ABSTRACT
Fields are generally semi-autonomous, overlapping in myriad ways and as the accounts presented above illustrate, the early lives of these children were lived predominately within three fields that shaped their developing habitus: family, education and sport. In addition, the more dispersed but particularly dominant field of patriarchy (and its ideology of masculinism) can also be observed (with the possible exception of Stephen), chiefly through its effects within each of these three fields. Within these intersections, is the field of power within which all these children encountered men of power. These men, without exception, influenced not only the child, but the adult community around the child. It is quite clear that the seven main perpetrators within these accounts were collectively responsible for the sexual subjection of many children, possibly hundreds. It is also clear that their actions were not somehow hermetically sealed (concealed) from the community in which they abused children. Typically, this is expressed as an extension of individual ‘grooming’ (e.g. Leberg, 1997) by a malevolent, ‘clever’ and manipulative ‘groomer’ or ‘predator’ who ‘groomed’ or ‘fooled’ not only the child, but also the community or environment around the child. However, such explanations are, sociologically at least, unsatisfying as they rely on a sort of ‘super criminal’ operating within, but also above and outside, a community of wellmeaning but naïve, ‘culturally dopey’ adults. Yet a persistent finding in cases of ‘institutional abuse’, illustrated again by these accounts, is that other adults ‘knew’ and either did nothing or actively concealed the abuse:
PAUL: it was kind of understood that whichever boy was in his car at practice was the boy he was sleeping with. And that was right in front of your face, everybody knew it, but nobody said anything.
