Sexual Assault and the Meaning of Power and Authority for Women with Mental Disabilities

The sexual assault of persons with mental disabilities (also described as cognitive, intellectual and developmental disabilities) occurs at alarmingly high rates worldwide. These assaults are a form of gender-based violence intersecting with discrimination based on disability. Our research on the treatment of such cases in the Canadian criminal justice system demonstrates the systemic barriers these victims face at the level of both substantive legal doctrine and trial procedure. Relying on feminist legal theory and disability theory, we argue in this paper that abuses of trust and power underlie most sexual assaults of women with mental disabilities. We argue that existing Criminal Code provisions in Canada are inadequate to address this type of exploitation because courts have consistently failed to recognize that such abuses of power and trust are fundamentally inconsistent with any notion of voluntary consent.     

Disrupting Identity through Visible Therapy: A Feminist Post-structuralist Approach to Working with Women Who Have Experienced Child Sexual Abuse

This article draws on feminism and post-structuralism to theorize a narrative framework for developing and critiquing therapeutic practices with women who have experienced child sexual abuse. I argue that both objectivism and relativism provide poor guides for conducting therapy and that it is only through situating our knowledges precisely that more liberatory therapy practices may be developed. This approach, termed ‘visible therapy’, is used to directly and explicitly challenge normative constructions of women, child sexual abuse and therapy. I argue that it is necessary to explicate the embedded assumptions produced through practices of abuse, and which serve to construct children's experiences of that abuse, in order to ward against their reproduction within therapy relationships. I demonstrate that it is through situating and explicating the operations of power that the authenticity of experience and identity may be questioned and women's ongoing positioning as guilty victims may be challenged. Thus, I am concerned not with who women ‘really are’ but with how they come to know and be known through practices of both abuse and therapy. This, then, is about making the tactics of abuse and therapy visible. Problems are not located within individuals, but rather within the narratives which situate both past and current relationships but which, through reiteration, obscure their own social production. I conclude that it is only when categorical identity is no longer assumed that progressive therapy practices with women who have been sexually abused can be developed and maintained.     

Resilience and Vulnerability in Adolescents: Genetic Influences on Differential Response to Risk for Delinquency

Prior research has identified a vast number of correlates for delinquent behavior during adolescence, yet a considerable number of errors in prediction remain. These errors suggest that behavioral development among a portion of youths is not well understood, with some exhibiting resilience and others a heightened vulnerability to risks. Examining cases that do not confirm prediction outcomes provides an opportunity to achieve a greater understanding of the relationships between risk factors and delinquency, which can be used to improve theoretical explanations of behavior. This study explores the contribution of genetic and environmental factors to differences in individual responses to cumulative risk for delinquency among a sample of adolescent twins (N = 784 pairs, 49 % female) in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. The results indicate that additive genetic and unique environmental factors significantly contribute to variation in responses to cumulative risk across 14 risk factors spanning individual, familial, and environmental domains. When analyzed separately, the majority of the difference between vulnerable youths and the overall population was attributed to genetic influences, while differences between resilient youths and the population were primarily attributed to environmental influences. The findings illustrate the importance of examining both genetic and environmental influences in order to enhance explanations of adolescent offending.     

Institutionalization of Children with Disabilities in Croatia: Social Workers' Perspectives

Abstract

This study aims to advance understanding of social workers’ perceptions of the circumstances necessitating and preventing the placement of children with disabilities (CwDs) in institutions. This retrospective study involved thematic analyses of one focus group (n?=?7) and semi-structured individual interviews (n?=?12). Participants included social work professionals with experience providing welfare services for CwDs and their families. In effort to prevent separation of CwDs from their families, results suggest a need for continued monitoring of deinstitutionalization of CwDs alongside increased availability, accessibility, and quality of childcare, alternative child welfare and family support services.     

Women, power and ordination: A psychological interpretation of objections to the ordination of women to the priesthood

The ordination of women to the priesthood is a subject which still encounters strong antagonism from both men and women. In this paper, such antagonism is interpreted using the thesis of Dinnerstein (1978) which suggests that it may be an expression of the flight from maternal power. The experience of a woman as the first caretaker, coupled with the infant's primitive capacity to deal with the necessarily dependent and frustrating relationship with her, leads men and women to associate their ambivalent fantasies of maternal power with female authority. In particular, the ordination of women for a role which is itself mystically powerful provokes arguments and attitudes which can be interpreted as an expression of this irrational fear.     

Subjective Age in the Transition to Adulthood for Persons with and without Motor Disabilities

This study examined subjective age (how old one feels) and associated variables in 148 emerging adults, ages 20–30 years. Seventy-six participants had a motor disability (cerebral palsy, spina bifida) and 72 had no motor disability. Participants completed questionnaires and were interviewed. There was no significant difference in subjective age between groups. Consistent with previous research, chronological and subjective ages were significantly negatively related in participants without motor disabilities. Chronological and subjective ages were unrelated in the group with motor disabilities but higher psychosocial maturity was related to an older subjective age. Perceptions of how much parents fostered autonomy did not predict subjective age in either group. In both groups, individuals whose parents treated them as younger reported feeling younger. Number of role transitions did not predict subjective age. The results highlight the importance of exploring motor disabilities as a source of diversity in the subjective ages of young people during the transition to adulthood.

Reproduction and Scale: A Response to Skeggs and Wilson

This paper draws on the concepts of reproduction and scale to suggest that Skeggs and Wilson, in their contributions to this issue of Feminist Legal Studies, both identify a future-oriented reworking of historically accumulated value. The spectacular emotional labour of British reality television and the parody of mechanistic labour in Bangkok’s sex shows may be seen as instances in the affective search for future security in transnational markets. Capitalist subjectivities are still being produced through these gendered and sexual activities, but they are being produced with television audiences and sex tourists whose geopolitical baggage becomes part of the show.     

Reactions of Boys and Girls to Sexual Abuse and to Sexual Encounters with Peers

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - To understand the etiology and consequences of child sexual abuse it is important to study the victims’ subjective reactions to such incidents. Because...