Working with Young People with Harmful Sexual Behaviour

Abstract

The exploitation and subjugation of one gender by another (women are more likely to be victims of exploitation than men) are deeply rooted in historical practices, politics and cultural values concerning the roles each should adopt in a society. These roles act as identifiers, defining what it means to be a male and what it means to be a female in domestic, group and community spaces, be it in the home, at work or at leisure. The subjugation of women and maltreatment associated with these gendered roles are preserved by everyday actions, social expectations and traditions and are maintained by outmoded legislation. The enculturation of gender inequality thus becomes intergenerational, and the values that contribute to gender-based violence and the sexual abuse of children are passed down and across families. In this part of the book, we examine the impact of a form of sexual abuse that is little talked about—abuse by mothers. As will be shown, sexual abuse of children by women is as likely to have its genesis in gender inequality and violence to women as is sexual abuse by men. We traverse a different terrain from the other parts of the book, the abuse of a son by his mother, the cyclical nature of intergenerational abuse and the factors that intersect to create conditions of risk and vulnerability to children. Elsewhere (Jones and Trotman Jemmott 2013; Jones et al. 2014), we identify how these intersections place children at risk of male perpetrators of abuse. In this part of the book, we explain that these same conditions can mean that children are also at risk from women and these same conditions can, in turn, mean that children who once were victims are now both victim and perpetrator—placing other children at risk of abuse from them. These networks of sexual abuse are often described as intergenerational but we must remember that they also extend their reach laterally across generations, across young people in a wide range of settings, across peer groups and sibling groups too. Interlocking factors that perpetuate child sexual abuse (CSA) in the Caribbean include the following: