Exploring Perspectives of Social Workers on Female Perpetrated Sexual Abuse
Date
2018-04-30
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Abstract
Female perpetrated child sexual abuse is a phenomenon that has been under researched by social work scholars. Professional responses to the issue have a significant impact on the experiences of survivors and social workers play a key role in the identification, investigation and treatment of sexual abuse. To address the dearth of research in this area, I studied social worker’s perspectives on women’s sexual offending using a discourse analysis methodology. A sample of six social workers participated in semi-structured interviews. The participants talked about the lack of social work training and education specific to women’s sexual offending, and how this could lead to difficulty in understanding and responding to the issue. They described several dominant discourses in society, which draw on dominant ideologies of gender and serve to mask recognition and minimize the seriousness of women’s sexual offending. The participants talked about the consequences of this lack of recognition for survivors, who could face responses of disbelief and dismissal, and a lack of appropriate resources. They described female perpetrated sexual abuse as a traumatic experience that can result in emotional and relational difficulties for survivors. In their representations of offenders, a history of trauma, in particular a previous history of sexual victimization, was given as an explanation for offending behaviour. In their descriptions of motivations for women’s sexual offending, some participants articulated a discourse based on gender difference. This involved framing women’s offending as passive, and emotionally and relationally motivated, compared to men’s offending as aggressive and sexually motivated. This conflicts with previous research that shows a large degree of similarity between men and women’s sexual offending. These findings have implications for social work practice, education and research.
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Discourse Analysis, Child Welfare, Sexual Abuse
Citation
Allen, D. D. (2018). Exploring perspectives of social workers on female perpetrated sexual abuse (Master's thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/31902