Weighing Ethical Considerations in Proposed Non-recent Child Sexual Abuse Investigations: A Response to Maslen and Paine’s Oxford CSA Framework

Questions about when it is right for police forces to investigate alleged offences committed in the more or less distant past have become increasingly pressing. Recent widely publicized cases of child sexual abuse (CSA) and exploitation, sometimes involving high profile individuals, have illustrated the ethical, psychological, and forensic complexities of investigating non-recent child sexual abuse. Hannah Maslen and Colin Paine have developed the Oxford CSA Framework to assist police to weigh the various ethical considerations that militate for and against initiating a CSA investigation. While such a tool is to be welcomed, and while there is much that is helpful in Maslen and Paine's approach, we suggest that the Oxford CSA framework could be strengthened. Our first suggestion is to abandon a proposed distinction between a set of considerations that is said to generate a “presumption” in favor of investigation and other considerations that may supplement or oppose this presumption. Our second suggestion is to review the weightings applied to the considerations within the model, which lack clear justification and create problematic effects. Finally, we suggest that referring the Oxford CSA Framework to a panel with lived and professional experience of CSA could serve important procedural justice goals and enhance the Framework's recommendations.     

Characteristics of children with problem sexual behaviour and adolescent perpetrators of sexual abuse: a systematic review

ABSTRACT

People who commit sexual offences are a heterogeneous group, with research suggesting that children and young people commit a large proportion of all sex offences, especially those committed against other children. This systematic review provides a synthesis of literature concerning the characteristics of children and adolescents who exhibit harmful sexual behaviour. There is a particular focus in this review on studies that examine the characteristics of children and young people exhibiting these behaviours within institutional and organisational settings or which take a situational and/or developmental approach to understanding sexually abusive behaviour. Using a developmental and life-course criminology lens, this review explores implications from the literature for the prevention and response to child sexual abuse, with a particular focus on institutional contexts where the perpetrators are children and adolescents.     

Child sexual abuse material in child-centred institutions: situational crime prevention approaches

ABSTRACT

This paper focuses on the potential for child-centred institutions to use situational crime prevention (SCP) strategies to prevent or reduce child sexual abuse material (CSAM) offending as a distinct form of child sexual abuse (CSA). We discuss the failure of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Australia to address the potential for CSAM offending to occur in child-centred institutions. Our premise is that CSAM offending is markedly shaped by the situation in which it occurs, rather than by any pre-existing preparedness to offend sexually against children. In this context, SCP for CSAM offending must be considered as part of overall strategies to combat CSA in institutional settings. However, we acknowledge that effective implementation of SCP in this area is not straightforward. We consider some of the challenges in implementing SCP at an institutional level.     

Gay rights activism: collection action frames,networks, and protesting among gays,lesbians, and bisexuals

While sexual minorities have produced large and efficacious social movements in many countries, there are few systematic studies on why gays and lesbians join these movements. To address this void, this study created a unique sample of activist and non-activist listservs to identify some factors that inspired greater involvement in protests for gay and lesbian equality (n?=?285). Through the use of binary logistic regression, this study highlights the importance of several contextual, framing, and demographic variables on the protesting actions of sexual minorities. In particular, the act of protesting for gay and lesbian rights was predicted by involvement in voluntary groups, the concealment of sexual orientations, a concern over institutionalized heterosexism, and the internalizing several sorts of activist identities. Finally, racial background, but not gender, age, or economic factors, was associated with attendance at gay and lesbian rights demonstrations.     

‘A second wife is not really a wife’: polygyny,gender relations and economic realities in Tajikistan

While polygyny in Tajikistan existed before the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and has been a phenomenon of growing importance since Independence, it is still forbidden by law. To understand this renewal, I do not look at polygyny as a sign of religiousness, but as a form of patriarchal bargain in which women (who often experienced former matrimonial disjuncture) may have a greater power of decision in the spousal relations. I will explore women's points of view, from which polygyny is a strategy to accessing the symbolic and material resources they lack. I then explore the conditions to which becoming a second wife is possible: women's own resources, be they material, symbolic, familial, appear as of crucial importance in this accession to the status of being married anew.     

Sex,Statistics, Peacekeepers and Power: UN Data on Sexual Exploitation and Abuse and the Quest for Legal Reform

The UN Secretariat provides annual statistics on allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse made against peacekeeping personnel, with reduced numbers of allegations leading to claims of success for the UN's ‘zero tolerance’ policy. This article explores the use of data as ‘technologies’ of global governance, to examine the function that these annual statistics serve for the UN and the impact that they have on calls for legal reform. Thus far, the statistics have attracted little academic appraisal. Yet, they have been used to establish the UN's authority to resolve the ‘problem’ of sexual exploitation and abuse, diminishing the space for critique of UN policy and undermining the quest for improved legal arrangements.     

Legal responses to child sexual abuse cases in the Children’s Court of Victoria: study findings on a case-management approach

Child sexual abuse cases present Children’s Courts with distinctive challenges. The highly conflictual nature of child sexual abuse cases means they do not lend themselves to the usual adversarial court processes that characterise the conduct of Magistrate Court matters in Australia. With this in mind, the Children’s Court in Victoria established for 12 months in 2013 a pilot specialised judicial list (known as the ‘D’ List) which offered an intensive Magistrate-led case management approach to child sexual abuse cases in the Family (child protection) Division of the Court. The operation of the List was evaluated to assess the suitability and effectiveness of this approach, and to investigate the challenges associated with managing and deciding this class of cases. The findings confirmed that the List provided better management of cases and reduced delay. Given this, the Court is continuing the judicially proactive intensive case management approach and dedicated list for child sexual abuse matters and extending it to regional courts; believing it to be a more effective approach to managing and deciding this complex class of cases.     

Identifying deviant sexual interest in a sex offender sample using dual-target rapid serial visual presentation task

To investigate the dual-target rapid serial visual presentation (dtRSVP) task as a measure of deviant sexual interest (i.e. a sexual interest in children), we administered a dtRSVP with gender- and age-specific pictorial stimuli to child sex offenders (n = 69), other sex offenders (n = 43), non-sex offenders (n = 14), and community controls (n = 88). We hypothesized that (1) stimuli belonging to the preferred gender and age group presented as targets (both T1 and the subsequent T2) in the serial sequence would be more accurately detected than non-preferred stimuli and that (2) this increased detection would reduce the detection of targets later in the serial sequence (T2) due to an attentional blink. Our findings supported hypothesis 1 and partly supported hypothesis 2. Although we found group differences, individual indices based on detection rates did not allow for individual-level diagnostic categorization of participants.     

从性别角度谈和谐社会建设

党的十六届四中全会明确提出要建立社会主义和谐社会;男女平等是衡量社会文明进步的重要尺度,公平正义是和谐社会的核心理念;推进性别平等,是构建和谐社会的内在要求。只有全面提高妇女素质,才能为男女两性的和谐发展奠定能力基础。     

刑事领域涉性评价“泛道德化”倾向批哭——以当下中国大陆为视阈

“泛道德化”之不可取早已成为社会共识,然而,在当下中国大陆的刑事领域中,涉性的立法、执法、司法活动以及学术研究,都存在着严重的“泛道德化”倾向,这种倾向与科学、理性的精神背道而驰,亟待矫正。涉性评价的“泛道德化”倾向之祛除,将依赖于公民的性权利得到正视、强调及落实。