Ship of Fools: Societal attitudes to sexual abuse of children in the past

Thread: Societal attitudes to sexual abuse of children in the past Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on :

For those of you that were around (and adults) in the 1940's - 1980's, I'd very much like to hear what your impressions of societal attitudes towards child sexual abuse were back then in the workplace and in the home.

Was there a culture of turning a blind eye? Was there a culture of not mentioning it or doing anything about it even if you knew it was happening in the home or the school or wherever? Was it distasteful but you just got on with normal life?

Have attitudes in the past changed from the attitudes of society today?

If so, why?

Posted by ken (# 2460) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
For those of you that were around (and adults) in the 1940's - 1980's, I'd very much like to hear what your impressions of societal attitudes towards child sexual abuse were back then in the workplace and in the home.

Was there a culture of turning a blind eye? Was there a culture of not mentioning it or doing anything about it even if you knew it was happening in the home or the school or wherever? Was it distasteful but you just got on with normal life?

Have attitudes in the past changed from the attitudes of society today?

As far as I remember I never heard or thought about it or knew such a thing existed until I was about 11 years old, in the late 1960s. Over the next few years there were a number of notorious cases in the area I lived in that got into the national news. So my general impression was that it was very rare, and that everybody thought of it as one of the worst crimes there was, in the same general category of seriousness as rape and murder.

I am genuinely surprised, even slightly shocked, at other people here saying that child abuse was generally accepted in the 1970s and 80s. It really wasn't.

Posted by tclune (# 7959) on :

I'm about a decade older than Ken, and my recollections of life in the midwestern US are pretty much the same. It was viewed as horrific, but it wasn't something that people thought of as likely to happen. Nonetheless, children were routinely warned not to accept rides from strangers, etc.

--Tom Clune

Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :

There was the same sort of worry about strangers - definitely the warnings to be careful of some adults who were perceived as odd. Certain alleyways we were told not use when certain people (tramps?) were around in the village. Thinking rural Britain in the early 70s, cars weren't so common and we were allowed to roam a lot freer than children are now.

I can remember very little awareness of familial abuse. With hindsight, I'm pretty sure one of my/my sister's friends was in an incestuous relationship with her father. Her mother died of cancer when she about 11 or 12. When the mother was alive we were in and out of houses and that stopped, there were a few other things that made me wonder as an adult. That one was never commented on, as far as I'm aware - to be honest I'm not sure anyone else was in a position to see what we saw. (That was also true of physical abuse. A blind eye and deaf ear was turned to children being quite heavily physically chastised)

Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :

The only concrete case I knew was a teacher at my school, who definitely liked boys. Eventually, parents complained and he left, but he went off to another school, and wasn't prosecuted. I don't know how common that was in schools.

Posted by Doublethink (# 1984) on :

Have you ever read Last Seen Wearing an Inspector Morse novel published in 1974 ? It revolves around a 15 year old girl who - it turns out - has had sex with various adult men and then run off with a teacher. The term child abuse is never mentioned in the book, and the girl is portrayed as a manipulative seducer of men like her mother. This is a mainstream novel that was very successful. Morse's attitudes to women are also fairly dire.

I believe that someone being a "flasher", or "a dirty old man" would not have been connected with the term "child abuse" as such. I suspect the horror was reserved for physically violent penetrative rape and little else.

Posted by Eigon (# 4917) on :

My gran told me that there were certain people who lived in her street before the Second World War who neighbours would keep an eye on "in case they got up to any funny business". One of those was a widower living with his young daughter. But she never explained at the time what "funny business" might be.
As kids in the late 60s/early 70s, we were warned by other local kids to "stay away from Old Jonesy", but what would happen if we didn't wasn't really gone into. So the gang of us just used to scream and run when we saw him, without really wondering what would happen if he caught us.

Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :

Of course Old Johnsey might simply have been a sad old bloke who was a bit weird that everyone liked to run away from.

