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- Title
How Perpetrators View Child Sexual Abuse.
- Authors
Gilgun, Jane F.; Connor, Teresa M.
- Abstract
The article focuses on child sexual abuse from the point of view of perpetrators. In open-ended interviews, perpetrators gave accounts of their experience during the act of sexually abusing a child. Perpetrators' accounts suggest that sexual abuse of children feels good to them and that, during the sexual act, perpetrators view the child victim as an object. Previous research and theory throw little light on perpetrators' perceptions. The perpetrators' subjective experience of child sexual abuse virtually was overlooked; when authors did note that children serve as objects of sexual gratification, they did not present empirical data to support the statements. The article adds to the literature on sexual gratification and children as objects by presenting empirical data that support and develop these ideas to increase understanding of them. The data are the perceptions of perpetrators themselves. The article consisted of life history interviews with 14 male perpetrators of child sexual abuse. They ranged in age from 21 to 54, with a mean age of 30. Nine subjects were married at the time of the interview, two were divorced, and three had never married.
- Subjects
CHILD sexual abuse; SEXUAL psychology; PEDOPHILIA; CHILD molesters; SEXUAL fantasies; SINGLE people's sexual behavior
- Publication
Social Work, 1989, Vol 34, Issue 3, p249
- ISSN
0037-8046
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1093/sw/34.3.249