[Socialism Today, No 17, April 1996, p. 6-7]
The recent TV documentary-drama, No child of mine, was a sensitive and careful attempt to portray the character of child abuse. The story of Kerry, sexually abused from early childhood, was set against a background of ‘normality’, a middle-class household not a single-parent family on a run-down housing estate, and was interspersed with pictures of ‘normal childhood’ – a school-yard scene, a family picnic etc.
It showed how the behaviour of victims can alter. Failure at school and various anti-social activities were portrayed, for example, the wrecking of her foster home bedroom after returning from a visit to her mother. Kerry is coerced into prostitution by her father, then continues when struggling to get together the money to enter a safe house. This was an important counterbalance to the current obsession with child ‘evil’ – a timely reminder of what is done to children to damage them. The Children’s Society reported that between 1989 and 1995, 2,380 cautions were issued to child prostitutes and 1,730 convictions secured. Such punitive action
is worse than useless.
Effective but harrowing, the film gave an accurate picture of abuse without being salacious
of titillating. It challenged effectively the portrayal of abusers as ‘perverts’ and ‘loners’.
Many journalists and politicians must have been watching some other film. ‘Outrage at child sex filth on TV … Drama was sick’, complained The Sun, “The tragic victims of child sex abuse deserve… the truth not some salacious screen exaggeration’. This from the paper with a daily
sex object on page three – in the past not infrequently ‘dressed’ as a school girl. The Mirror argued that as we know that such things go on we don’t need our noses rubbing in it.
The statistics are familiar, but what lies behind them has clearly just shocked millions of people who ‘knew’ about child abuse. Even so many people refused to re-examine their prejudices
The statistics are familiar, but what lies behind them has clearly just shocked millions of people who ‘knew’ about child abuse. Even so many people refused to re-examine their prejudices.
Tory MP Theresa Gorman admitted she turned-off half way through but claimed it portrayed child abuse in a pornographic way and would be used by people who ‘indulge in such fantasies’. Of course, they are short of material from magazines, videos and the Internet! The film was harrowing because it focused on the impact on the victim, not on the actions of abusers.
The Daily Record in Scotland actually carried an eight-page special, to launch a campaign for government action, reporting the stories of survivors of abuse. But their portrayal of abuse, and the measures they put forward, shows they didn’t understand the point the programme made. They still portrayed abusers as ‘perverts’ and ‘sex-beasts’, totally ignoring the programme’s location of abuse in the family and family-type situations. Their eight-point programme concentrates almost entirely on punitive action, apart from ‘improved rights for victims’. They demand compulsory treatment, when the real issue is getting any effective treatment in a prison
system which is in crisis.
None of this after-the-event punishment will help prevent abuse. Although they give the figure that one in five girls and one in 14 boys are at risk from abuse by adults, The Record doesn’t even demand more safe houses and other facilities for abused children.
A more highbrow but equally evasive response was exemplified by Melanie Phillips, a columnist in the Observer. Week after week she campaigns against single parents, for the imposition of the traditional family with a male head of household, and discipline and respect for authority. Rather than tackle the aspects of abuse which contradict her moralising views on family life, she evades the issue by casting doubt on the truthfulness of the person on whose experience Kerry was based. The programme may not have been factually true in every detail – it was described as docudrama – but it was realistic.
Phillips then launches an incredible attack, not on the government which refuses to provide helplines (Childline s vastly overstretched) or refuges (apparently there are only four in the country), but on the charities who tried to use the publicity to raise money for the services the
state refuses to supply! As if extracting a confession from them, she says, ‘The (Children’s) Society concedes its campaign was designed to raise money for refuges as well as raise awareness of child prostitution’. She concludes with the statement, ‘It’s hard not to see here more cynical agendas at work, to do with ideology, empire-building and self-publicity’.
Unfortunately, it’s the politics that she stands for, which extol a right-wing, authoritarian ideology flying in the face of facts, which make it more difficult to tackle devastating social problems such as child abuse and to establish a culture which prevents it in the first place.
Margaret Creear
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