A RESEARCH REPORT PRESENTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL WORK SCHOOL OF HUMAN AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT FACULTY OF HUMANITIES UNIVERSITY OF THE WITWATERSRAND JOHANNESBURG IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENT FOR THE MASTERS OF ARTS IN SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT MARCH, 2016 / The cases of children involved in criminal activities are on the increase all over the world, including in South Africa. Offering services to all children and youth, whilst upholding the rights of children, is one of the fields of practice in social work. South Africa has adopted a restorative approach that aims to rehabilitate and return children in conflict with the law back into their communities. At the heart of applying restorative approaches as intervention with children in conflict with the law are social workers. The study attempts to explore the experiences of social workers regarding their intervention strategies with young sexual offenders. The study applied a qualitative approach and narrative research design. Non-probability purposive sampling was used to select 12 research participants from organisations that facilitate diversion programmes for child sex offenders. To ensure trustworthiness of the research, three prosecutors were also interviewed. Semi-structured interview schedules were utilised to conduct in-depth telephonic interviews with the participants. The data was transcribed verbatim and analysed using thematic analysis. The main finding which emerged from the study was that social workers’ challenges with diversion are mainly associated with external factors such as poor parental co-operation. The study concludes that diversion contributes to reducing the level of recidivism with child sex offenders and is a necessary form of intervention for children in conflict with the law. Key words: Children in conflict with the law, Diversion, Rehabilitation, Sexual offences, Child sex offenders, Social workers.

This thesis examines the ways American visual media -television and mainstream/independent cinema- has presented the narrative of child sexual abuse since the beginning of the 21st century. Due to the rise of the counterculture movement and the sexual revolution of the 1960s, a discourse for talking about child sexuality was created. By providing an opportunity to discuss children and sex, for the first time cultural products could deal overtly with child sexual abuse, rather than connotatively. In response to this new discourse, conservative ideals about child sexuality proliferated in the 1970s and 1980s that attempted to return the child to a world of purity and asexuality with all threats to this purity being monstrous. The examples discussed in this thesis highlight the ways that contemporary American visual media has responded to three decades of obsession that created a "master narrative" of child sexual abuse - something that continues to play a significant role in society.

abstract: When children allege sexual abuse, there is rarely medical evidence or eyewitnesses, making their testimony in trial a primary factor in assessing their credibility. However, little is known about what may be unclear to jury members making verdict decisions. In some districts, jury members are allowed to ask questions of the child witness at the end of their testimony. The current study utilizes a sample of trial transcripts from Maricopa County, Arizona where children ages 5-17 years old have alleged some form of sexual abuse; a jurisdiction where jury members are permitted to ask written questions. Cases were analyzed to assess: 1) if jury questions were asked and how often these questions occurred, 2) what content they asked about, and 3) whether occurrence or frequency of jury questions related to case characteristics (i.e. child age, child-perpetrator relationship, severity of abuse, frequency of abuse). It was hypothesized that 1) juries would ask questions mostly about the dynamics of abuse and disclosure, 2) these questions would primarily clarify information previously discussed by attorneys during direct- and cross-examination (instead of asking new inquiries that went undiscussed during testimony), 3) there would be more jury questions as child age increases and 4) more serious cases (based on case characteristics) would have more jury questions. Results were mixed. Jury members often asked about the dynamics of abuse and disclosure (abuse details, statements regarding abuse, the child’s subjective reactions), but case characteristics of child age, child-perpetrator relationship, and severity of abuse did not have a relationship with the presence of jury questions. However, cases where children alleged multiple instances of abuse were more likely to receive jury questions, which may allude to the misconception that children would disclose abuse right away and not let multiple instances occur. Although the sample size is small for generalization, it is an important first step for future research to further examine jury questions, improve attorney questioning techniques, and better educate the general public about the dynamics of child sexual abuse cases. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Criminology and Criminal Justice 2019

Doctor of Philospohy in Social Work / This research is concerned with decision-making in judgments made in the Family Court of Australia where there are allegations of child sexual abuse. The focus of the research is the identification of the concepts that are relied on in the assessment of these allegations by professionals providing evidence to the court and how judges determine what evidence should be given weight and relied on. This research was undertaken against a historical and current backdrop of scepticism about the veracity of child sexual abuse allegations in family law disputes, despite the heightened risk to children, and in particular to girls, after their parents separate and/or divorce. In this context the Family Court is also increasingly becoming a part of the child protection system as allegations of abuse are raised in hearings. This research has taken place in the period of time after the Reform Act (1995) and before new proposed legislation for 2006 was proclaimed. This research is based on a detailed thematic analysis of 21 judgments of first instance trials between 1997 and 2001 that were selected for the presence of a child sexual abuse allegation and at least two professionals disputing some aspect of the allegation. Twenty-five family members, including 18 mothers and four maternal grandmothers, made allegations about 28 family members, 21 of whom were fathers. Professionals who gave evidence included 11 child protection officers and 20 court-ordered private assessors (including 17 child and family psychiatrists, three clinical psychologists and 11 court counsellors). This research found that the context of the allegation, the family law litigation, had a dominant influence on how the allegations were assessed and interpreted: the impact of two influential paradigms, the separation and divorce and the legal/psychiatric paradigms, resulted in a reticence to test out the allegations of child sexual abuse made against fathers. Concepts from these paradigms were applied by court-ordered assessors and represented the sceptical conceptualisation of allegations of child sexual abuse as the product of the parental conflict, associated maternal anxiety and mental illness. In contrast, fathers were not scrutinised as closely against criteria for sex offending even when they made admissions relating to the allegations. Evidence from and about children was not central to the hearings and professionals who were in a position to present assessments of the child sexual abuse allegations to the court were discredited as a result of concerns about ‘contamination’ relating to criticisms of investigation and other methodological errors. In addition, allegations from children were frequently not fully examined or analysed by assessors or the judiciary. There were glimpses of a child-focused approach in a small number of hearings and, while there was no specialist assessment of the child sexual abuse allegations, there was evidence of specialist knowledge pertaining to domestic violence in cases in which there was a high level of evidence relating to serious domestic violence. This research has shown that there is a continuing influence of a sceptical paradigm in relation to the assessment of child sexual abuse allegations in the Family Court. It suggests that the scope of assessments needs to go beyond the usual scope of parental competencies to include an assessment of the propensity for child sexual abuse perpetration and the dynamics and effects of incest.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Rutgers University, 2009. / "Graduate Program in Social Work." Includes bibliographical references (p. 119-129).

Thesis (M.S.W.) - Carleton University, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (p.158-162). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Thesis (M.S.)--Florida State University, 2004. / Advisor: Dr. Mike Burmester, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Dept. of Computer Science. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed June 21, 2004). Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 224-279). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2008. / Full text also available online. Scroll down for electronic link.

This study investigated how social understandings influence, and often obscure, individual perception. As a replication ofLindblom's (2002) study conducted in Sweden, the aim of this project was to investigate how individuals, studying towards a health care degree such as psychology, handle the occurrence of Child Sexual Abuse (CSA) when presented with it. To this end, participants were presented with a picture designed to represent CSA and were asked to interpret the nature of the picture. Following this, participants completed the Child Sexual Abuse Myth Scale (CSAMS) which served to highlight whether the three predominant social stereotypes surrounding CSA, namely, Blame Diffusion, Denial of Abusiveness and Restrictive Stereotypes, were influential in the interpretations participants offered surrounding the picture representing CSA. It was discovered that participants who scored significantly higher on the myth scale for the myths, Denial of Abusiveness and Restrictive Stereotypes, were more likely to misinterpret CSA when presented with it. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, Durban, 2004