My first journal article has been published. It’s about Victorian child sexual exploitation and can be found here. It’s only a short article and there is a lot more to write about Mary Jeffries – which I hope to do in other later articles.
I’m right in the middle of fieldwork at the moment, which means that I am arranging interviews and then actually doing them. The next job is transcribing them, typing out everything that was said, which takes much longer than you’d think! I’m also applying to talk at some conferences and I’m going to submit an abstract to a journal to see if I can get the research published. If accepted the article wouldn’t be published until next year so you have to start planning ahead really early on!
I’ve just done a presentation for the Sheffield Gender History group about my PhD side project. As part of background reading about laws relating to childhood sexual abuse I read about the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885, which aimed to raise the age of consent to 16 for girls. The author of the paper, Gorham, commented that MPs were reluctant to pass this law because they might fall foul of it themselves, as many visited brothels owned by a woman called Mrs Jeffries. So I’ve have been investigating Mrs Jeffries and her connections to MPs and other VIPs of 1885. This is what my talk was about and I’m hoping to turn it into an article in due course.
Another talk, which I’m due to give in June at a Gendered Emotions in History conference, is about the different emotions reported by male and female participants in my survey and if there are any parallels between them and historical examples. I’ve been reading about Francesca Bussa, who was married at 12 or 13 in 1397 and after the wedding night refused to speak or eat. She only recovered after being inspired to do good works but continued to punish herself shockingly throughout her life; eating only 1 meal a day, whipping and torturing herself. She cut off her own hair and complained of being tormented by demons. She also did some amazing things – performed miracles, opened her home to the sick and founded a monastery for women. In the end she was canonised and is now known as Saint Frances. I don’t want to minimise her significance to Catholics but there is a clear link between her early marriage and the onset of symptoms of self harm. Many female participants in my research have described a sense of disconnection between the body and mind, which I think has parallels with the story of Saint Frances.
As you can probably tell I am doing lots of things at the moment! Luckily the PhD gives you time to explore different avenues and decide which are the most fruitful.
References
Bell, R.M., 1985. Holy Anorexia, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Gorham, D., 1978. The “Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon” Re-examined: Child Prostitution and the Idea of Childhood in Late-Victorian England. Victorian Studies, 21(3), pp.353–379.
I’ve missed a month out but it only takes a tiny bit of snow here in the UK to send everything, including my life, haywire! I’m catching up with myself now (although more snow is due). I am contacting people who volunteered for interview about ten at a time so I don’t become overwhelmed. So if you haven’t heard from me yet you may still do. Thank you to everyone who has responded so far.
In the meantime I’ve been continuing with some side research I’m doing and keeping up with the news around child abuse. Interestingly they have combined recently with this story about Florida banning child marriage, something that is shockingly common in the USA. As you can see here half of the US states have exceptions to their laws which result in no minimum age for marriage and it does actually happen. Between 2000 and 2010 248,000 children were married, most to adults, not their peers. The UK also has an issue with child marriage, particularly forced marriage.
As part of my PhD research I’ve been looking at the laws around child sexual abuse including marriage and the age of consent for sex. I’ve been researching the circumstances around the UK Criminal Law Amendment Act in 1885 when the age of consent was raised (for girls only) from 12 to 16. Before 1885 sex or rape of a child under 10 was a felony and between 10-12 was only a misdemeanour – which I would suggest demonstrates an attitude towards older children that continues today – for example see this French case. Such stories in the news show me, as if I didn’t know, that there is much work to be done and I hope I can contribute.
Peer abuse has been in the news lately, that is abuse of children by children. The assumption is that abuse by children has risen. I don’t know if we can conclude that or not. It may be true but it may also be that we haven’t been asking the right questions before.
What is or isn’t a crime is defined by our society and this has changed over time. When I was a child, in the 1970’s, being groped by another teenager at school was not seen as a crime. It was extremely common. It wasn’t reported to anyone.
Most surveys ask about abuse perpetrators who are 5 years or more older than the victim so they will miss some abuse by children. However when a more open question is asked the results can be rather different. In 1929 an American survey asked about childhood abuse. Perpetrators were reported as 38% adult males, 20% women and 42% adolescents or peers (1). A 2014 study of literature researching abuse of cared for children found that between 13-70% of reported child sexual abuse was by peers (2), so the percentage varies widely from one study to another. Does it actually vary though?
The internet, social media and easy access to pornography may well have affected the amount and/or severity of children abusing children. There may also be more willingness to report such crimes. We do also need to ask the right questions to gauge the real extent of the problem.
References
There’s been a lot in the news lately about the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority (CICA) denying compensation to victims of child sexual abuse (CSA) on the grounds that they consented. I wonder how many of these were teenagers because we do really seem to have a problem addressing CSA when teenagers are the victims.
There is a long history of this. Before the Victorian era the age of consent was generally set at the onset of puberty (between 10-12 years old) however children were engaged and married earlier, especially in the upper classes (1). In 1885 a new law was proposed to raise the age of consent to 16, for girls, to enable prosecution of people exploiting younger teenagers. However many MPs were opposed. Here’s a quote from Charles Hopwood, MP.
‘these girls who went wrong from an early age were just as familiar with the result of their actions as those of an older age. [“No!”] It was all very well to cry “No!” but those Members who did so were judging by their own families, who were carefully nurtured and preserved from contamination; but girls who went upon the streets came from a different class.’ (2)
So this isn’t just about the age of the victims but also class. Eventually the law was passed, thanks to a press campaign, but the exploitation of teenagers continued. In 1989 Wild (3) studied ‘child sex rings’ in Leeds and found 334 child victims in 31 cases with nine having a commercial basis. Thus we have child sexual exploitation (CSE) identified back in the 1980’s. I’m not sure what was done about this, if anything.
Now we have another opportunity to tackle CSE. I’d argue that the first step is to agree that a child cannot consent to sexual exploitation. Finkelhor (4) says that for:
‘true consent to occur, two conditions must prevail. A person must know what it is that he or she is consenting to, and a person must be free to say yes or no… children lack the information that is necessary to make an “informed” decision about the matter. They are ignorant about sex and sexual relationships…children have a hard time saying no to adults.’
Can we just agree this point, embed it in our government agencies and get on with sorting the actual issue out, rather than blaming the victims?
REFERENCES (apologies that these are not all available online)
