According to Barbara Katz Rothman (1989:18-19)
a sociologist and leading analyst of reproduction, these
changes have effected social relations:

More and more of us are choosing to live our

lives this way, putting together families by

choice and not by obligation... But while people

are struggling to create a language to encompass

these new relations, a. way' of' expressing our

connections that is neither dismissive "just
friends" nor' the archaic language of Ikinship,

another language is being developed. It is a

technical and. legal language, reaching’ in ‘the

very opposite direction. With all of the caring

and nurturance removed we are hearing about

"contracting couples," "surrogate mothers,"

”genetic parents,” "gestational motherhood,"

"custodial" and "noncustodial parents"...this

language is a guide to a very different social

reality. While on the other hand we are trying
to think of children as people, deserving respect

249

and needing care, on the other hand our society
is also coming to think of children as products.

As changes in technology and social problem
constructions alter children’s and adult’s relationships
with one another there is one area where their social
worlds are joined - as consumers. The child as consumer
represents a 4.2 billion dollar market (Kline, 1989).
Children are not only interested in products they are also
heavily courted by advertisers and manufacturers.
Beginning as early as age three children can recognize
brand names - knowing Nike is a name of a particular shoe,
for instance. In their role as consumers children and
adult worlds converge. This convergence has worried some
who perceive marketing strategies as placing parameters on
children’s play and imagination (Kline, 1989). It also
concerns those who see consumerism as just one more way in
which children are turning into the miniature adults
chronicled earlier by Aries.

Challenges such as reproductive technologies, changes
in consumerism and social problems like child sexual abuse
have all added to revealing some facets of how child/adult
relations are not based on natural considerations. These,
and other issues reveal the profoundly social nature of
they ways children and adults interact and raise questions
about what a child or adult is or why sexuality was ever

believed to belong solely to adults.

250

Social Constructionime as a Nay of Thinking

Thinking about child sexual abuse and how it became a
social problem has been a complicated process of mapping
origins, debates and agreements among groups and people who
I came to see as claimsmakers. Social constructionism has
been particularly useful for understanding how activities
shape perceptions of social problems. In a problem that is
cast as a tragedy it is sometimes difficult to move beyond
the seemingly homogenous view of damaged children, and to
see competing, ideological arguments which lead tn) the
definition of what child sexual abuse is and how it is
understood. Without the insights of social constructionism
it would be difficult to separate out the language and
strategies that have come to make discussions of child
sexual abuse commonplace. I

But social constructionism is not without its
problems. As I researched the most recent history of child
sexual abuse I was well aware of one of the central tenets
and problems of constructionism. To view sexual abuse as a
constructed problem is to overlook or at least set aside
considerations that might be called "objective." Any
issues that could adhere to sexual abuse itself had to be
separated out and understood as a part of social activity.
I found the relativism of such an approach to be troubling.

Children are sexually abused, sometimes sadistically, and

251
this is a social problem which needs to be addressed, no
matter how it is constructed.

In addition to its relativism, I was aware of other
problems within constructionism. Having been accused of
"ontological gerrymandering" (Woolgar and Pawluch, 1985)
recent constructionist arguments have tried to avoid the
dichotomization of constructionism and objectivism. The
conditions that give rise to definitions of social
problems, such as social movements, are not objective, they
too represent social activities which individuals
participate in, and need to be understood as such.
Constructionist arguments, however, need to be grounded in
historical and structural analyses, which clarify the
interactions among history, activity and institutions.

One issue that needs to come more into the foreground
of constructionist arguments is the kind of laissez-faire
equality with which social problems are treated. Are all
social problems created equally? It seems not. Missing
children represent a very small fraction of children’s
experience. Sexual abuse, understood as a continuum of
actions, effects millions of children. As a culture, how
can a distinction be made about where to put resources, or
how to create social policy? Are numbers enough? I would
argue that numbers alone cannot make social problems
significant, but they can rivet attention and. make it

easier to ask questions about the way in which unequal

252

treatment is created. Social constructionism gives a
certain power to sociologists and others studying social
problems - it allows human activity to be the central focus
of analysis. And any analysis that reveals the ways in
which people are actively involved in drawing attention to
or creating an arena around a social problem, also holds
within it the promise that people can alter conditions
which are harmful and create social change. It is
empowering.

The lessons of applying social constructionism to
child sexual abuse are plentiful. I have come to see
language not as simply an association of words to a
problem, but as a powerful mechanism, shaping reality. In
a similar vien I view silence as another form of speech;
one which became part of each discourse about child sexual
abuse. Perhaps most importantly, I have learned that the
definitions of social problems reveal not just the social
construction of a particular problem, but also the
normative condition that the problem is covertly measured
against. The sexually abused. child. reveals layers of
construction of childhood itself and in the final analysis
illuminates the topography of the contested terrain that

exists between childhood and adulthood.

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