By Roderic Broadhurst, Brigitte Bouhours, and John Bacon-Shone

Between 2003 and 2009, the International Violence Against Women Survey (IVAWS) has been conducted in 12 developed and developing countries. The IVAWS is a comprehensive instrument that measures women’s experiences of physical and sexual violence by men, including intimate partners, victims’ help-seeking behaviour and the response of.... was conducted in Hong Kong and, for this reason, no trends in violence over time are available; however, because the IVAWS uses standardised questions and data collection methods, results can be compared with those of the other countries that participated in the survey. The report shows rates of victimisation for seven types of physical..... who the perpetrator was, particularly whether it was an intimate partner, a relative, a friend or acquaintance, or a stranger. Women who had recent incident, such as whether they had reported the assault to the police or victim support services. Drawing on socio-demographic and behavioual information on both respondents and their partners, the report examines the predictors of violent victimisation by partners and non-partners.

Hong Kong: University of Hong Kong; Canberra: Australian National University, 2012. 110p.

By Sara Bianca Taverriti

Irregular migrants face particular challenges in interacting with law enforcement authorities to report a crime, as they fear detection and deportation. This fear, together with their generally precarious situation, makes them particularly vulnerable to crime. This report aims to explain the existing legislation, policy and practices impacting on migrants’ ability to access the Criminal Justice System in Italy, as either victims or witnesses, without running the risk of self-incrimination or deportation. In particular, the report focuses on ‘firewall’ practices – that is, measures that encourage reporting of crime by migrants with irregular status by neutralising the risk and the fear of deportation and expulsion as a consequence of reporting crime. This report is intended to analyse the strengths and weaknesses of these measures, in order to assess their effectiveness in facilitating safe reporting of crime by irregular migrants. Finally, the report will consider the potential of policy reforms in the area of safe reporting, including by considering the potential for implementation in Italy of local measures known as ‘sanctuary policies’. This research contributes to a project on safe reporting of crime for victims and witnesses with irregular migration status in Europe and the United States undertaken by the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS) at the University of Oxford.1 As well as Italy, this project examines the United States, Spain, the Netherlands and Belgium. The ultimate aim of the project is to promote learning of best practices and knowledge-exchange on this topic between countries. It also aims to evaluate the legal and political replicability of ‘firewall’ policies across different countries, and in particular the legal replicability of US experiences (for example, that of ‘sanctuary cities’) in European contexts.

Bristol, UK: COMPAS, Global Exchange on Migration and Diversity, 2019. 46p.

By Markus González Beilfuss

According to the European Union (EU) Victims-Directive, victims of crime have the right to be informed, supported and protected, as well as to participate in criminal proceedings. EU Member States retain notable scope for action to transpose these rights into their national legislation, but with the entry into force of this Directive in October 2012, victims' protection entitlements improved significantly within thre remit of EU Law. However, foreign victims with irregular migration status are still in a vulnerable position. Indeed, they are included in the Directive in a particular way. On the one hand, Member States have to take the necessary measures to ensure that the rights set out in the Directive are not conditional on the victim's residence status. According to Art. 1.1, the rights delineated shall apply to all victims in a non-discriminatory manner, including with respect to their residence status. Nevertheless, on the other hand the Directive does not address the conditions of the residence of crime victims in the territory of the Member States. As mentioned in the preamble of the Directive (Recital 10), ‘reporting a crime and participating in criminal proceedings do not create any rights regarding the residence status of the victim’. Victims of crime with irregular migration status fall under the scope of the EU's Return-Directive. As with any third-country nationals staying irregularly in their territories, Member States shall issue them with a return decision. As stated in Art. 6.4 of the Return-Directive, ‘compassionate, humanitarian or other reasons’ allow Member States to grant at any moment a residence permit or the right to stay to any person with irregular migration status. However, EU law does not directly grant these victims of crime the right to stay if they report the case to the police or the criminal justice system. The outcome of the existing legal framework can be particularly harmful for these crime victims, who are exposed to retaliation and can fear deportation if they report the crime to the police. But it also impacts upon the whole criminal justice system, which may lose crucial actors for the prosecution of crime. In the last decade, EU and international law have started to bring in some exceptions to this inconsistent and harmful legal system. According to Directive 2004/81/EC, victims of human trafficking have access to a so-called ‘reflection period’ that allows them to recover and escape from the influence of traffickers. During this period, it is not possible to enforce deportation orders of third-country national victims, and once the reflection period is finished, victims may under certain circumstances access a residence permit.