Putting together what Doublethink and others say, I wonder if the difference was not that child abuse was accepted "back then", but that it was thought of as being an extreme, unusual perversion, that children were thought of as being very unreliable witnesses, particularly where upstanding members of the community were concerned, and that little thought was given to including girls in their early teens within the purview of child abuse laws.

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :

My father who attended a secondary boarding school said that there were one or two teachers that the boys knew not to get caught alone with for fear of consequences that might be unpleasant and embarrassing. The attitude, as I understood it, was somewhat the same as that exhibited towards Richard Griffith's character in The History Boys.

Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :

And I wonder what the attitude of other adults would have been if the abuse had been reported?

My guess is that if the prevailing views are that a) abuse is an appropriate label only for the more extreme behaviours and b) children are often unreliable witnesses, then the likely response will be to brush it off.

However if you were to ask any of those adults subsequently what they thought of child abuse I'd imagine many would say it was beyond the pale and not to be tolerated under any circumstances.

Posted by Doublethink (# 1984) on :

I doubt too that there would have been much, if any, recognition of sexual abuse of boys by women. Even fairly recently, the press tended to portray such cases as a boy "having an affair" with a teacher.

Posted by North East Quine (# 13049) on :

I had a great uncle who wasn't safe around post-pubescent teenage girls. He was one of the generation who were "never the same again" after serving in the trenches in the First World War. He was quite elderly when I was a little girl, and still visibly facially scarred.

Speaking to my Mum, during the 1940s there were a few men in her community who had come back damaged from the trenches - a teacher who sometimes had a meltdown in class, a heavy drinker etc. From what my Mum says, the community just worked round the fact that it had these damaged men in its midst.

I wonder what it was like for his wife - they had been sweethearts before the war and married as soon as he got back in 1918. And they stayed married.

Posted by Doublethink (# 1984) on :

Would you describe him as a child abuser - would your family have talked about him in those terms ? Come to that - did anyone ever choose to involve the police ?

[ 17. November 2012, 17:01: Message edited by: Doublethink ]

Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on :

Very much as Ken and others have described, including the dire warnings about the dangers of something that was never made explicit.

I never personally encountered anything, but one person I know was attacked by a child-molester who was prosecuted. Another boy at school described what I would now interpret as being picked up by a stranger and paid to be abused. However, he was a bad'un in other ways that had nothing to do with sex.

Sometime in my late teens I remember being told about a notorious local case, I think from not long after the war, where some adult men had been imprisoned for setting up a circle in which they seduced young-adult boys. This was - still in my view rightly - represented as an awful warning.

It was regarded as abhorrent, but there wasn't the paranoia there is today.

[ETA Sorry snafu - clicked edit instead of quote function - DT, Inept Purgatory Host]

[ 17. November 2012, 17:09: Message edited by: Doublethink ]

Posted by Doublethink (# 1984) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
Another boy at school described what I would now interpret as being picked up by a stranger and paid to be abused. However, he was a bad'un in other ways that had nothing to do with sex.

That is what we would now call a form of grooming. Who was the 'bad'un' the lad himself ? It is often children under least control who are most vulnerable - and least likely to believed on disclosure (though that is probably somewhat less true now).

[ 17. November 2012, 17:11: Message edited by: Doublethink ]

Posted by North East Quine (# 13049) on :

Doublethink, no-one in the family would have described him as a child abuser, because teenage girls wouldn't have fallen within the description of "child."

It's a long and complicated story, but yes, the police were aware of one incident.

Posted by Doublethink (# 1984) on :

Yeah, and I think that is one of the reasons it is difficult to do direct comparisons historically. We had/have a family friend referred to as uncle who is mildly inappropriate at parties, I don't know if he was more of a problem when he was younger.

Peter Kay does a sketch where he talks about everyone always having at least one Uncle Knobhead and alludes to inappropriate behaviour - I think it is part of a lot of people's peripheral family story.

