Graduate conference, Aldeburgh 2010

1. Graduate conference,Aldeburgh 2010 Child abuse, love or just plain sex? Victim responses to maternal incest

2. Victim response to maternal incest • Background to the research • Methodological approach • Protecting children • The child: innocent or evil? • The family: a place of safety or a place of danger? • The legal system: child protection or child abduction? • The abuser: stranger or friend? • Professional workers: saviour or scapegoat?

3. Thinking about the family • Ideal type – ‘naturally given and . . socially and morally desirable’ (Barrett & McIntosh, 1991:26) • The safe haven or unregulated space? ‘. . . you had to go home. . . In the evening you had to go home. It was like having a big stone in your stomach everyday of your life. . . Outside I was a happy child’ -Petra. • Perceptions of family life ‘. . Things would have looked Ok. We had a car; we had a TV; we went on holiday. . . On Sunday we would have Sunday lunch and the tea would be on a trolley. . . We did a lot of entertaining’ – Alice. ‘. . . The family were seen by outsiders as loving and affectionate’ – Penny ‘The outer side was very upper middle class and yet all the horrible stuff was going on underneath’ – Penny.

4. Thinking about the mother ‘role’ • All women share the universal nurturing role ‘Woman is conflated with mother, and together appears as an undifferentiated and unchanging monolith’(Glenn 1994:13) • The special relationship ‘The expectations of the female role simultaneously expects a degree of bodily experience between woman and child and denies the existence of sexuality in woman’ (Plummer 1981:228) • Benign motives ‘I had to get them clean’ - Janet • Asexual maternity • Incest taboos

5. Thinking about the mother ‘role’ • Good enough, romanticised motherhood or maternal ambivalence • Ideal types ‘. . .once I had Richard I knew I wasn’t capable of looking after children. . . Basically no mothering instincts’ – Janet • Maternal loss ‘the child victims of maternal incest have to disillusion the social world by shaking motherhood from its pedestal and at the same time risk permanent loss of the primary maternal attachment’(Turton 2008:34) ‘there’s something about a mother. . . (she) gives you love and care. So when she abuses you, it leads to an even greater sense of despair than when your father does it. In my dreams I castrate my father and suffocate him. But I can’t attack my mother. I’m torn between love and hate’ (cited in Elliott 1993:10)

6. Thinking about the child • Seductive or innocent • The right to protection • Innocence vulnerability and the grooming process (Warner 2001) • Child protection versus children’s rights • The welfare approach • Freedom and rights? • Uncontrolled childhood sexuality • Identity, difference and ‘specialisms’ • Establishing identity by creating the ‘other’ (O’Connell Davidson 2005) • Intimate, familial relationships • The long-term intimate relationship ‘the more other relationships become interchangeable and revocable, the more a child can become the focus of new hopes – it is the ultimate guarantee of permanence, providing an anchor for one’s life’ (Beck & Beck-Gernsheim 1995:73) ‘

7. Thinking about responses • Silencing ‘. . But she’s your mother dear, of course she wants a cuddle’ – Penny ‘. . They (aunt and grandmother) were very important to me as a child. . . I never. . . I don’t think. . .ever felt like telling. . . I just felt I could behave like a child with them and be safe and secure in that. . .’ – May ‘But you see I never did tell her (grandmother) about the abuse. She asked me; she asked me lots of times. . . But I never did tell her. . . I don’t know why but I guess it’s. . . I was afraid of loosing her’ - Petra • Attachments ‘. . .survivors say that, though they hate their mothers for what they did they still want to be loved by their mothers and would not confront them. . As one woman said, ‘with flowers, let alone with the abuse she had perpetrated on me’ (Elliott 1993:10) ‘I can remember at Christmas crying that I wanted me mum. I cried loads of times wanting me mum, but not the mum I got’ - Louise