%X Child Sexual Abuse (CSA) is an ongoing scourge upon society. There is minimal understanding of the experiences of mothers and children in private law family court proceedings (PLP), when CSA is reported. A qualitative study was conducted and a feminist-informed Foucauldian Discourse Analysis was applied to understand ten life-stories from within a larger sample of 45. Five themes are presented. CSA was overwhelmingly reported as being minimised, with harmful outcomes for children and mothers reported. Pro-father and ‘parental alienation’ narratives were a facilitator of severe harm and continued male violence to victim-survivor mothers and children. Further research into the scale and prevalence of CSA within PLP is urgently required.
%K Social Sciences, Law, Government & Law, Domestic abuse, family court, private law, child sexual abuse, intra-familial sexual abuse, parental alienation, human rights, women, PARENTAL ALIENATION, CUSTODY, CONTRADICTIONS
%I ROUTLEDGE JOURNALS, TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD
%T ‘Let’s excuse abusive men from abusing and enable sexual abuse’: child sexual abuse investigations in England’s private family courts
%P 345-365
%L discovery10199463
%A E Dalgarno
%A D Bramwell
%A A Verma
%A S Ayeb-Karlsson
%V 46
%J Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law
%O © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.
%N 3
%D 2024