[ 17. November 2012, 17:23: Message edited by: Doublethink ]

Posted by North East Quine (# 13049) on :

It was pretty much a secondary part of his "story" Doublethink. Although AFAIK he didn't talk much about the war himself, other men in the area had been in the trenches with him; he was generally regarded as a local hero. Plus, there was the visible scarring, no-one could look at him and forget that he'd been in the war.

He'd have ended up in prison today.

Posted by no prophet (# 15560) on :

I don't think as a child in the 1960s we ever really understood at all. No idea. I don't think we had the vocabulary to describe illegal sexual acts other than "rape". I don't recall hearing many of the commonly used words today to describe sexual acts and issues until the late 1970s or early 80s. My take is that the feminist movement, coupled with what we tend to call "The 1960s" changed everything (though the 1960s changes were probably more like 1965 to 1975 here).

When the sexual abuse issues came to the fore in the early 1980s here, most of us were dismissive and simply did not accept that it occurred except in situations of mental illness, alcoholism, low education. Like it was a disorder or condition of a select underclass or lesser people. We were heavily prejudiced against Ukrainian immigrants (a lumping together of many eastern Europe immigrant peoples) and the peoples we now call First Nations, and presumed these groups might do such things because we "knew" they were odd and stupid.

So the answer to the OP question, we denied it, saw it as a problem of people we denigrated due to our bigotry.

Posted by Ethne Alba (# 5804) on :

Don't forget, the police were then far more embedded in the Local Community. So allegations made against local establishment figures were often met with incredulity, or a blank refusal to take matters any further.

Posted by no prophet (# 15560) on :

Missed edit window:
I should modify my comments above to "me" and "my" and not tar everyone here with my shallow ignorance and bigotry from the past. I held these views and so did my small, sheltered circle of friends, and can only suggest that I think other western, prairie Canadians also did.

Posted by beatmenace (# 16955) on :

Warnings were definitly a bit more oblique when i was a kid. For example, at school, it was well known you shouldn't go to tea with a certain local Clergyman - no one said why , but as an adult, i can guess.
Likewise a certain set of public toilets was regarded as a place one shouldn't visit. Later on the Police did visit them, shall we say, and what they found made the local Press...........

Posted by Oferyas (# 14031) on :

At least one teacher at our school in the late 1960s went to jail for sexual abuse of children. I know of other dubious characters who seemed to 'get away with it' if their reputations were to be believed.
I'm not sure children were always believed, and the thought that women could be perpetrators was simply inconceivable.

Posted by Sleepwalker (# 15343) on :

A relative of mine who is now in his 70s was sexually abused by a family friend. He gave evidence in court (not behind a screen, as now can be the case) and the man was sent to jail. My relative was 8 years old at the time. So I think sexual abuse of children has been treated as a crime for a long time.

However, what has changed even during my (shorter) lifetime is either the prevelance of it or the realisation that it is more prevelant than we thought it was (I lean towards the latter).

I do not think there was denial of its existence as such, just that society as a whole didn't talk about abuse per se, sexual or otherwise. In this the sexual abuse of children was probably treated differently to the rape of adult women which was denied in many ways and for a long time. It was a legal impossibility between married people until relatively recently, in the UK at least.

Posted by BessHiggs (# 15176) on :

I was born in the late 60's and I remember Stranger Danger being drilled into my head, because it was only strange creepy men in beat up clothes who were any threat. Certainly not my music teacher, a deacon in his church, who had me sit in his lap so he could wrap his arms around me to "show me how to play the notes correctly". It wasn't my grandmother's college roommate's brother, included in every family gathering, who I learned very quickly not to let give me a tour of his barn. It wasn't my great uncle, who got very very grabby after a couple of Gibsons. It wasn't my driving teacher who seemed to think that it was OK to place his hand on my thigh to let me know when to apply the brakes. It was only a STRANGER who could be inappropriate and bad and dangerous to me.

