Children, Sexual Abuse and the Emotions of the Community Health Practitioner in England and Wales, 1970-2000 (2023)
Ruth Beecher (Author)
Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences
Volume: 78
Issue: 4
Pages: 365-380
Publication date: 2023
Language: English
A survivor of child sexual abuse felt that doctors missed opportunities to notice her distress when, at fourteen, she had an unexplained illness that lasted for a year. The cause, she wrote, was “explained by Doctors as psychological, but nobody questioned further. WHY??? … If adults don’t listen[,] then we have no one to turn to.” For decades, community health practitioners have been identified as an important group in protecting children from maltreatment, but survivor testimony and agency statistics demonstrate that they rarely receive verbal disclosures or recognize the physical or behavioural warning signs of sexual abuse. The accounts we have of the 1980s tell of swiftly heightening professional awareness, followed by a visceral backlash in the latter part of the decade that discouraged practitioners from acting on their concerns. This article uses trade and professional journals, training materials, textbooks, and new oral histories to consider why community-based doctors and nurses have struggled to notice and respond to the sexually abused child. It will argue that the conceptual model of child sexual abuse that community health practitioners encountered in the workplace encouraged a mechanical and procedural response to suspicions of abuse. In a highly gendered and contested workplace, practitioners’ feelings about how survivors, non-abusing family members, and perpetrators should be understood were rarely debated in training or in practice. The emotional cost to the practitioners of engagement with sexual abuse, and their need for spaces of reflexivity and structures of support, were ignored.
...MoreArticle Jacob D Moses; Agnes Arnold-Forster; Samuel V Schotland (2023) Introduction: Healthcare Practitioners’ Emotions and the Politics of Well-Being in Twentieth Century Anglo-America. Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences (pp. 341-351).
Similar Citations
Article
Janet Weston;
Virginia Berridge;
(2020)
AIDS Inside and Out: HIV/AIDS and Penal Policy in Ireland and England & Wales in the 1980s and 1990s
Book
Olivier Esteves;
(2018)
The 'desegregation' of English schools: Bussing, race and urban space, 1960s–80s
Book
Deborah Blythe Doroshow;
(2019)
Emotionally Disturbed: A History of Caring for America's Troubled Children
Article
Wendy Sims-Schouten;
(2025)
“Undisciplined and a Moral Danger”: Fright, Idleness and Immorality as Attributions of “Imbecile Children” in Late Victorian and Edwardian Britain
Article
Nadja Durbach;
(2020)
Dead or Alive? Stillbirth Registration, Premature Babies, and the Definition of Life in England and Wales, 1836–1960
Book
Deborah Brunton;
(2013)
The Politics of Vaccination: Practice and Policy in England, Wales, Ireland, and Scotland, 1800-1874
Article
Margaret White;
(2023)
Mortality among those certified under lunacy legislation in Scotland during World War I
Article
Peter Anderson;
(2021)
Unions and compensating wage differentials for workplace accident risk: the English and Welsh railway industry, 1902–12
Book
Gordon Dickinson;
David Bower;
(2019)
Britannia's Roads: An Introduction to the Strip Maps of John Ogilby's Britannia,1675
Chapter
Edgars Rops;
(2020)
The Horse in Welsh and Anglo-Saxon Law
Article
Michael Cunningham;
(June 2018)
“Two Wheels Bad”? The Status of Cycling in the Youth Hostels Association of England and Wales in the 1930s
Article
Robert C. Allen;
(2019)
Class structure and inequality during the industrial revolution: Lessons from England's social tables, 1688–1867
Article
Roy E. Bailey;
Timothy J. Hatton;
Kris Inwood;
(2016)
Health, height, and the household at the turn of the twentieth century
Article
Gregory, Ian N.;
Henneberg, Jordi Martí;
(2010)
The Railways, Urbanization, and Local Demography in England and Wales, 1825--1911
Article
Turner, John;
Hayward, Rhodri;
Angel, Katherine;
Fulford, Bill;
Hall, John;
Millard, Chris;
Thomso, Mathew;
(2015)
The History of Mental Health Services in Modern England: Practitioner Memories and the Direction of Future Research
Book
Laybourn, Keith;
Taylor, David;
(2011)
Policing in England and Wales, 1918--39: The Fed, Flying Squads and Forensics
Book
Glennie, Paul;
Thrift, N. J.;
(2009)
Shaping the Day: A History of Timekeeping in England and Wales, 1300--1800
Book
Philo, Chris;
(2004)
A Geographical History of Institutional Provision for the Insane from Medieval Times to the 1860s in England and Wales: The Space Reserved for Insanity
Article
Taylor, Vanessa;
Chappells, Heather;
Medd, Will;
Trentmann, Frank;
(2009)
Drought Is Normal: The Socio-Technical Evolution of Drought and Water Demand in England and Wales, 1893--2006
Chapter
Stagg, Kevin;
(2006)
Representing Physical Difference: The Materiality of the Monstrous
Be the first to comment!