The So-Called ‘Discovery' of Child Sexual Assault

Some historians have argued that this period saw the development of the ‘paedophile' as a concept, an object of discourse and an identity.^[283] As we have seen, there is a much longer history of concern about child sexual assault.

By the 1970s, a raft of individuals and groups were increasingly concerned with CSA, including psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, sociologists, activists and those working in both policing and criminal justice. Research by sociologists and psychologists had a strong impact on emerging ideas on child sexual abuse. David Finkelhor's work Sexually Victimized Children drew attention to the problem of child sexual abuse, offering theories on how and why offenders might abuse, and a large-scale survey of victims, to understand more fully how abuse occurred, and the impacts CSA had on survivors.^[285] During the 1980s, feminists highlighted the multiple physical and emotional traumas children might suffer, and the ways these were intensified by the power relations between victim and offender. Feminism powerfully advocated that victims could suffer ongoing trauma after sexual violence. Rethinking concepts of harm acted to reorient broader understandings of CSA, placing the victim's experience at the centre of understandings of abuse.

Working alongside feminists, therapists and reformers were groups at the other end of the political spectrum: conservatives and those espousing ‘family values'. Child pornography in particular raised issues of exploitation, and feminists, social workers and moralists were drawn together in opposition to its manufacture and distribution.^[286] It was deeply ironic that radical and conservative groups held oppositional views on gender and sexuality, yet were united in their vision of child sexual assault as a major social problem, and one which should be regulated by the state.

Yet not everyone believed CSA was necessarily harmful. In 1978, Henry Kempe, an expert on child physical assault and ‘baby battering', suggested that a single, ‘non-violent' assault would cause little harm to a child living in a safe family home.^[287] Others were more radical in attempting to rework ideas of liberation and sexual freedom. In the 1970s, a small number of psycholo­gists and therapists claimed that child sexual activity and even incest might have a positive impact on a child. They were suggesting that childhood sexual activity was merely acting on a natural search for pleasure, and that, performed with joy and comfort, it might help develop healthy future sexual relationships.^[288] Most radically, controversial paedophile and pederast advo­cate groups in Europe and the USA claimed that intergenerational sex was not harmful or exploitative of children or teenagers. Most notable was the North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA), founded in 1978 (it still remains an online presence). NAMBLA argued that there were positive benefits to a boy having a sexual relationship with an adult, including the development of a healthy sexual identity.^[289] Similar self-justifying views have been revealed in interviews with paedophiles.^[290] While this was hotly con­tested in the media and in law enforcement, it is indicative of the wide­ranging responses that child sexual activity could generate.

Despite these alternative voices, by the mid 1980s CSA was widely recog­nised in most Western nations as a serious social problem. In Britain, there was a broad moral panic, largely driven by the media, around various forms of CSA, including child pornography, paedophile rings and sex murders. There was also an increasing awareness of the rates of intrafamilial sexual assault. During the 1980s, reports of all forms of CSA in the United States swelled, in part due to widening definitions. It had become commonplace within the media to refer to the 22 per cent of Americans who had allegedly been victims of child sexual assault, while in Britain it was claimed one in ten children had been sexually assaulted.^[291] Though the reportage of CSA in the media had become increasingly hysterical in many countries, this should not distract us from the realities of sexual violence, and this period also saw an increase in policing, social work and written resources for children, families and caseworkers. Similar concerns were raised in many nations across the world, and in 1989 the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child was ratified. Article 19 required all participating states to provide ‘legislative, administrative, social and educational measures' to protect children against multiple forms of abuse. Article 34 dealt more specifically with sexual exploi­tation and sexual abuse, including sexual activity, prostitution and pornography.^[292]