Oxford, UK: COMPAS, Global Exchange on Migration and Diversity, 2019. 33p.

By Ruben Timmerman, Arjen Leerkes, and Richard Staring

Across Europe, irregular migrants experience considerable difficulty obtaining basic access to justice, protection, and services across a wide range of areas. The structural exclusion of irregular migrants from the integration strategies of European Union (EU) Member States serves in many situations to limit the full exercise of their basic rights, including in particular the right of an individual to safely report to the police if they have been a victim of or witness to crime.1 In recent years, however, efforts have been made to ensure that irregular migrants within Europe are guaranteed equal access to justice and basic rights should they fall victim to crime. Perhaps most notably, Directive 2012/29/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 25 October 2012 establishing minimum standards on the rights, support and protection of victims of crime (hereinafter, Victims’ Directive), which entered into force in 2015, sets out to ensure that the rights of all victims of crime are protected, regardless of nationality or residence status.2 Among other things, the EU Victims’ Directive signifies—at least on paper—the inclusion of irregular migrants within the wider purview of victims’ rights. However, there remain significant challenges and barriers to access to justice and rights for irregular migrant victims of crime within Europe, and there is much work still to be done in effectively realising the vision set out by the EU Victims’ Directive. In particular, it has long been observed by human rights observers, scholars, and practitioners in the field of migration that irregular migrants are often hesitant or unwilling to contact or interact with law enforcement authorities to report crime, either as victims or as witnesses, out of fear of arrest or deportation.3 As a result, these irregular migrants are unable to exercise their basic rights to necessary services, protection, and justice, and are often more vulnerable to perpetrators who are able to exploit their reluctance to report crime. Moreover, the lack of opportunity for irregular migrants to safely report crime results in a lack of crucial intelligence about criminal activity for law enforcement, and significantly reduces authorities’ insight into crime and public safety issues in their communities. As a result of these challenges, both in the United States and across Europe innovative and diverse initiatives have been developed—particularly at the local level—to promote ‘safe reporting’ of crime among irregular migrants, and in turn to ensure greater access to justice for victims.4 In particular, many localities have developed what are commonly referred to as ‘firewall policies’.

Oxford, UK; COMPAS, Global Exchange on Migration and Diversity, 2019. 46p.

Edited by Carol Hagemann-White, Liz Kelly and Thomas Meysen

This book offers insights and perspectives from a study of “Cultural Encounters in Intervention Against Violence” (CEINAV) in four EU-countries. Seeking a deeper understanding of the underpinnings of intervention practices in Germany, Portugal, Slovenia and the United Kingdom, the team explored variations in institutional structures and traditions of law, policing, and social welfare. Theories of structural inequality and ethics are discussed and translated into practice.

Leverkusen-Opladen, Verlag Barbara Budrich, 2019. 320p.

Edited by Veronika Bezinsky, Andrada Filip, Luma Kamel, Claire Laurent, Saide Mobayed, Kathryn Platzer, Michael Platzer

FEMICIDE Volume 6: Violence Against Girls contains the speeches delivered at these side events, at which high-ranking officials and experts on GBV presented comprehensive ways of reducing the risk of such violence, increasing the quality of protection for girl victims, and ending the impunity for perpetrators. It also includes the most recent and most effective prevention and mitigation strategies on gender-based violence against underage girls. In this volume of FEMICIDE we pay particular attention to girl refugees, displaced girls and migrant children, and the specific forms of violence and abuse occurring in the context of their flight. The refugee and migration flows in 2015 and 2016 have often been accompanied by abuses of the rights of children, and girls in particular. In such extreme situations as armed conflict, natural disasters, and other emergencies, girls are especially vulnerable to forced marriage, sexual exploitation, trafficking, psychological and physical intimidation, during all stages of their displacement. As girls are the most vulnerable of the vulnerable and are less likely to seek protection and a remedy, this publication focuses specifically on transnational aspects of violence against children, which are often neglected.

