ABSTRACT
The situation women face when a child is sexually abused by a partner or another relative is one of formidable stressfulness and complexity. They are faced with losses for themselves, their children and others, with confusion, conflict and threat both from within the family and outside, and decisions with life-long implications. The language used in professional discourses to describe circumstances in which they do not fully meet children's needs for protection is hopelessly inadequate to represent this. The key terms – ‘collusion’, ‘maintenance’ and ‘failure to protect’ – are labels attached to women's roles on the basis of outcome. They say only that abuse recurred after the mother had some knowledge of it and nothing of what occurred in between. It was for this reason that the inquiry into Tyra Henry's death after a history of physical abuse did not regard the term ‘failure to protect’ as useful in relation to her mother, dismissing it as ‘self-evident’ (London Borough of Lambeth, 1987). In addition, how knowledge is imputed in relation to child sexual abuse is highly problematic. Both ‘collusion’ and ‘maintenance’ further imply consensus or agreement. Their use derives from the functionalist approach to the family as a consensual unit which has underpinned most family systems theory. The accounts of the women interviewed for this study indicated that their inability to meet all their children's needs for protection had more to do with conflict than consensus.
