Edited by Paula Reavey and Sam Warner

Child sexual abuse is a multifaceted event, interpreted in many different ways, in many different contexts. In New Feminist Stories of Child Sexual Abuse contributors try to untangle some of the complex ways in which stories of child sexual abuse are translated through and into personal, professional and social practices. The first section of the book explores the cultural and political landscape of child sexual in Western and non-Western contexts. It examines the ways in which radical aspects of feminism can be undermined in Western cultures and how Westernised ideologies of childhood, sex and gender have been used to structure discussions about child sexual abuse across the world. The second section traces the effects of these wider cultural and political narratives through the various contexts in which child sexual abuse is theorised and around which interventions in the lives of women are structured. It provides insights into how traditional approaches to understanding harm can be challenged and reworked in practice, using alternative therapeutic models based on feminist post-structuralist agendas. Reworking earlier feminist analyses, New Feminist Stories of Child Sexual Abuse asks pertinent questions about how child sexual abuse is produced, rather than merely represented, in the ways we speak about it.

London; New York: Routledge, 2003. 271p.

By Louise A. Jackson

Child Sexual Abuse in Victorian England is the first detailed investigation of the way that child abuse was discovered, debated, diagnosed and dealt with in the Victorian and Edwardian periods.The focus is placed on the child and his or her experience of court procedure and welfare practice, thereby providing a unique and important evaluation of the treatment of children in the courtroom. Through a series of case studies, including analyses of the criminal courts, the author examines the impact of legislation at grass roots level, and demonstrates why this was a formative period in the legal definition of sexual abuse. Providing a much-needed insight into Victorian attitudes, including that of Christian morality, this book makes a distinctive contribution to the history of crime, social welfare and the family. It also offers a valuable critique of current work on the history of children's homes and institutions, arguing that the interpersonal relationships of children and carers is a crucial area of study.

London; New York: Routledge: 2000. 221p.

By Rebecca M. Bowen

This book has three important sections. The first section sets the stage for this book by reviewing the historical context within which early theories of child sexual abuse were developed. The second section of the book then turns to the task of reviewing the empirical knowledge base that defines the scope of the problem of child sexual abuse. This section considers the prevalence and incidence of child sexual abuse, extrafamilial and intrafamilial abuse, factors associated with risk of abuse and of offending, and nonoffending guardians. It is argued throughout this section that child sexual abuse is an epidemic fueled by sociocultural structures and values. The final section considers the aftermath of child sexual abuse—the professional response to child sexual abuse. In the important final chapter of this book, the scope of the problem of child sexual abuse—as illustrated in the empirical knowledge base—is compared to that of the professional response to child sexual abuse. This comparison provides striking evidence that society’s response to child sexual abuse is failing profoundly. By reviewing the assumptions underlying society’s response to child sexual abuse, I argue that the reason for such a complete system failure is that the systemic response is grounded in the historical and often myth-bound conceptualization of child sexual abuse rather than in the empirical literature.

New York, Boston, Dordrecht, London, Moscow: Kluwer Academic, 2002. 321p.

Edited by Adele D. Jones

Child sexual abuse (CSA) is one of the most under-reported criminal acts against children. Children are often too young to know exactly what is happening to them, but instinctively feel that something is wrong and are often left with an awareness that life will never be the same. CSA violates children’s rights and perforates their sense of security and normalcy; a perforation that is further enlarged by the colluded silence of those who have the responsibility to protect them. Incidents of CSA seem to be escalating worldwide and the Caribbean is not exempt. Increasing numbers of reports of CSA in the media suggest that either a higher proportion of the cases are being reported or that there are increasing instances of such abuse. However, although this problem seems to affect the region, the topic still remains taboo and generally not spoken about and often it seems that family reputation and honour are considered more important and placed ahead of the safety and well-being of the child. Further, it seems to be perpetuated through a culture of gender inequalities, social and culturally held perceptions about family interactions and asking for help as well as patriarchal and outdated legislation.

Basingstoke, Hampshire. UK; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. 290p.

Edited by Paris Goodyear-Brown

This handbook is the most comprehensive volume on child sexual abuse to date and offers a snapshot of the state of the field as it stands today. As such, it is intended to aid the refinement of our thoughts, to help increase our mutual understanding as we approach this critically important issue together, and to help shape society’s approach to child sexual abuse.

Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, 2012. 642p.

By Edward L. Rowan

The number of confirmed cases of child sexual abuse in the United States rose from 6,000 in 1976 to 113,000 in 1985, and rose again to 300,000 in 2000. Understanding Child Sexual Abuse explores the dynamics, effects, treatment options, and preventive measures available to both the children and the adults involved in child sexual abuse. Intended for survivors and for all those wishing to help victims, Understanding Child Sexual Abuse is a useful, sensitive guide to the treatment of such behavior and its aftermath.

Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2006. 113p.

By Marcus Ward and Holly Rodger

The purpose of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA or ‘the Inquiry’) is to investigate whether public bodies and other non-state institutions have taken seriously their responsibility to protect children from sexual abuse in England and Wales, and to make meaningful recommendations for change, to help ensure that children now, and in the future, are better protected from sexual abuse. The Inquiry has launched 13 investigations into a broad range of institutions. The Residential Schools Investigation will investigate the nature and extent of, and institutional responses to, child sexual abuse in residential schools, including schools in the state and independent sectors and schools for children with disabilities and/or special educational needs. This literature review summarises the research literature on child sexual abuse (including child sexual exploitation) in residential schools. The aim is to provide an overview of what is already known, specifically in relation to child sexual abuse that occurs within residential schools, their role in safeguarding children from sexual abuse and the role they play in protecting children from sexual abuse in general. The review also draws on literature relating to non-residential schools from all sectors (see the methodology section for an overview of the types of schools this covers).

London: Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, 2018. 54p.

By Sue Jago, with Lorena Arocha, Isabelle Brodie, Margaret Melrose, Jenny Pearce and Camille Warrington

This research project has explored the extent and nature of the response of LSCBs to the 2009 government guidance on safeguarding children and young people from sexual exploitation. Where the guidance is followed, there are examples of developing and innovative practice to protect and support young people and their families and to investigate and prosecute their abusers. However, the research has found that the delivery of that dual approach to child sexual exploitation is far from the norm. There are three areas that cause particular concern: • only a quarter of LSCBs in England are implementing the guidance • young people, their families and carers receive awareness raising in less than half of the country • the prosecution of abusers is rare and, where criminal proceedings take place, young people’s experience of court is intolerable These and related findings are set out below together with recommendations on how to ensure that action is taken, locally and nationally, to address this form of child abuse.

Bedfordshire, UK: University of Bedfordshire, 2011.140p.

By Office of the Children’s Commissioner

This report, coming at the end of the first year of this Inquiry into the sexual exploitation of children in gangs and groups, has uncovered for the first time the extent to which children in England are being sexually exploited. We publish the number of known victims over a set period of time but can say with certainty that our figures are an undercounting of the true scale of this form of abuse. We know that because, although many agencies and organisations responded to our request for information and data, there were some notable gaps, with a few local authorities failing to do so. Furthermore, we know that children are sexually exploited in contexts other than in gangs and groups, including by lone perpetrators. Evidence about those children is not included in this report. During the course of this Inquiry we have heard from young people who have been raped in the most unbearable ways. These have included children who have been abducted, trafficked, beaten and threatened after being drawn into a web of sexual violence by promises of love and others who have suffered in silence for years as they are casually and routinely raped by the boys in their neighbourhoods – as they come out of school, as they walk to the shops, as they play in their local park. The vast majority of the perpetrators of this terrible crime are male. They range in age from as young as fourteen to old men. They come from all ethnic groups and so do their victims – contrary to what some may wish to believe. The failure of agencies to recognise this means that too many child victims are not getting the protection and support they so desperately need.

London: The Office, 2012. 138p.

By Diana Lopez-Avila

This paper aims at shedding light on the relationship between women's empowerment and domestic violence. For this, we explore different ways to measure women's empowerment and domestic violence, and analyze whether the relation depends on the definitions used. We take advantage of a rich data set collected in rural Colombia, including several measures of self-esteem, disagreement towards domestic violence, participation in household decisions and social capital; and analyze the relationship with both aggressive and controlling ways of domestic violence. The results indicate that the different measures of women's empowerment help explain much better the aggressive ways of domestic violence than the controlling ones. Our results show a positive correlation between women's empowerment and domestic violence. This goes in line with the theories that argue that men use violence as a way to leverage their power within the household. Among the different latent measures of women's empowerment we used, we found that social capital and self-esteem are significantly correlated with aggressive domestic violence. We do not find that more common proxies, such as women's participation in household decisions, are significantly correlated to domestic violence.

