Remembering Together – Histories of Child Sexual Abuse’

On Dec 7th, SHaME (Birkbeck) and the Institute for the Public Understanding of the Past (University of York) will be co-hosting a one-day collaborative workshop in London with survivors, practitioners and academics called ‘Remembering Together – Histories of Child Sexual Abuse.’ This closed workshop is a first step towards establishing a collaborative research network on historicising child sexual abuse. There will be a further event in York in Spring 2023. This is an in-person event by invitation only. If you have not received an invitation but are interested in taking part, contact r.beecher@bbk.ac.uk outlining your interest. 

Participants will start a conversation about the histories of child sexual abuse. We will think about whether we can move away from medical, psychiatric and criminal justice responses to abuse after the fact. Can public health approaches be adopted to preventing sexual violence against children from occurring in the first place? By better understanding the histories of child sexual abuse in the past, we aim to equip ourselves to develop new approaches in the present.

Although child sexual abuse (CSA) is currently high on the national radar in the UK due to the regular outputs from the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), it is an area of inquiry that is currently rigidly segregated with divisions between the academic sector, statutory and third-sector service providers, survivors and activists. The research agenda is also marred by the failure of funders and researchers to put victims/survivors at the centre of innovative thinking. This workshop marks the beginning of a process to address these silos. We hope that historicising child sexual abuse in the context of the wider social changes of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries will enable participants to unpack the legacies of CSA for individuals and institutions, as well as opening up discussion about interventions in practice and policy in the present.

This invitation has been extended to potential participants who identify as survivors, researchers, practitioners and activists from Ireland, the UK and France. This includes adult survivor or work in a survivor advocacy organisation; a service deliverer or practitioner, work in mental or physical health, social care, education, young people’s services, emotional and practical support organisations or legal advice agencies; or an academic researcher in anthropology, history, history of art, creative writing, cultural studies, social work, politics, criminology, law, public health, medical humanities and sociology; or other….

The day will be run in a non-hierarchical and creative way and will include a Big Questions Roundtable.

On the day:

• There will be a variety of session types and formats in which to participate
• Everyone is a participant
• All participants must actively engage in activities
• Everyone has a role to play in making the event successful

Themes for discussion might include:

• Public representations of histories of child sexual abuse
• Medicalisation of child sexual abuse
• Survivor histories in context
• Shifting ideas about disability
• Changing perspectives on ‘perpetrators’
• Historical intersections with race, culture and ethnicity
• Changing patterns of service provision
• Memory and lived experience
• Access to records and archiving
• Research challenges

Age Guidance: 18 yrs +
CLOSED EVENT – but get in touch if you want more information.