Perceptions of child sexual abuse among adult women in Romania: a social constructivist study

• In Event: Child Sexual Abuse

Abstract

Child sexual abuse (CSA) is a significant global concern. Occurrences of sexual acts between adults and children have been recorded throughout history; however, as understandings of CSA are highly dependent on the social, cultural and historical contexts they have emerged – and continue to emerge in – there is no definition that comprehensively encapsulates this complex concept. The social constructivist framework functions on two main assumptions: a) that a completely objective reality cannot exist in a socially constructed world and b) that knowledge is constructed jointly and individually assimilated.

Due to sociology being banned throughout the communist era, social research in Romania is fairly new, having started to emerge after the fall of the communist regime in 1989.Consequently, there are many aspects of the social world to be explored in the Romanian context. The current study employs the qualitative methods of digital story completion and semi-structured interviews to understand CSA in the Romanian context through the perceptions of Romanian women of different backgrounds and ages. Thus, as there is very little discussion of CSA in Romanian academia, the novelty of the research lies in the in-depth analysis of CSA as a concept and as a part of the Romanian social world. It is foreseen that the study will contribute to the improvement of comparative work on this topic and potentially start a discussion on the extent to which CSA is a problem in this country. Preliminary findings will be presented.

Author

• Theodora Stefania Dinca, University of Sheffield