Feminist Perspectives on Child Sexual Abuse

Author(s):  
Sam Warner
1993 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 231-246 ◽  
Author(s):  
J Cream

By the end of 1987, Cleveland in northern England had been attributed with a new and disturbing meaning. It was the centre of a ‘crisis' about the sexual abuse of children. Although no one yet knows the ‘truth’ about the situation, popular and strongly held perceptions of what really happened remain widespread and entrenched. In this paper, the way in which a place came to be associated with a particular set of meanings is examined; the reasons why some readings are ‘silenced’ whereas others enter the dominant public discourse are investigated. In ‘Cleveland’, feminist perspectives were suppressed. The debate around child sexual abuse successfully avoided the question of who was doing the abusing, and there was a deafening silence on how to prevent that abuse. The issue of sexuality appeared to be edited out of the agenda. An examination of the symbolic geographies of a particular place such as Cleveland allows an analysis of power and the nature of society. It is now difficult to mention the name ‘Cleveland’ without triggering an array of images associated with child sexual abuse. What these images arc is important for any understanding of the situation whereby ‘Cleveland’ became a metaphor for child sexual abuse.


1999 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 204-205
Author(s):  
Megan Cleary

In recent years, the law in the area of recovered memories in child sexual abuse cases has developed rapidly. See J.K. Murray, “Repression, Memory & Suggestibility: A Call for Limitations on the Admissibility of Repressed Memory Testimony in Abuse Trials,” University of Colorado Law Review, 66 (1995): 477-522, at 479. Three cases have defined the scope of liability to third parties. The cases, decided within six months of each other, all involved lawsuits by third parties against therapists, based on treatment in which the patients recovered memories of sexual abuse. The New Hampshire Supreme Court, in Hungerford v. Jones, 722 A.2d 478 (N.H. 1998), allowed such a claim to survive, while the supreme courts in Iowa, in J.A.H. v. Wadle & Associates, 589 N.W.2d 256 (Iowa 1999), and California, in Eear v. Sills, 82 Cal. Rptr. 281 (1991), rejected lawsuits brought by nonpatients for professional liability.


2001 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 291-307
Author(s):  
Tony Ward ◽  
Stephen M. Hudson

1990 ◽  
Vol 35 (11) ◽  
pp. 1096-1096
Author(s):  
Marilyn T. Erickson

1992 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. M. Finlayson ◽  
G. P. Koocher

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