A History of Ambivalence and Conflict in the Discursive Construction of the ‘Child Victim’ of Sexual Abuse
| Published date | 01 September 1999 |
| Date | 01 September 1999 |
| Author | Carol Smart |
| DOI | 10.1177/096466399900800306 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
A HISTORY OF AMBIVALENCE
AND CONFLICT IN THE
DISCURSIVE CONSTRUCTION OF
THE ‘CHILD VICTIM’ OF
SEXUAL ABUSE
CAROL SMART
University of Leeds, UK
‘These poor children ought to be precluded from association with other chil-
dren, for without any fault on their part they are moral lepers’ (Lord Bishop of
Ely, 1914)
ABSTRACT
This article was presented as one of the plenary addresses at the Keele Conference on
Gender, Sexuality and Law in June 1998. Speakers were asked to focus on how their
own work had developed and changed over time. In my address and in this article
these issues are essentially absent because I cannot avoid the conclusion that, in my
case at least, the substance of my research is of more interest than reflections upon
my intellectual biography. However, this article is, I think, a good example of what I
regard as an important strand of my work as a feminist socio-legal theorist and
researcher. My work over the last 20 years has moved back and forth between the
theoretical (viz. Feminism and the Power of Law [1989]), the empirical (Family Frag-
ments? [1999]) and the historical (Regulating Womanhood [1992]). Sometimes it has
even managed to combine all three elements (The Ties That Bind [1982]). There have
been moments when I felt that theoretical work was the most important, because of
the limits of contemporary analysis or because I felt that my historical or empirical
work had given rise to ways of thinking which called for expression in a transferable
medium – and theory is always more widely read than empirical or historical work.
But at other times I have found the focus on theory to be rather sterile and unre-
warding and at such times I have found that empirical work poses new challenges and
forces me to think in new ways. My current work on contemporary changes to child-
hood, for example, is certainly making me reconsider how we should theorise gender
in family relationships. Empirical work, in my experience, always changes how one
understands the social world. At other times, particularly when the rigours of
SOCIAL &LEGAL STUDIES 0964 6639 (199909) 8:3 Copyright © 1999
SAGE Publications, London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi,
Vol. 8(3), 391–409; 009287
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fieldwork are too demanding, I return to the library and the archives. While fieldwork
is exciting and challenging, I find that I am most intellectually contented when I am
among original documents. This article emerges from such a period. Historical work
challenges our modern complacencies and arrogance, and brings us back in touch with
the prolonged difficulties of bringing about social and legal change. It also locates us,
as researchers and as sometime agents of change, in an important tradition of endeav-
our and struggle. The issue of how law deals with sexuality, and indeed the extent to
which it is part of the historical and cultural construction of sexual behaviour, has
been of interest and concern to me throughout my academic career. I remain con-
vinced that law, understood in its widest meaning, is still one of the most important
sites of engagement and counter-discourse.
INTRODUCTION
IT IS a truism to remark that we have had – in western developed societies
– problems with identifying and dealing with what is referred to as child
sexual abuse. We do now acknowledge the existence of adult–child sexual
contact and, in the main, hold that such contact is harmful and abusive. We
have put effort into documenting its extent and in devising more appropriate
methods of handling the offence, the harm and its consequences. However,
child sexual abuse remains a contested discursive field. My focus in this article
is therefore on the social and cultural history of this field of contestation and
the processes whereby English society began to interpret adult–child sexual
contact as harmful. This means that in this article I am suspending the idea
that ‘harm’ is a transcendental notion which is automatically knowable and
recognisable at any moment in history by any member of a culture. I shall
argue that what is seen as harmful changes over time and as a consequence of
processes of redefinition which we can map. I am also suspending the idea
that we always automatically know what a ‘child’ is. Historians and sociolo-
gists of childhood have shown that ideas about the child and childhood have
changed considerably over time (Cooter, 1992; Hendrick, 1994; Hopkins,
1994; James and Prout, 1990; Pinchbeck and Hewitt, 1973). What we think
is appropriate behaviour for a person of 12 years of age now would be quite
different from what would have been thought appropriate in 1900 or 1950.
This, in turn, would have been affected by class and gender differences. I need
not labour this point but it is worth mentioning in case we slip into a kind of
essentialism when looking at sexual behaviour. Sociologically speaking, it
would seem that we can now easily accept the idea that the extension of
schooling to children in this century changed childhood. However, the idea
that extending the age of consent for girls from 13 to 16 years old in 1885 also
changed the nature of childhood is less easily grasped. We tend to think that
it was self-evident that a 13-year-old could not consent and was too imma-
ture for sex. In fact this was not then self-evident at all. Rather we ought to
understand the extent to which the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act 1885
was part of a new construction of modern childhood. It created and extended
a particular, historically and culturally specific type of childhood to the age
of 16 in much the same way as the Education Acts did subsequently.
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