Vienna: Academic Council on the United Nations System (ACUNS) Vienna Liaison Office, 2016. 78p.

Edited by Helen Hemblade

Although violence against and murder of older women is a widespread phenomenon across the world, it receives little targeted attention. The simple fact that women get older than men, and as a result must live alone longer, makes them more vulnerable to exploitation, fraud, robbery and even physical abuse. As such, the abuse and femicide of older women is one of the most widespread unpunished crimes, affecting women of all backgrounds, cultures and countries. In many societies, elderly widows are physically and mentally abused, robbed of their right to inherit their assets - eventually losing their societal status. Due to poor education and no independent income, they are financially insecure and dependent on their children or relatives. FEMICIDE Volume VIII aims to analyse the ways in which women, over the age of 55, are psychologically and physically mistreated all around the globe, often resulting in death.

Vienna: Academic Council on the United Nations System (ACUNS) Vienna Liaison Office. 2017. 80p.

By Hannah Ford

Until recently, the topic of female sexual offenders remained under-researched, and many incorrect assumptions and beliefs still surround the subject. This book is organised into five parts around eleven chapters. It provides a comprehensive overview of the latest research in this often overlooked area and discusses both adult female offenders and adolescents/younger children who commit sexual offences against children. After an in-depth evaluation of research literature, the author then considers a range of treatment approaches and directions for future research.

Chichester, West Sussex, UK: John Wiley & Sons, 2006. 204p.

By Vernon R. Wiehe

Often excused by parents as `kids will be kids' behaviour, sibling abuse remains largely unrecognized. Symptoms of such abuse and its devastating effects on victims go undetected, victims do not receive appropriate therapeutic intervention, and transgressors do not come to the attention of the courts.

Thousand Oaks, CA; London; New Delhi: SAGE Publications, 1997. 232p.

By Julia C. Davidson

Child Sexual Abuse critically evaluates the development of policy and legislative measures to control sex offenders. The last fifteen years has seen increasing concern on the part of the government, criminal justice agencies, the media and the public, regarding child sexual abuse. This concern has been prompted by a series of events including cases inviting media attention and involving the abduction, sexual abuse and murder of young children. The response to this wave of child sexual abuse revelation has been to introduce increasingly punitive legislation regarding the punishment and control of sex offenders (sex offenders are the only group of offenders in British legal history to have their own act), both in custody and in the community. But this response, it is argued here, has developed in a reactionary way to media and public anxiety regarding the punishment and control of sex offenders (who have abused children) and the perceived threat of such offenders in the community.

Abington, Oxon, UK: New York: Routledge-Cavendish, 2008. 193p.

By Ben Mathews

This book offers a timely and detailed exploration and analysis of key contemporary issues and challenges in child sexual abuse, which holds great relevance for scholarly, legal, policy, professional and clinical audiences worldwide. The book draws together the best current evidence about the nature, aetiology, contexts, and sequelae of child sexual abuse. It explores the optimal definition of child sexual abuse, considers sexual abuse in history, and explores new theoretical understandings of children’s rights and other key theories including public health and the Capabilities Approach, and their relevance to child sexual abuse prevention and responses. It examines a selection of the most pressing legal, theoretical, policy and practical challenges in child sexual abuse in the modern world, in developed and developing economies, including institutional child sexual abuse, female genital cutting, child marriage, the use of technology for sexual abuse, and the ethical responsibility and legal liability of major state and religious organisations, and individuals. It examines recent landmark legal and policy developments in all of these areas, drawing in particular on extensive developments from Australia in the wake of its Royal Commission Into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. It also considers the best evidence about promising strategies and future promising directions in enhancing effective prevention, intervention and responses to child sexual abuse.

