‘They Wouldn’t Believe Me’: Giving a Voice to British South Asian Male Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse

Abstract

AbstractBritish South Asian male child sexual abuse (CSA) survivors face a twofold problem: lack of research on this phenomenon and limited service provision. First, male CSA survivors have traditionally been marginalized in favour of female CSA survivors, a group that forms the basis of most academic research and to whom the majority of counselling and support services in the UK cater (Rapsey et al. 2020). The centrality of these female experiences, although crucial to understanding CSA survivor experiences in general, has eclipsed the specific narratives of male survivors. Second, despite the UK’s incredibly multicultural population, people from minoritized backgrounds still experience institutional forms of racism that are entrenched in service provision and research and that lead to racialized and Eurocentric perspectives and practices (Singh 2019). This article thus seeks to expand on the existing body of literature on male CSA in minoritized groups. It illuminates the experiences of male survivors from British South Asian communities, creating space for the much-needed voices of a critically under-researched group.