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It is hard to state with confidence the actual statistics on the
incidence of child sexual abuse. The field of calculating its existence is rife
with discord and accusations. Of course, child sexual abuse exists. Yet,
strangely, "experts" in the field have divided into camps, with little
that they agree on. Battles rage over which statistics are correct; then battles
rage over the interpretation of the statistics. The figures are so uncertain
that a recent U.S. Department of Health and Human Services survey of studies on
child sexual abuse stunningly reported that "rates for victimization for
girls range from 6 to 62 percent" of the population, for boys "from 3
to 24 percent." [44]
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hysteria.
[48] Many have argued that the growing attention paid to the problem of child
sexual abuse stems from its power as a social metaphor, not from a significant
rise in incidence. For example, two child advocates write:
The
choice of child abuse as an official social problem and the timing of its
occurrence cannot be explained solely in terms of the phenomenon of child
maltreatment itself. Rather, the emergence of child abuse as a key social
problem concerns, in part, its functions as a generative metaphor serving to
displace other collective unconscious anxieties and contradictions in American
society.
[49]
In the midst of the bitter debates about the incidence of child sexual abuse, one thing is clear: There has been a dramatic explosion of discussion about child sexual abuse in the last two decades. [50] Prior to that time, it was barely recognized as a problem. [51]
In fact, the term "child abuse" itself is of relatively recent vintage. According to philosopher Ian Hacking, the term only appeared in mainstream usage in 1962, in response to the alarming medical discovery of "battered-child syndrome." [52] An instant
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media sensation, the discovery of this new syndrome led to an "explosion in child abuse literature" in the next decade. [53] These early accounts of child abuse focused exclusively on physical violence against children. The sexual abuse of children was viewed as a separate and far less pressing issue than child battering.
Yet,
the two problems merged in public consciousness, [54] until gradually the sex
eclipsed the violence. [55] Hacking argues that by the mid-1970s, the
problem of child sexual abuse gained such prominence in our cultural landscape
that it changed the meaning we attach to the phrase "child abuse." Whereas
the term previously referred to violence, "child abuse" now primarily
conjures up sexual abuse or sexual violence.
[56] In public discourse, regardless of actual practice, sexual abuse of
children is now the problem in child abuse.
A major force behind this shift in meaning was the feminist
movement and its vigorous campaign against incest.
[57] In the mid-1970s, early "speakouts" by women incest survivors
propelled the movement,
[58] unmasking the crime of incest as a vast, hidden social crisis.
[59] As the formerly "unspeakable" crime of incest was taken up by
feminists and thrust into the public sphere, soon it merged into a larger issue:
the sexual abuse of children more generally, whether inside or outside the
family.
Also fueling the discovery of child sexual abuse was a theoretical revolution in psychiatry. In 1984 two prominent books by psychoanalysts
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appeared that attacked the foundation of Freudian theory: the
Oedipus complex.
[60] Early in his career, Freud had advanced a "seduction theory" that
he later rejected. In the rejected
theory, Freud had supposed that many of his women patients were ill because they
had been molested as children, usually by their fathers. But in 1897, Freud
changed his mind, and so changed the course of psychoanalysis: His patients'
abuse was not necessarily real; it usually existed only in fantasy.
[61] The consistent reports by his patients of childhood "seductions"
were manifestations of their unconscious oedipal sexual wishes. Freud's
abandonment of the seduction theory therefore allowed him to uncover the
centerpiece of his theory of childhood sexual development.
The 1984 books flatly argued that Freud was wrong, or rather, that he had been right the first time. The books began a crisis in psychoanalysis that reverberates to this day. [62] The authors argued that Freud's abandonment of the seduction theory in favor of the Oedipus complex had been a betrayal. His patients had not fantasized their molestation; they were victims of actual sexual abuse that Freud ignored in order to build his theory. The new Freud critics contended that psychoanalysis - and our modern understanding of the human personality – are founded on a lie and a cover-up of child molestation. Therapists, influenced by the attacks, began to search for hidden signs of child sexual abuse in their patients. Many found what they were looking for. [63]
Child sex abuse began to reveal itself not only in the home, but also in institutions - schools and churches - and on the streets, where pedophiles awaited unsuspecting children. [64] Anxiety over child sexual[*223]
abuse has continued to mount, to the point where cultural critics contend that we live in a "culture of child abuse," [65] that nothing short of a "child abuse movement" is afoot. [66]
Our cultural preoccupation has taken root and blossomed in several different fields of concern. [67] In the 1980s, the focus moved to day care centers. [68] Numerous prosecutions arose against day care center workers, based on children's seemingly fantastical accounts of sexual and often satanic ritual abuse. [69] The defendants were accused of molesting the children in weird and violent rites. Prosecutors claimed that a major aim of these rituals (other than to worship Satan), was to produce child pornography.[*224]
None
was ever found. [70] The cases were the subject of intense media and judicial
scrutiny. One of these cases, the McMartin Preschool Trial in Los Angeles, ran for two years
beginning in 1984, making it the longest criminal trial in U.S. history. [71]
In a relatively short time, recovered memories of repressed sexual abuse in childhood grew from "virtual nonexistence to epidemic frequency." [73] Scholars report an "explosion of research and publishing" on the subject by activists between 1978 and 1981. [74] In 1980, the publication of Michelle Remembers, [75] a guide for adults who suspected they had repressed memories of their own sexual abuse as children, marked a major turning point in the "recovered-memory phenomenon." [76] A rash of lawsuits arose as those who had recovered memories sued their alleged abusers - usually their parents.
