NCJ Number
178845
Journal
Northwestern University Law Review Volume: 92 Issue: 4 Dated: Summer 1998 Pages: 1197-1640
Editor(s)
Katherine E. Mills
Date Published
1998
Length
451 pages
Annotation
Ten essays examine the history and contemporary issues associated with the American society's and legal system's response to child sexual abuse and those who perpetrate it.
Abstract
The first essay argues that social policy regarding sex offenders should ideally reflect the seriousness of the crimes in terms of their impact on women and children in general and on specific victims. At the same time, social policy should allow for a range of sentencing options that recognizes that not all victims have the same preference for outcomes of criminal prosecution and also recognizes that sex offenders are a diverse group of criminals. Surgical or chemical castration of sex offenders is discussed in another paper, as it argues that there is no ethical bar to taking voluntary castration into account in imposing sentence upon convicted sex offenders. A third paper critiques the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Kansas v. Hendricks, which held to be constitutional Kansas' law that sanctions long-term institutionalization of "sexually violent predators." This is followed by a related paper that draws lessons from Minnesota's sex offender commitment litigation to portray a foreshadowing of the future of "Kansas v. Hendricks." Other papers identify gaps in Federal legislation that weaken the law's protection of teens who are potential victims of sexual abuse; the history of sex offender statutes before modern sex offender statutes; the impact of child molesters' denial of their behavior on individual and cultural constructions of child sexual abuse; the influence of patriarchal cultural values on responses to various circumstances that involved allegations of child sexual abuse; the manipulation of legal remedies to deter suits by survivors of childhood sexual abuse; and the history of legal definitions of incest. For individual papers, see NCJ-178846-53.