seems like it's the second time in a handful of months that the French general public is rocked by a scandal about widespread sexual abuse against minors with little to no consequences despite multiple prior reports, and the public and political response is once again utter garbage (calling for new laws, more money for cops, etc)
i'm popping my head out as someone who knows way too much about CSA for my own good to remind you that: most* sexual abuse against minors happens within or immediately around the close family unit
Sexual abuse against minors directly stems from the following beliefs that are core to society:
- Children are the property of their parents
- People incorrectly believe most sexual violence (incl. against children) happens spontaneously, from strangers
- Women (disproportionally the victims here) are the property, especially for reproductive purposes, of men (their father, their husband). Queer women have it worse, ofc, since they are coerced into sex with men
- Men, especially queer, must also be coerced, by force (sometimes sexual), to reproduce the (sometimes sexual) violence of the patriarchy, especially if they don't want to, especially by other men
Any response that strengthens the idea that children are the property of their parents who should be the only adults to have any bond with them, and who should be hypervigilent about other adults, is going to raise a fuckton of walls that will trap children in abuse, whether it's a parent raping them, or abusing them because they're queer and confused with no other adults to turn to. Congratulations, you've trapped kids in the close familial unit, which is statistically where most CSA happens. Combo that if they are disabled in any way. Combo that if they are already marginalized in any other way (poverty, racialization, etc).
Making the legal punishment worse is also useless: you're going to mobilize more resources to handle cases that will dwindle down in numbers because suddenly, a parent who hears from their kid that their other parent rapes them will make the calculation in their head that results in "don't say anything, or daddy is going to jail forever". Existing laws are not applied because the culture we live in TOLERATES sexual abuse of kids, as long as nobody talks about it. (Nobody talks about that uncle you haven't seen since you were 8. He let you play on his lap a lot. Rumours is he diddled your cousin or something. Nobody talks about it of course.)
Until someone starts really handling this problem from the viewpoint that children's autonomy is trampled at every possible opportunity, that minority is an axis of oppression, and children are considered the sole property of their parents as opposed to a vulnerable population that the commons must care for together, we are fucked. Until someone links the dots that widespread childhood sexual abuse happens on the same spectrum as widespread sexual assault of partners, widespread sexual assault scandals in the media, we are fucked.
This has been a PSA
