I read with deep sadness Sonia Sodha’s article (Comment), in particular her notion that we “live in a society where there is so much guilt, shame and fear around child sexual abuse that there are powerful collective instincts to try to minimise it”. Attitudes, it seems, have changed little since I was brought up in “care” in Scotland (Falkirk) and England (Northampton) in the 1960s and 1970s. Sexual abuse and violence at the hands of adults (men and women) was rife. It was not just in children’s homes, foster care and the church, but also in the wider community. Yet as Sodha so astutely identifies, then as now, child abuse and cruelty simultaneously seem to be everywhere but nowhere: indifference, silence and blame by adults and abusers.
Nobody, not then, not now, ever wanted to know, so one quickly learns to stop talking altogether. Even today, some of the cruelties are difficult to explain and describe. It’s often hard to shut these experiences out, let alone try to communicate them, even if someone was willing to listen. So, as the headline to the article rightly puts it: “As long as we avert our gaze from sexual abuse, we will continue to fail children.”
Dr John Finlay
New Town, Edinburgh
