Conceptualising and Categorising Child Abuse Inquiries: From Damage Control to Foregrounding Survivor Testimony

Shurlee Swain,Katie Wright,Johanna Sköld

doi:10.1111/johs.12176

Shurlee Swain, Katie Wright + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1111/johs.12176

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Abstract

AbstractTestimony before inquiries into out‐of‐home care that have taken place in many countries over the last twenty years has severely disrupted received ideas about the quality of care given to children in the past. Evidence of the widespread abuse of children presented before recent inquiries internationally gives rise to the question: why didn’t we know? Part of the answer lies in the changing forms and functions of inquiries, whose interests they serve, how they are organised and how they gather evidence. Using as a case study, a survey of historical abuse inquiries in Australia, this article explores the shift to victim and survivor testimony and in so doing offers a new way of conceptualising and categorising historical child abuse inquiries. It focuses less on how inquiries are constituted or governed, and instead advances an historically contextualised approach that foregrounds the issue of who speaks and who is heard.

Highlights

Inquiries into historical institutional child abuse have become a global phenomenon, with approximately twenty Western democracies across Europe, the United States, Canada, New Zealand and Australia having established official inquiries since the 1980s
This paper argues that consideration of these matters is critical to furthering understanding of the role of commissions of inquiry at a time when there is an increasing propensity for governments to employ them as a political mechanism
Historical institutional abuse inquiries provide a critical means by which the past abuse of children is documented and acknowledged

Summary

Introduction

Inquiries into historical institutional child abuse have become a global phenomenon, with approximately twenty Western democracies across Europe, the United States, Canada, New Zealand and Australia having established official inquiries since the 1980s.

Results

Conclusion