Historically, due to cultural family values, society denied child sexual abuse. What we now identify as abuse was not always thought of as abuse. For instance in 18th-century London people thought a cure for venereal disease was to have sexual relations with a child (Olafson, Corwin, & Summit, 1993).Victims of sexual abuse in American work were thought of as sexual aberrants or participating victims (Gordon, 1988; Schlossman & Wallach, 1978; Weiss, Rogers, Darwin, & Dutton, 1955 as cited in Olafson, Corwin, & Summit, 1993). 20th-century reclassifications degendered perpetrators, and still kept the blame away from the the respectable family, child abuse advocates were considered psychologically abnormal (Olafson, Corwin, & Summit, 1993).
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Suspected victims need to play a greater part in investigations. This is being achieved through joint investigation by police and social workers of CSA cases (Conroy, Fielding and Tunstill, 1990 as cited in Fielding & Conroy, 1992), it has also been thought that videotaping the interviews of the victims, and procedural changes to improve children 's involvement in court may be necessary to help facilitate disclosure of abuse. Because it is difficult to tell if a child has been sexual abused the rule to go by has been to listen to the child and what the child says. However it is also said that there are times when adults have to make decisions for children ' instead of empowering the child to deal with it more so on their own. Police interrogation tactics have been criticised, with police seeing an increase in judges criticising their techniques. A 1990 police seminar on interrogation techniques showed that police officers did not know all the facts of cases, they were not patient and lost their tempers, and ignored their training. There was a call for interrogations to be videotaped, and for standardised techniques based on academic research, as well as more ethical techniques and new training to better be able to deal with children (The Observer 23 September 1990 as cited in Fielding & Conroy, 1992). In 1990 ACPO set up a working party to assess the techniques of police interviews. These seemed to be under the assumption that police are dealing with clear situations where it is easy to identify what is going on and who is guilty. Police are not always trained as well as they could be for coping with CSA. Boon and Knox (as cited in Fielding & Conroy, 1992) reported that the way lawyers ' communicated with children was so poor that when children were giving evidence in court they often did not
CSA …show more content…
Suspected victims need to play a greater part in investigations. This is being achieved through joint investigation by police and social workers of CSA cases (Conroy, Fielding and Tunstill, 1990 as cited in Fielding & Conroy, 1992), it has also been thought that videotaping the interviews of the victims, and procedural changes to improve children 's involvement in court may be necessary to help facilitate disclosure of abuse. Because it is difficult to tell if a child has been sexual abused the rule to go by has been to listen to the child and what the child says. However it is also said that there are times when adults have to make decisions for children ' instead of empowering the child to deal with it more so on their own. Police interrogation tactics have been criticised, with police seeing an increase in judges criticising their techniques. A 1990 police seminar on interrogation techniques showed that police officers did not know all the facts of cases, they were not patient and lost their tempers, and ignored their training. There was a call for interrogations to be videotaped, and for standardised techniques based on academic research, as well as more ethical techniques and new training to better be able to deal with children (The Observer 23 September 1990 as cited in Fielding & Conroy, 1992). In 1990 ACPO set up a working party to assess the techniques of police interviews. These seemed to be under the assumption that police are dealing with clear situations where it is easy to identify what is going on and who is guilty. Police are not always trained as well as they could be for coping with CSA. Boon and Knox (as cited in Fielding & Conroy, 1992) reported that the way lawyers ' communicated with children was so poor that when children were giving evidence in court they often did not