Constructing Sexual Harm: Prosecutorial Narratives of Children, Abuse, and the Disruption of Heterosexuality

• In Event: 2351 - Section on the Sociology of Sex and Gender Refereed Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: 10. Sexual Violence

Abstract

Sociologists have identified many factors that mitigate the progressive effects of the legal mobilization to end sexual violence. Within this body of research, however, there is little interrogation about the social construction of sexual harm. I use the case of child sexual abuse to investigate how prosecutors make sense sexual harm in their professional decisions. Data are qualitative interviews with 43 prosecutors, and analysis follows a law and language approach. Findings reveal that prosecutors deploy a discourse of sexual identity to construct sexual injury on the child’s body. The perceived harm centers on the child’s premature sexualization and the anticipated loss of his or her heterosexual potential. Girl victims are thought to grow into sexual promiscuity, and boy victims are thought to grow into sex offenders themselves. Prosecutorial constructions of child sexual abuse cases are future-oriented, which increases their urgency and also imagines the child as a person in formation, rather than a fully actualized person with intrinsic rights. This research has theoretical implications for the intersection of childhood studies and queer studies.

Author

• Jamie L. Small, University of Dayton