“Disgusting Details Which Are Best Forgotten”: Disclosures of Child Sexual Abuse in Twentieth-Century Britain

Abstract

For those who by the end of the twentieth century came to be termed “survivors” of child sexual abuse, different genres and forms have been available to narrate and evaluate that abuse. This article explores the reception and practical results of such disclosures: the unpredictable effects of telling, and the strategies of containment, silencing, or disbelief that greeted disclosures. I make note of the ethical challenges of writing the history of child sexual abuse and conclude that twenty-first-century observers have been too ready to perceive much of the previous century as a period of profound silence in relation to child sexual abuse. At the same time, historical and sociological accounts have also been too ready to claim the final third of the twentieth century as a period of compulsive disclosure and fluency in constructing sexual selves. The history of child sexual abuse reveals significant barriers to disclosure in the 1970s and 1980s, despite new visibility of child sexual abuse in the media and through feminist sexual politics. Attention to such obstacles suggests the need to rethink narratives of “permissive” sexual change to acknowledge more fully the ongoing inequities and hierarchies in sexual candor and voice.

‘A Poor Prospect Indeed’: The State’s Disavowal of Child Abuse Victims in Youth Custody, 1960–1990

“…External perspectives on custody are an indispensable asset here, as the history of regulatory change in the 1990s and 2000s strongly suggests [13] (pp. [44][45][46][47][48][49].…”

“…The former holds one of the largest collections of criminological material in the world; the latter holds the archival records of central government, including the Home Office Prison Department. We searched catalogues for keywords relating to children, child protection, child safeguarding, complaints, disclosures and the different types of custody; we also used keywords such as 'sexual misconduct' and 'indecency', which were commonly used before the 1980s to refer to CSA [34,44]; and we searched for the names of establishments 'of interest', reviewing all records that appeared to overlap with periods covered by historic allegations.…”

“…It is also clear that victim-blaming discouraged disclosure. Disclosed abuse was often trivialised, explained away, or denied altogether [44], reinforcing power disparities and protecting abusers. Even so, it is unambiguously the case that throughout the period we cover, most under-21s engaged in non-consensual sexual relationships with adults could be recognised as the victims of offences defined as such by the criminal law, with the exception of all cases where both parties were female, in which no crime of any sort existed.…”

“…This can result in the dehumanisation of child residents, and an increased risk that some staff then feel less inhibited (or more entitled) to transgress other moral boundaries in their interactions with other children [109] (pp. [38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50].…”

9 Fathers, sons, and ‘normal’, ‘ordinary’ family life, 1945–1974

“…18 Lucy Delap has uncovered disclosures of child sexual abuse in the 1950s and 1960s that was routinely dismissed as evidence of 'normal' childhood sexuality. 19 Instances of sexual and domestic violence were similarly normalised. 20 Moreover, as Matt Houlbrook has argued, 'normal' might best be viewed as a fundamentally elusive social category.…”