Avengers, Conquerors, Playmates, and Lovers: Roles Played by Child Sexual Abuse Perpetrators (From Deviance and Deviants: An Anthology, P 190-202, 2000, Richard Tewksbury and Patricia Gagne -- See NCJ-184209)

• NCJ Number: 184214
• Author(s): Jane F. Gilgun
• Date Published: 2000
• Length: 13 pages
• Sale Source: Roxbury Publishing Co.
• Publication Format: Book (Softbound)
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This article examines the ways adults who sexually abuse children define their relationships with their victims and how they use those definitions to facilitate access to children.

Abstract

The article claims that definitions of the situation are important for how victims interpret their experiences, and that the way in which other adults in the child’s life define or interpret a relationship between an abusive adult and a child can affect whether the sexual abuse is detected. Clinicians generally approach child molestation on individual, psychodynamic and interpersonal levels. Policy and programming, especially prevention and education programs, focus on social change and on preventing the development of molesting behavior in the first place. Prevention efforts could be further supported by challenging models of male conduct--such as the unmanliness of feeling hurt and lonely and the manliness of being sexually aggressive and exploitative--and by initiating policies and programs that promote other more humanitarian alternatives. Figure, references