ABSTRACT
There is probably no identity deemed shadier or more deviant in popular discourse than the paedophile. The archetypal figure haunts parks and playgrounds in his dirty raincoat or lingers invisibly, anonymously or pseudonymously in children’s cyber chat rooms. He is the dangerous stranger who inhabits parents’ worst nightmares and renders modern childhood a ‘behind closed doors’ experience. Except it is precisely behind the closed doors of the institutions in which children are supposed to be safe that sexual abuse happens: in families; in homes; in closed communities; in schools; and in leisure contexts. Such abuse is primarily perpetrated by someone known to the child, often someone related to the child, and it is a crime most usually perpetrated against girls by a male relative, father or stepfather in 51.6 per cent of cases (Richards, 2011), despite claims — from sources including the Vatican, defending celibacy — that homosexuality is to blame.
