Child Sexual Abuse Reported by Adult Survivors: Legal Responses in England and Wales, Ireland and Australia

This book provides a critical history and analysis of legal responses to historical or non-recent child sexual abuse (NRCSA) in England and Wales, Ireland, and Australia, exploring the emergence of NRCSA as a social, political, and legal phenomenon and the legal responses developed to address its challenges. It highlights the progress made in criminal law, tort law, public inquiries, and state reparations, but also identifies failures to deliver accountability and recognition to survivors. It is of interest to academic lawyers, political scientists, historians, and those working on related topics in criminology, sociology, social policy, cultural studies, and gender studies.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 338 pages
Publication date: 29 January 2024
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Child Sexual Abuse Reported by Adult Survivors is a comprehensive and timely critical history and analysis of legal responses to historical or non-recent child sexual abuse (NRCSA) in England and Wales, Ireland, and Australia, each of which represents an evolving and progressive approach to this important and complex issue. The book examines the emergence of NRCSA as a distinctive social, political, and legal phenomenon in each country and explores the legal responses developed to address its unprecedented challenges. Courts and parliaments in each country have reformed existing doctrine and practice and have created new ways of holding state and private actors accountable and new ways of addressing survivors' injuries. Criminal law, tort law, public inquiries, and state reparations have all been to the forefront of these new legal responses, which have transformed laws' engagement with NRCSA survivors and understandings of justice itself. However, despite this undeniable progress, the book identifies ways in which the legal responses developed in each country fail to deliver accountability and recognition to NRCSA survivors and argues that such failures betray the laws inherent ambivalence to delivering justice for these survivors.

Creating new insights into legal responses to this complex contemporary legal, social, and political problem, this book will be of great interest to academic lawyers, political scientists, and historians, as well as those working on related topics in criminology, sociology, social policy, cultural studies, and gender studies.

Weight: 453g
Dimension: 234 x 156 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781032253640