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27 J. Child Sexual Abuse 1 (2018)

handle is hein.journals/wcsa27 and id is 1 raw text is: JOURNAL OF CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE 2018, VOL. 27, NO. 1, 1-21 Routledge https://doi.org/10.1080/10538712.2017.1390715 Taylor & Francis Group The Secret of Intrafamilial Child Sexual Abuse: Who Keeps It and How? Dafna Tener The Paul Baerwald School of Social Work and Social Welfare, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem ABSTRACT KEYWORDS This article analyzes how women survivors of intrafamilial child Child sexual abuse; adult sexual abuse perceive the family members who took part in keep- survivors; disclosure; family ing it secret and their tactics for doing so. Analysis of 20 in-depth relationships; qualitative interviews with Jewish Israeli women revealed unique ways of research guarding the secret. These were attributed to the perpetrator, the mother and the family. Secret-keeping tactics included pre- senting a normative public identity or an unstable psychological identity, presenting multiple personas, reframing the abuse, con- cealing any trace of the secret after it was disclosed, as if the abuse had never happened, and making a monument of the abuser. These tactics are discussed in the context of silencing, the inter- personal relations orientation model, and the wider concepts of secrecy in society. Implications for professional practice and for society are considered, and new attitudes toward intrafamilial child sexual abuse secrecy are suggested. Theoretical discussions on disclosure all emphasize the complexity of the process of telling others about sexual abuse (Alaggia, 2010; Draucker & Martsolf, 2008; Kenny & Wurtele, 2012; McElvaney, Greene, & Hogan, 2012). Many sexually abused children do not disclose their abuse, or they delay in disclosing it for many years (Jensen, Gulbrandsen, Mossige, Reichelt, & Tjersland, 2005; Oates, 2007; Schonbucher, Maier, Mohler-Kuo, Schnyder, & Landolt, 2012), especially when it is within the family (Kogan, 2004). Despite broad recognition of their role, however, the direct and interactive effects of family mechanisms, often acting as massive barriers to disclosure, have received little scholarly attention to date (Alaggia & Kirshenbaum, 2005; Anderson, 2015; Hershkowitz, Lanes, & Lamb, 2007; Welfare, 2010). Individuals, including the survivor, family members, and neighbors as well as the community, society, and broad cultural context are all key actors in the disclosure process (Alaggia, 2010). Concealing and disclosing sexual abuse during childhood are facilitated and inhibited by a range of personal, interpersonal, and sociocultural factors (Tener & Murphy, 2015). Our focus in this article will be on inhibitory factors. On the personal level, these include, for example, older age at CONTACT Dafna Tener 0 dtener@gmail.com ( the Paul Baerwald School of Social Work and Social Welfare, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mt. Scopus Jerusalem 91905, Israel. 0 2017 Taylor & Francis

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