Paris: Paris School of Economics, 2015. 42p.

By Aurélien Dasre , Angela Greulich, Inan Ceren

This paper identifies motors and barriers for combatting domestic violence against women in Turkey – a country where modernism and conservatism are in constant interplay. We combine information from the Demographic Health Surveys and the Turkish Domestic Violence Survey and distinguish between controlling behavior, physical and sexual violence. Our empirical analysis tests how far a woman's intra-household decision making power (as measured by her education, her activity status, her income etc.) bears the potential to reduce her risk of experiencing domestic violence in Turkey. The analysis takes into account contextual factors as well as partner and household characteristics. We find that women's participation in the labor market does not, on its' own, reduce women's risk of experiencing intimate partner violence, but an egalitarian share of economic resources between spouses in likely to protect women against domestic violence. This finding has two important implications: First, higher education enabling women to access formal wage employment allows women not only to gain economic independence, but also to freely choose their partner. Second, unstable economic conditions that harm earning opportunities for men are an important risk factor for couples to experience conflits that can result in domestic violence against women. Against the background of the recent economic crisis that comes hand in hand with a backlash of gender and family norms in Turkey, our results highlight the need of policy action in this field.

Paris: University of Paris, Maison des Sciences Économiques, 2017. 37p.

By Chandre Gould

In this monograph, readers will meet some of the men who are responsible for violent crime in South Africa. The narratives presented here are based on interviews with men who have been incarcerated for murder, robbery and rape. These accounts show that the foundation for their criminal careers was laid early in their lives and compounded by their experiences of loss, abuse and alienation. Readers are taken on a journey through their lives to understand why crime in South Africa is so violent, and what needs to be done to prevent it.

Pretoria, South Africa: Institute for Security Studies, 2017. 144p.

By Human Rights Watch

This report—based largely on research and interviews conducted with 22 North Koreans detained in detention and interrogation facilities after 2011 (when Kim Jong Un came to power) and eight former North Korean officials who fled the country—provides new information on North Korea’s opaque pretrial detention and investigation system. It describes the criminal investigation process; North Korea’s weak legal and institutional framework; the dependence of law enforcement and the judiciary on the ruling WPK; the apparent presumption of guilt; bribery and corruption; and inhumane conditions and mistreatment of those in detention and interrogation facilities (kuryujang) that often amounts to torture. Because North Korea is a “closed” country, not much is known about the legal processes in its pretrial detention system, but the experiences of those interviewed and the other evidence detailed below, show that torture, humiliation, coerced confessions, hunger, unhygienic conditions, and the necessity of connections and bribes to avoid the worst treatment appear to be fundamental characteristics.

New York: HRW, 2021. 100p.

By Human Rights Watch

On April 7, 2016, soon after the end of evening prayers, Sadia, 27, heard her husband calling her to come down to the street. As she got to the door, however, he stood flanked by two men, blocking the exit. On her husband’s order, his companions doused her with nitric acid. “My husband stood watching as my dress fell straight off and my necklace and earrings melted into my skin,” Sadia said. After four surgeries and almost four months at Dhaka Medical College Hospital, Sadia lost both her left ear and left eye. “He was trying to kill me,” she said when Human Rights Watch met her a year later. Acid attacks are one particularly extreme form of violence in a pattern of widespread gender-based violence targeting women and girls in Bangladesh. In fact, many of the women interviewed for this report endured domestic violence, including beatings and other physical attacks, verbal and emotional abuse, and economic control, for months or even years leading up to an attack with acid. For instance, during the 12 years that Sadia was married before the acid attack, her husband beat her regularly and poured chemicals in her eyes three times, each time temporarily blinding her.

New York: HRW, 2020. 73p.

