Bridging the gap: feminist theory and practice reality in work with the perpetrators of child sexual abuse

Abstract

Child sexual abuse has been a focus of concern for feminist writers for over a decade, and social work and probation practitioners are spending an increasing amount of time undertaking intervention with men who sexually abuse children. This paper uses a review of feminist literature which identifies three contested areas in the feminist discussion: theory, power and the fixity of gender, and discusses whether these debates are reflected in any way in the interventions being undertaken with men who sexually abuse children. The conclusion reached is of a distance between theory which draws on a radical patriarchal analysis of child sexual abuse and the practice of those who attempt to work with the perpetrators of such abuse. Although some workers frame their intervention in terms of a patriarchal understanding of society and of the nature of power within this – to this extent following a radical feminist approach – there is a sense in which practitioners’ use of feminist theory is only partial. Thus feminist theory is often presented as unitary and there is a sense in which practitioners who say they are espousing feminism are not in touch with the subtleties of feminist analysis revealed in the literature review. In addition, the logic of the radical feminist perspective is not followed through in practice as there is evidence of a sensitivity to difference which may be aligning practitioners with a post‐modern/post‐structural interpretation of men’s sexual violence towards children.