Den talande kroppen. Om samhällets beredskap att hantera sexuella övergrepp på barn

Abstract

This essay explores giris' and women's disclosure and society's readiness to handle child sexual abuse. Disclosure and readiness is analysed both on an institutional and individual level. By tuming to empirical research on sexual abuse, women's stories about disclosure and concepts used in feminist ethics and moral philosophy, the author problematizes the questions of if, how and where disclosure, social support and healing can take place. She argues that voice and silence, two of the central themes in 20th century feminism, are also central to the experiences of sexual abuse victims and their need for social support. The question of how victims can be discovered or assessed is reframed to a question of what one is allowed to see and speak about in our society. Both the victim and her network of potential helpers are restrained in their abilities to know what has taken place, to speak about it and to act on it. Instead of understanding effects and symptoms of sexual abuse as exclusively medical or psychological problems, they can be perceived and interpreted as embodied communication. When subdued, excluded, deprived of justice and prevented from revealing the secret, the body of the survivor speaks instead. There is some empirical evidence that society's reactions to different kinds of sexual abuse disclosure are gendered. Female survivors have estimated female therapists as being more helpful and sexually abused women are at risk of being sexually exploited by male professionals. A deeper understanding of if (and how) responses to sexual abuse disclosure are gendered is lacking. However, when healing from the trauma of sexual violence, disclosure, justice and care seem to be important aspects of social support.