Female-perpetrated sexual abuse: a review of victim and professional perspectives

Abstract

Professional attitudes towards female-perpetrated sexual abuse (FPSA) reportedly reflect the gender-role expectations found in broader society, which cast males almost exclusively as sexual aggressors or willing sexual recipients, females as sexually non-coercive or victims and male-perpetrated sexual abuse as particularly significant or injurious. Such views, however, appear to stand in contrast to the perspectives of individuals who have experienced FPSA. This paper details a systematic review of peer-reviewed quantitative and qualitative literature examining these different (professional and victim) perspectives. Although the methodological shortcomings of primary papers limit the conclusions that can be drawn, the findings suggest that victim and professional perspectives of FPSA remain discrepant; professionals generally considered FPSA as less serious, less harmful and less deserving of investigation than male-perpetrated abuse; while victims of FPSA felt their experiences influenced significantly their psychological wellbeing and abilities to form and maintain interpersonal relationships. These findings are discussed in relation to professional practice and suggestions for future research.     

Patience

Hate-fuelled violence reconfigures the social landscape in figurative and literal senses: both the emotive fabric of friendship, neighbourhood, love, and the material landscape of the city’s streets, alleys, shopfronts, cars, buses, burial grounds. Hate-violence thus reimagines and re-images the world; restructures it normatively and physically. This photo-essay presents the visual aftermath of the February 2020 communal violence in Delhi. The photographs are situated in a narrative of the author’s personal journey to the sites of violence, along with the history of communal tension in the city and its periodic eruption (usually with the sanction of the State) into large-scale pogroms. Word and image combine to give us a visceral sense of the destruction of a lifeworld and of the personal and political negotiations that follow, through which survivors must, somehow, attempt to channel their anger and grief.

     

EU Excise Duties and Section 90 of the Australian Constitution

The constitutionalisation of the EU has been not without its challenges. However, putting aside the apparent political difficulties of the constitutional process, this article argues that, because the further constitutionalisation of the EU depends on its ability to assimilate some features of a federal state, there are, at least, two reasons why the EU is not yet ready for its constitutionalisation. The first reason is that its excise duty system, which permits discriminatory and protectionist behaviour by Member States, prevents the EU from achieving its fundamental objective of an internal market. The second reason is the EU's budget, which is so small that it is doubtful whether the EU will survive its continuing enlargement. As a solution to this problem, this article introduces section 90 of the Australian Constitution, which provides the Commonwealth of Australia with the exclusive power to levy excise duties. The article argues that the adoption, by the EU, of a similar fiscal arrangement would remove the discriminatory and protectionist operation of its excise duty system and help enlarge the size of the EU's budget by providing it with a self‐ financing mechanism.