Cham, SWIT: Springer, 2019. 322p.

By Jo Woodiwiss

Set against the background of the recovered memory wars, this book explores women’s engagement with narratives of childhood sexual abuse (CSA), recovery and therapeutic discourses and the role they themselves play in the construction and use of abuse narratives whether they have, by their own definition, continuous, recovered or false memories. These are the women whose voices have been largely absent from the debates around recovery and the recovered memory wars and who are mostly constructed as weak, vulnerable and at the mercy of misguided therapists or the ongoing effects of abuse. This is not a book about childhood sexual abuse. Nor is it a book on the recovered memory wars, or on memory. It is also not a general book about therapeutic or self-help culture. Yet these themes do form part of the background against which the research for this book was carried out. They also form part of the background against which women engage in the ongoing process of (re)constructing their own narratives of childhood sexual abuse.

Basingstoke, Hampshire, UK; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. 252p.

By Alyson Brown and David Barrett

This book aims to document and analyse the enduring involvement of children in the commercial sex trade in twentieth-century England. It uncovers new evidence to indicate the extent of under-age prostitution over this period, a much-neglected subject despite the increased visibility of children more generally. The authors argue that child prostitution needs to be understood within a broader context of child abuse,<span class='showMoreLessContentElement' style='display: none;'> and that this provides one of the clearest manifestations of the way in which 'deviant groups' can be conceived of as both victims and threats. The picture of child prostitution which emerges is one of exclusion from mainstream society and the law, and remoteness from the agencies set up to help young people in trouble, which were often reluctant to accept the realities of child prostitution. The evidence provided in this book indicates that the circumstances which have led young people into prostitution over the last hundred years amount, at worst, to physical or psychological abuse or neglect, and at best as the result of limited choice.

Abingdon, O xon ; New York: Routledge, 2013. 223p. (Originally published by Willan, 2002)

Edited by Paula Reavey and Sam Warner

Child sexual abuse is a multifaceted event, interpreted in many different ways, in many different contexts. In New Feminist Stories of Child Sexual Abuse contributors try to untangle some of the complex ways in which stories of child sexual abuse are translated through and into personal, professional and social practices. The first section of the book explores the cultural and political landscape of child sexual in Western and non-Western contexts. It examines the ways in which radical aspects of feminism can be undermined in Western cultures and how Westernised ideologies of childhood, sex and gender have been used to structure discussions about child sexual abuse across the world. The second section traces the effects of these wider cultural and political narratives through the various contexts in which child sexual abuse is theorised and around which interventions in the lives of women are structured. It provides insights into how traditional approaches to understanding harm can be challenged and reworked in practice, using alternative therapeutic models based on feminist post-structuralist agendas. Reworking earlier feminist analyses, New Feminist Stories of Child Sexual Abuse asks pertinent questions about how child sexual abuse is produced, rather than merely represented, in the ways we speak about it.

London; New York: Routledge, 2003. 271p.

By Louise A. Jackson

Child Sexual Abuse in Victorian England is the first detailed investigation of the way that child abuse was discovered, debated, diagnosed and dealt with in the Victorian and Edwardian periods.The focus is placed on the child and his or her experience of court procedure and welfare practice, thereby providing a unique and important evaluation of the treatment of children in the courtroom. Through a series of case studies, including analyses of the criminal courts, the author examines the impact of legislation at grass roots level, and demonstrates why this was a formative period in the legal definition of sexual abuse. Providing a much-needed insight into Victorian attitudes, including that of Christian morality, this book makes a distinctive contribution to the history of crime, social welfare and the family. It also offers a valuable critique of current work on the history of children's homes and institutions, arguing that the interpersonal relationships of children and carers is a crucial area of study.

London; New York: Routledge: 2000. 221p.

