Who's to Blame?: Child Sexual Abuse & Non-Offending Mothers - Hardcover

Betty Joyce Carter

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0802028470 ISBN 13: 9780802028471

Publisher: Univ of Toronto Pr

Synopsis

Anyone familiar with current literature on child sexual abuse knows that non-offending mothers are routinely blamed for allowing their children to be victimized. This book analyses and challenges this orthodoxy. It explores why mothers are held responsible when they are not themselves offenders, and documents the institutionalized sexism they encounter in their dealings with intervening agencies.

Central to the study are the cases of twenty-four mothers whose children disclosed incidents of sexual abuse. Betty Carter follows the experiences of these women in detail, documenting the treatment they received from police, child-protection workers, counsellors, schools, courts, physicians, co-workers, and family members. She traces the tendency to blame mothers of sexually abused children to the specific wording of legislation, to the implementation of agency policies, and to front-line practices.

Using a feminist analysis, and drawing on her years of experience as a child-protection worker and child-abuse specialist, Carter argues that the procedures and policies of various institutions reproduce and maintain patriarchal ideology and sexist practices.

About this title

About the Author:

Betty Joyce Carter is Professor Emerita, School of Social Work, University of British Columbia.

About this edition

• Publisher: Univ of Toronto Pr
• ISBN 10: 0802028470
• ISBN 13: 9780802028471
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 234