New International Frontiers in Child Sexual Abuse: Theory, Problems and Progress

322 Pages·2019·2.73 MB·English

by  Ben Mathews

Child Maltreatment:
Contemporary Issues in Research and Policy 7
Ben Mathews
New
International
Frontiers in Child
Sexual Abuse
Theory, Problems and Progress
Child Maltreatment
Contemporary Issues in Research and Policy
Volume 7
Series Editors
Jill E. Korbin, Ph.D., Professor of Anthropology, Associate Dean, College of
Arts and Sciences, Director, Schubert Center for Child Studies, Crawford Hall,
7th Floor, 10900 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, OH 44106-7068, USA
[email protected]
Richard D. Krugman, MD, Distinguished Professor of Pediatrics and Dean,
University of Colorado, School of Medicine, Room C-1003 Bldg 500,
Anschutz Medical Campus, 13001 E. 17th Place, Aurora, CO 80045, USA
[email protected]
This series provides a high-quality, cutting edge, and comprehensive source offering
the current best knowledge on child maltreatment from multidisciplinary and
multicultural perspectives. It consists of a core handbook that is followed by two or
three edited volumes of original contributions per year. The core handbook will
present a comprehensive view of the field. Each chapter will summarize current
knowledge and suggest future directions in a specific area. It will also highlight
controversial and contested issues in that area, thus moving the field forward. The
handbook will be updated every five years. The edited volumes will focus on critical
issues in the field from basic biology and neuroscience to practice and policy. Both
the handbook and edited volumes will involve creative thinking about moving the
field forward and will not be a recitation of past research. Both will also take
multidisciplinary, multicultural and mixed methods approaches.
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/8863
Ben Mathews
New International Frontiers
in Child Sexual Abuse
Theory, Problems and Progress
Ben Mathews
Faculty of Law
Queensland University of Technology
Brisbane, QLD, Australia
ISSN 2211-9701 ISSN 2211-971X (electronic)
Child Maltreatment
ISBN 978-3-319-99042-2 ISBN 978-3-319-99043-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99043-9
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018952362
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019
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Acknowledgements
Some sections of this book are adapted from parts of previously published works.
Some of these works were published under Creative Commons licences automati-
cally permitting republication with attribution (CC-BY). Other works were pub-
lished under other licences requiring permissions or attributions. I am grateful to the
publishers for permission to reuse and adapt the materials.
Mathews, B. (2017). Optimising implementation of reforms to better prevent and
respond to child sexual abuse in institutions: Insights from public health, regula-
tory theory, and Australia’s Royal Commission, Child Abuse and Neglect, 74,
86–98.
Mathews, B., & Collin-Vézina, D. (2017). Sexual Abuse: Towards a Conceptual
Model and Definition. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, 1–18.
Mathews, B., Bromfield, L., Walsh, K., Cheng, Q., & Norman, R. (2017). Reports
of child sexual abuse of boys and girls: Longitudinal trends over a 20-year period
in Victoria, Australia. Child Abuse & Neglect, 66, 9–22.
Mathews, B., Collin-Vézina, D. (2016) Child Sexual Abuse: Raising Awareness and
Empathy Is Essential To Promote New Public Health Responses, Journal of
Public Health, 37, 304–314.
Mathews, B., Lee, X., & Norman, R. (2016). Impact of a new mandatory reporting
law on reporting and identification of child sexual abuse: A seven-year time trend
analysis. Child Abuse & Neglect, 56, 62–79.
Mathews, B. (2015). A Theoretical Framework for Designing and Evaluating
Strategies to Identify Cases of Serious Child Abuse and Neglect. In B. Mathews
and D. Bross (Eds.). Mandatory reporting laws and the identification of severe
child abuse and neglect (pp. 127–156). Dordrecht: Springer.
Mathews, B. (2013). Legal, cultural and practical developments in responding to
female genital mutilation: Can an absolute human right emerge? In C. Sampford,
R. Maguire, B. Lewis, (Ed.), Human Rights and Shifting Global Powers (pp. 207–
227). London: Routledge.
Mathews, B. (2011). Female genital mutilation: Australian law, policy and practical
challenges for doctors. Medical Journal of Australia, 194(3), 139–141.
v
vi Acknowledgements
Mathews, B., & Kenny, M. (2008). Mandatory reporting legislation in the USA,
Canada and Australia: A cross-jurisdictional review of key features, differences
and issues. Child Maltreatment, 13, 50–63.
I express my sincere gratitude to those whose work has inspired this book. First,
thanks to Jill Korbin and Dick Krugman for initiating this series on child maltreat-
ment and for supporting this book. Second, there are scores of researchers around
the world, past and present, from whom I have learnt, been inspired, and continue to
draw inspiration. Some of these I have been fortunate enough to meet and work with
in various capacities. Particular thanks are due to Don Bross, Maureen Kenny,
Sandy Wurtele, David Finkelhor, Lil Tonmyr, Elizabeth Letourneau, and Delphine
Collin-Vézina. Closer to home, special thanks must go to Michael Dunne, Leah
Bromfield, Andrew McGee, and, most of all, professionally and personally,
Kerryann Walsh.
I also thank the many survivors with whom I have worked in various professional
capacities. The privilege of listening to them, and learning from their experience,
has been the most formative experience of my professional career. I hope my work
has done them justice. Special mention must go to S, M, H, G, B, and K.
This book is dedicated first and foremost to survivors of child sexual abuse. It is
also dedicated to all individuals and institutions who in future can help to prevent it
and reduce its effects and in particular to those whose responsibility it is to create
change.
Introduction: A Range of Challenges, Cause for
Hope, and the Nature of This Book
A Range of Challenges
Recent events across the world highlight multiple diverse challenges for societies in
preventing, identifying, and responding to child sexual abuse. A scan of these events
demonstrates substantial prevalence, persistent social manifestations and norms and
resistance impeding change, prolific offending in institutional settings and systemic
failure to respond, and abuse between adolescent peers.
General Prevalence The reported prevalence of CSA continues to be disturbingly

high. A recent meta-analysis found high levels of victimisation in most nations for
both girls and boys; globally, 1 in 8 children (12.7%) had suffered CSA, with rates
of 18% for girls and 7.6% for boys (Stoltenborgh et al. 2011). Even in the USA,
where substantial efforts have been dedicated to prevention for several decades, and
where there is some evidence to indicate a decline in recent years, the most recent
national study found that 21.7% of all 14- to 17-year-olds reported experiencing
some form of sexual victimisation in their childhood, and in the past year, 16.4% of
girls and 9.4% of boys aged 14–17 reported such an experience (Finkelhor et al.
2015). These data included 12.9% of girls and 5.1% of boys aged 14–17 reporting
they had experienced attempted or completed rape. A national study from 2006 in
the USA found 4.5% of participants reported experiencing contact CSA by a parent
or adult caregiver, before sixth grade (Hussey et al. 2006).
Social Manifestations, Norms, and Resistance Impeding
Change
Social norms in many nations, both Western and developing, do not sufficiently
proscribe child sexual abuse. Social, legal, health, and educational systems are not
equipped to respond to long-established and newly emerging manifestations of
vii
viii Introduction: A Range of Challenges, Cause for Hope, and the Nature of This Book
child sexual abuse. Attitudes endorsing child sexual abuse, at both the individual
and institutional level, are persistent and entrenched. An appreciation of these recent
events is important to inform an understanding of the seriousness of the broader
situation and the social context and nature of contemporary challenges.
Developing Nations In Yemen, where there are no laws setting an age for marriage

or criminalising rape in marriage, families made desperate by war and hunger are
selling their daughters as child brides. Child brides are exposed to daily rape and
beating (Youssef 2017). The market in China for trafficked and enslaved child
brides from other countries such as Myanmar is growing (Baker 2017). Despite
recent progress, child marriage remains a massive problem, with an estimated 700
million women alive today being married as a child.
The Philippines is a hub for Internet-based exploitation of children, with the
Internet used for the live sexual exploitation of children as young as 2 years old. In
2018, Drew Shobbrook, an Australian, was sentenced to life imprisonment with his
Filipino partner Leslie Ann Fernandez, for sexual exploitation of 15 girls in a cyber-
sex ring based in Cebu. More generally, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation
estimates that at any given moment, 750,000 child predators are online (Murdoch
2018). More generally, the dark Internet poses a massive challenge for law enforce-
ment. While successful specialised teams exist, such as Task Force Argos in
Queensland, Australia, the exploitation of clandestine Internet sites adds a new
avenue for some of the worst child sex offenders. In 2015, South Australian man
Shannon McCoole was sentenced to 35 years in prison for a range of serious
offences against 7 children aged 18 months to 3 years, who he accessed through his
job as a carer hired by the South Australian government. His offences included shar-
ing videos and photos of his abuse of the children on a sophisticated global child
pornography website with 1000 members; he was also the head administrator of this
site (Hancock 2015; Marcus 2016; McGregor and Lim 2015).
Western Nations In Western nations, this problem is exemplified by recent selected

