Testimonies about Child Sexual Abuse in the Family. Creating Knowledge about Vulnerability

When children and adolescents experience violence and abuse, the family is often the scene of the crime. This is especially true in cases of child sexual abuse. Children are hardly ever able to escape a violent family situation on their own. Research shows that one of the strategies of perpetrators, both male and female family members, is to confuse children so that they have no language for the violent experiences and find it difficult to confide. This presentation is based on a study analysing survivors’ testimonies (n=870) about child sexual abuse (CSA) within the family. The context of the study is the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse in Germany, founded in 2016. The Inquiry’s work is based on the concept of witnessing and supporting mainly survivors of CSA to share their stories. The Inquiry has collected more than 2,000 written and oral reports. The presentation is based on a study and the analysis of more than 800 reports of survivors, who experienced child sexual abuse in the private space of the family. The following questions are relevant: What do we learn from survivors about their vulnerability as children and as adults who talk about perpetrators and bystanders in the private space? Which common characteristics in the actions of perpetrators within families can be identified? The discussion shed light on the importance of the third party and the possibilities for the perpetrators to shape the environment of the family as a whole. Witnessing by survivors is an important epistemological, ethical, and political instrument for creating knowledge about vulnerability.