A Sociological Examination of What Helped and What Hindered Child Sexual Abuse Victim-Survivors’ Recovery Journey

This thesis highlights the social processes that help adult victim-survivors ‘recover’ from child sexual abuse (CSA). Few sociological studies theorise and explore how best to support adult victims of child sexual abuse. Theories thus far have typically approached this experience from a psychological perspective, with the onus on the victim-survivor’s need to change. Other studies refer to the stages of ‘recovery’ but fail to explore how change and ‘recovery’ occur.

This research was conducted during Covid-19 lockdown, using semi-structured interviews with five male and five female victim-survivors, aged 40 – 70, who were interviewed online or by phone. Nine participants work professionally or voluntarily with victim-survivors of abuse or in CSA prevention.

Three dominant themes emerged from a thematic coding of the participants’ interview transcripts: ‘Realisation’, ‘Barriers and Misconceptions’ and ‘Recognition, Recovery and Empowerment’. ‘Realisation’ of abuse signifies the beginning of the process through which participants recognise and subsequently organise and understand their experiences of abuse and the ongoing impact of these experiences on their adult lives. ‘Barriers and Misconceptions’ refers to the beliefs participants held about the abuse and themselves which prevented them from realising the reality behind the abuse. ‘Recognition’ helped participants make the realisations, while ‘Recovery and Empowerment’ offered them hope for the future.

This thesis analysed interview data to develop understanding around how prevailing social views of sexual abuse impact victim-survivors’ ‘recovery’, identifying specific barriers and enabling factors. Realisations helped challenge the misconceptions formed and internalised by encounters with the prevailing social view, building awareness around the abuse and its aftermath. This research offers a new way to understand the social mechanisms at play for victim-survivors in their ‘recovery’ from abuse, rather than focussing on purely psychological mechanisms. It offers potential for identifying and removing barriers preventing victim-survivors’ ‘recovery’ and, instead, implementing enablers which encourage their ‘recovery’.