ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I introduce some of the key themes in this book, drawing on the work of contributors. The first is to question the utility, in terms of reducing the incidence and prevalence of child sexual abuse, of the vast volume of academic and professional work on the subject produced since 1978 (when feminist scholarship started to identify incest as a major social problem), and to question the efficacy – in the radical feminist terms of ‘stopping abusers abusing’ – of current policy on child protection and child sexual abuse prevention. I use the findings of official inquiries into child abuse in the UK, and in particular the Report of the Inquiry into Child Abuse in Cleveland in 1987, to illustrate the size of the problem, and the lack of impact inquiries have had on solving it. I discuss the usefulness of ‘cycle of violence’ theory in explaining the aetiology of child sexual abuse and focus on feminist concerns about the way it is being used against the interests of sexually abused children and their non-abusing or protective mothers. This leads on to looking at the impact of gender-neutral language on what is seen, known and done about child protection and child sexual abuse prevention, and in particular, how it makes men invisible as primarily the sexual abusers of children and protects their sexual access to children.