events in the USA, France, Australia, and the UK. In the USA, a substantial number
of states have amended civil statutes of limitation to give survivors of child sexual
abuse a more reasonable amount of time in which to commence civil legal proceed-
ings for compensation for their injuries. However, many other states, including
Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania, have resisted reform, influenced by
powerful institutions – most notably the Catholic Church and Agudath Israel of
America. Some have described the strategies used by the Catholic Church as “mafia-
like” (Kirchgaessner 2016). In France in 2018, the government enacted a new law
so that a charge of rape would be automatically made out if an adult had sex with a
minor aged under 15. This was prompted by public outcry after two cases in which
prosecutors judged 11-year-olds to have apparently provided consent to a sexual
interaction with men aged 28 and 30. Rape had not been shown under the former
law because there was no “coercion, threat, or violence” (Samuel 2018).
In Australia, in the remote Western Australian town of Roebourne, with a popula-
tion of 2000 and a high concentration of Indigenous Australians, 36 men were
Introduction: A Range of Challenges, Cause for Hope, and the Nature of This Book ix
charged with 300 offences related to 184 child victims, and there are scores more
suspects (Perpitch 2017). Over 90% of the town’s school-aged children are thought
to be victims (Laurie and Taylor 2018).
England In England, a number of scandals have been revealed regarding organised

criminal gangs that have been operating with impunity for years on a mass scale,
with a succession of revelations of entire towns being epicentres of CSA. In these
cases, the criminal gangs have comprised exclusively or mostly men from British-
Asian backgrounds, with this thought to have been one factor influencing authori-
ties’ reluctance to intervene due to a fear of being perceived as racially motivated.
The nature of these kinds of offending in England has largely involved the
grooming of vulnerable girls, before systematic sexual abuse and trafficking to
other areas. Rotherham, a town in South Yorkshire, population 258,000, was the first
of these towns to come to light. A report published in 2014 by Professor Alexis Jay
found a conservative estimate of at least 1400 children (mostly girls, some as young
as 11) were raped and trafficked between 1997 and 2013 (Jay 2014). Police officers
and social workers had repeatedly failed to respond to complaints and blamed the
girls for being willing participants in child prostitution. Even by the standards of
CSA, the offences were extremely serious, often involving gang rapes, trafficking
between towns, and appalling violence. Multiple earlier reports as far back as 2002
by a special investigator were ignored. The local council’s entire cabinet was even-
tually forced to resign. In Rochdale, a town of 107,000 in Greater Manchester,
police and social workers had been warned dozens of times over a period of years
that girls were being sexually abused by a gang of men but repeatedly failed to act;
again, the girls were not believed or were judged by social workers to be “making
their own choices” (Williams 2012). Nine men were later convicted, but some have
maintained the scale of offending is similar to Rotherham (Bunyan et al. 2015). A
Member of Parliament attested that she had made direct complaints to the police
“virtually every week”. Subsequently, a separate criminal gang’s activities were the
subject of Operation Doublet, a police operation involving 550 officers.
In Oxford, 7 men were imprisoned after being found guilty of offences against 6
girls aged 11–15. The offences were extremely serious and involved grooming,
sexual torture, rape, and trafficking. A serious case review published in 2015 con-
cluded that as many as 373 children may have been targeted for sex in Oxfordshire
in a 16-year period. Some of the victims had been abused for 8 years despite repeated
complaints to police and social welfare authorities. This report found that the girls
were disbelieved and were seen by authorities as “precocious and difficult” that
authorities had failed to recognise that the girls’ ability to “resist” the abuse had
been eroded by grooming and violent control (Laville 2015; Oxfordshire
Safeguarding Children Board 2015). In Newcastle, Operation Sanctuary identified
700 girls and young women as victims, who again the victims not only of the offend-
ers but of inadequate responses by police (Perraudin 2018; Spicer 2018). Telford,
population 170,000, is the latest town to experience the uncovering of child sexual
abuse and sex trafficking. Recent estimates, while disputed, have put the number of
victims at up to 1000 over a 40-year period (Grierson 2018).