By Human Rights Watch

In 2017, a US Border Patrol agent kneed a woman in the lower pelvis, leaving bruises and pain days later, according to her statement to a government official screening her asylum claim. In a separate incident that year, a Border Patrol agent or Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officer forced a girl to undress and then inappropriately touched her. In 2018, a CBP officer hit another asylum applicant so hard he was knocked unconscious and suffered brain swelling. That same year, an officer wearing a green uniform, consistent with those of the Border Patrol, asked an asylum applicant to give him oral sex in exchange for being released from custody. Another asylum applicant was bitten in the testicle by a Border Patrol service dog and denied medical treatment for about one month and ultimately had to have his testicle surgically removed. In 2019, CBP officials appeared to withhold food from a man in a freezing cold holding facility until he agreed to sign a paper that he did not understand. These are just some of the allegations of abuse catalogued in internal US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reports received by Human Rights Watch on September 24, 2021 via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

New York: HRW, 2021. 103p.

By Human Rights Watch

The Cameroon report, “‘Everyone Wants Me Dead’: Killings, Abductions, Torture, and Sexual Violence Against LGBT People by Armed Groups in Iraq,” documents cases of attempted murder of LGBT people by armed groups primarily within the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), which are nominally under the prime minister’s authority.

New York: HRW, 2022. 115p.

By Human Rights Watch

In June 2021, Eşref Akoda shot dead his 38-year-old wife Yemen outside her home in the central Anatolian town of Aksaray. Prior to this lethal assault, courts had on four separate occasions issued preventive orders aimed at keeping Eşref away from Yemen after he harassed her when she filed for divorce. A lawyer for the family said that Eşref Akoda had approached and threatened his wife at least twice, violating the third and fourth preventive orders, but that on those occasions the court had not imposed any of the available disciplinary sanctions on him, such as a short period in detention, due to a “lack of evidence”. The prosecutor also declined to bring criminal charges against him, even though Yemen’s lawyer had filed complaints with the prosecutor’s office.

New York: HRW, 2022. 92p.

By Yuliya Mysyuk

This thesis explores perceptions and views of different groups involved in elder abuse. First chapter provides a general introduction to the topic and current study. In the second chapter of this thesis, definitions of elder abuse and their developments are reviewed. Chapter three explores different perspectives on the etiology of violence in later life. Chapter four discusses older persons’ definitions of and explanations for elder abuse. Chapter five explores older victims’ ideas about the causes and effects of abuse, the ways of coping with abuse and how they currently feel about it. In the sixth chapter, the framing of elder abuse as a social and a health problem is addressed, with attention to the factors that influence societal context and the health care system. Chapter seven raises the debate about the distinction of system abuse as a separate form of elder abuse. Finally, key findings of this thesis on perspectives on elder abuse are summarized in chapter eight of this thesis.

Leiden, Netherlands: Leiden University, 2015. 169p.

Edited by Carol Hagemann-White, Liz Kelly, Thomas Meysen

This book offers insights and perspectives from a study of “Cultural Encounters in Intervention Against Violence” (CEINAV) in four EU-countries. Seeking a deeper understanding of the underpinnings of intervention practices in Germany, Portugal, Slovenia and the United Kingdom, the team explored variations in institutional structures and traditions of law, policing, and social welfare. Theories of structural inequality and ethics are discussed and translated into practice

Leverkusen-Opladen: Verlag Barbara Budrich, 2019. 282p.

By European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights

Crime harms individual victims, their loved ones, as well as society as a whole. Its effects are multi-faceted, causing physical, psychological and material injury. Fear of crime can be almost equally damaging, often changing how people live their daily lives. Crime undermines the individual rights of victims, including their core fundamental rights, such as the right to life and human dignity. The EU Charter of Fundamental Rights obliges states to protect these rights. The Charter and the Victims’ Rights Directive also give victims a right to redress and to be treated without discrimination. In addition, victims’ property and consumer protection rights can be affected. This report presents results from FRA’s Fundamental Rights Survey – the first EU-wide survey to collect comparable data on people’s experiences with, concern about, and responses to select types of crime. It focuses on violence and harassment, as well as on certain property crimes. The survey reached out to 35,000 people in the EU, the United Kingdom and North Macedonia.

Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union, 2021 117p.