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And so began the "the memory wars," which pitted activists against mainstream psychiatric professionals, many of whom insist that recovered memories are in fact implanted in patients by their therapists. [77]
Entering the fray was a new syndrome, "multiple personality
disorder," said to becaused by childhood sexual abuse.
[78] Ian Hacking compares the multiple personality "movement," which
has "thrived in a milieu of heightened consciousness about child
abuse," to a "parasite living upon a host."
[79] Like everything surrounding child sexual abuse, the diagnosis of multiple
personality disorder has engendered bitter disagreement among professionals,
some of whom contend that the disease is iatrogenic, created by a small band of
therapists, aided by TV talk shows and tabloid dramas. [80] It is the single most contested diagnosis in psychiatry.
[81] Although a majority of psychiatrists still believe there is simply no such
thing as multiple personality disorder, the rate of diagnosis of the disease has
increased exponentially since 1980.
[82]
The day care cases reached a groundswell in the mid-1980s, the recovered memory lawsuits in the early 1990s. [83] Since that time, a backlash has struck; critics have begun to claim that the theories and methods underlying these cases were spurious. [84] Many experts reviewing the day care cases contend that police investigators and prosecutors questioned the children in a manner that implanted or suggested their accounts of abuse. [85] By 1992, in response to the rise of charges and lawsuits based on recovered memories, some accused parents formed the False Memory Syndrome Foundation, which attracted more than 6,000 families in its first two years. [86] Yet, strangely, the backlash seems to continue the discussion
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of
child sexual abuse. [87] Now instead of movies of the week about child abuse, we have movies of the week about people who were
falsely accused of committing child abuse.
[88] The cultural obsession persists.
In the mid-1990s, a new menace riveted public attention: sexual
predators.
[89] States enacted so-called Megan's Laws, which require convicted sexual
offenders to register their presence with local authorities.
[90] There was also an increased public interest in retribution against child
molesters, evidenced for example, by rising calls to castrate pedophiles.
[91] States have called for longer confinements. Kansas's "Sexually Violent
Predator Act," upheld by the Supreme Court two years ago, provides for the
indefinite civil commitment of certain sex offenders.
[92] The defendant in the Kansas case was convicted of repeated child
molestation.
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The Internet has proved to be a particularly rich site for fear of sexual predators (and of child pornographers, as I will describe below). Anxiety over children's exposure to pedophiles was a major justification in Congress' rush to pass the 1996 Communications Decency Act (CDA), [93] a measure that quickly succumbed to a First Amendment challenge. [94]
New anti-stalking measures have arisen, targeting pedophiles who prey on children on the Internet. [95] The Protection of Children From Sexual Predators Act of 1998 criminalizes the use of interstate facilities to transmit information about a minor for criminal sexual purposes. [96] The Child Online Protection Act (COPA) prohibits knowingly distributing to minors "material that is harmful to minors." [97]
Meanwhile lurid, anguished media reports about the peril to our children fuel the crisis. As a media critic reported in 1997: "No other crime so preoccupies the press." [98] Child sexual abuse has become the master narrative of our culture. [99] It eclipses all other crimes; it is, we repeatedly hear, "worse than murder." [100] We view it as a root cause. [101] It
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excuses
its victims of anything else; it "exculpates." [102] When someone is accused of a heinous crime, he breaks down and
confesses his sordid history of childhood sexual victimization. And we respond,
"Well, of course that explains it."
[103]
"The deep, dark secret that you have to plow through hundreds of pages to discover is always - but always - what the blurb writers like to call 'society's last taboo'. So it's not much of a surprise anymore." [105]
Question:
Why in The Prince of Tides are the brother and sister, so, well, crazy? (The
sister half-dead from a suicide attempt, the brother underachieving and
ruined.)
Answer: They were molested as children. [106] The secret revealed, it dispels
mystery.
We
accept this notion even as some members of the psychiatric establishment have
come to doubt it - to suggest that the long-term effects of childhood
sexual abuse may have been exaggerated.
[107]
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All of these incidents indicate a changed view of children:
Children's sexual vulnerability has become one of their most prominent
characteristics. Regardless of which "side" one takes as to the truth
of statistics on child sexual
abuse, regardless of whether it is really a spreading plague or only an outbreak
of mass hysteria, it is certain that child sexual abuse is now a subject of
widespread controversy and social concern, a "cultural addiction."
[108] We have come to scrutinize child sexuality with an intense fervor: In
1996, a kindergarten student who kissed a girl in his class was suspended for
sexual harassment.
[109]
Psychoanalysis replaced childhood innocence with a vision of childhood as a hotbed of forbidden incestuous sexual strivings. Instead of accepting Freud's portrait of childhood as a realm rampant with hostile sexual desire, we now strive to recover our "pure" inner child.
Freud's theory of childhood sexuality has been widely accepted, [112] but it has always been hard to swallow. At first glance, it may appear that the discovery of child sexual abuse as a social problem has returned us to a pre-Freudian state where children are once again sexually pure and blank. As I will describe below, this new vision of children may seem more palatable, but it has come at a cost. [113]