By Rebecca M. Bowen

This book has three important sections. The first section sets the stage for this book by reviewing the historical context within which early theories of child sexual abuse were developed. The second section of the book then turns to the task of reviewing the empirical knowledge base that defines the scope of the problem of child sexual abuse. This section considers the prevalence and incidence of child sexual abuse, extrafamilial and intrafamilial abuse, factors associated with risk of abuse and of offending, and nonoffending guardians. It is argued throughout this section that child sexual abuse is an epidemic fueled by sociocultural structures and values. The final section considers the aftermath of child sexual abuse—the professional response to child sexual abuse. In the important final chapter of this book, the scope of the problem of child sexual abuse—as illustrated in the empirical knowledge base—is compared to that of the professional response to child sexual abuse. This comparison provides striking evidence that society’s response to child sexual abuse is failing profoundly. By reviewing the assumptions underlying society’s response to child sexual abuse, I argue that the reason for such a complete system failure is that the systemic response is grounded in the historical and often myth-bound conceptualization of child sexual abuse rather than in the empirical literature.

New York, Boston, Dordrecht, London, Moscow: Kluwer Academic, 2002. 321p.

Edited by Adele D. Jones

Child sexual abuse (CSA) is one of the most under-reported criminal acts against children. Children are often too young to know exactly what is happening to them, but instinctively feel that something is wrong and are often left with an awareness that life will never be the same. CSA violates children’s rights and perforates their sense of security and normalcy; a perforation that is further enlarged by the colluded silence of those who have the responsibility to protect them. Incidents of CSA seem to be escalating worldwide and the Caribbean is not exempt. Increasing numbers of reports of CSA in the media suggest that either a higher proportion of the cases are being reported or that there are increasing instances of such abuse. However, although this problem seems to affect the region, the topic still remains taboo and generally not spoken about and often it seems that family reputation and honour are considered more important and placed ahead of the safety and well-being of the child. Further, it seems to be perpetuated through a culture of gender inequalities, social and culturally held perceptions about family interactions and asking for help as well as patriarchal and outdated legislation.

Basingstoke, Hampshire. UK; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. 290p.

Edited by Paris Goodyear-Brown

This handbook is the most comprehensive volume on child sexual abuse to date and offers a snapshot of the state of the field as it stands today. As such, it is intended to aid the refinement of our thoughts, to help increase our mutual understanding as we approach this critically important issue together, and to help shape society’s approach to child sexual abuse.

Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, 2012. 642p.

By Edward L. Rowan

The number of confirmed cases of child sexual abuse in the United States rose from 6,000 in 1976 to 113,000 in 1985, and rose again to 300,000 in 2000. Understanding Child Sexual Abuse explores the dynamics, effects, treatment options, and preventive measures available to both the children and the adults involved in child sexual abuse. Intended for survivors and for all those wishing to help victims, Understanding Child Sexual Abuse is a useful, sensitive guide to the treatment of such behavior and its aftermath.

Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2006. 113p.

By Marcus Ward and Holly Rodger

The purpose of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA or ‘the Inquiry’) is to investigate whether public bodies and other non-state institutions have taken seriously their responsibility to protect children from sexual abuse in England and Wales, and to make meaningful recommendations for change, to help ensure that children now, and in the future, are better protected from sexual abuse. The Inquiry has launched 13 investigations into a broad range of institutions. The Residential Schools Investigation will investigate the nature and extent of, and institutional responses to, child sexual abuse in residential schools, including schools in the state and independent sectors and schools for children with disabilities and/or special educational needs. This literature review summarises the research literature on child sexual abuse (including child sexual exploitation) in residential schools. The aim is to provide an overview of what is already known, specifically in relation to child sexual abuse that occurs within residential schools, their role in safeguarding children from sexual abuse and the role they play in protecting children from sexual abuse in general. The review also draws on literature relating to non-residential schools from all sectors (see the methodology section for an overview of the types of schools this covers).

London: Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, 2018. 54p.