And yes, I complained to adults about every single one of these instances except the last one, and in each case I was told that I was mistaken, because so-and-so wasn't like that, and besides, he's like family. In the last instance, I encountered the driving instructor in his van one evening when I was walking my dog. He asked if I wanted an extra lesson [Roll Eyes]

, and I set my fairly large, protective dog on him. Oddly enough, I had a new driving instructor for my next lesson.

Posted by Jahlove (# 10290) on :

Agree with above comments about vague warnings not to take sweets from strangers (can remember one occasion when (age 5 or 6), I failed to recognize *Uncle Pete* - my best friend and next door neighbour's dad, because he was wearing an (unaccustomed) cap and was giving out sweets to a group of us kids - i was horrified that the rest of them were taking them as they had the same warnings I did!

Would also like to say that the Blame the Victim culture was highly operative even in child cases - to wit: a junior school assembly:

Headmaster *there was a boy with us last term. He is not here today. He went with some men in a car*

(this is actually seared into my memory) - implication was/is *if you accept a lift/take sweets from strangers etc., don't upset our social set-up by getting yerself raped & murdered you annoying little rugrat* i.e. it's your own fault. Through adult eyes, with 20/20 hindsight and to be charitable, the Head probably thought that scare tactics were the best way to safeguard us. But the message we took away was that if bad stuff happened, it was our fault (a perception which abusers are skilled at engendering) - the culpability of the perps never even entered that discourse.

Can't remember any references to family pervs* -tho' since mine was a quite large extended group, statistically there probably were some - maybe they were just kept away from us kids.

*those that abused me actually WERE the proverbial *strangers*

Posted by ExclamationMark (# 14715) on :

I recall the usual warning about strangers in cars but in rural cambridgeshire a strange car (or any car in the 1960's) stood out.

No, as mentioned before, it was the "pillars of the community" who everyone knew and who were the problem. (It was true of a cadet leader in the 1930's according to my dad - also a lady teacher then who had an interest in the girls).

There was the policeman who loved a bit of physical assault. I was told never to get near him when i was out riding my bike. He loved to clip naughty boys round the ear or to be accurate smack their heads for no reason. The vicar from the next village with an interest in all things young boys plus the squire-vicar from another village who used to spit at working class lads from the council estate.

School? The Frenhc teacher in the 1970's who banged yr head on the desk for a wrong answer (if you want to see what he looked like watch Floyd's "The Wall" the teacher is the same). A biology teacher who ruffled boys hair and who turned up to a school trip with his (male) partner. My (married) form teacher in the 2nd year of senior school arrested and jailed a few years ago for offences committed while I was in his class. The toilets just outside the school gates where all sorts of men seemed to go in at all times ....

The acts were there and the awareness was there -- you just didn't go to the police or courts because no one would believe you esp if you came from the council houses.

Posted by Pulsator Organorum Ineptus (# 2515) on :

I think it was so beyond the pale that people didn't believe anyone they knew, even vaguely, could possibly be involved in it, either as perpetrator or victim. It was something that happened elsewhere.

People turned a blind eye not because they thought it was unimportant, but because they thought it didn't really happen. Perhaps they thought of it in rather the same way as witchcraft.

Posted by PeteC (# 10422) on :

Growing up in the 50s might have seemed to be an idyllic time. For the most part it was. But in that period, at least 4 men molested me (and probably others who were equally vulnerable). Two of those occasions were in a residential hospital setting. Most of the boys (5-16) learnt soon enough to stay out of the clutches of these persons. One was a family friend. The other, and the first, was an older teen. I was 7. Other boys protected me and kept him away.

On a street safety note, nothing was said or done by the schools that I was aware of.

I spoke to my sister a few years ago about warnings and she reminded me that certain households in our rather wide play area were delineated as "no go" by our parents. They also supplied us with houses which we could go to in cases of emergency. As for cars, it is a good thing no one ever offered this boy from a car-less family a ride. I would have gone in a heartbeat.

Physical abuse by persons in authority was epidemic and accepted by parents and children alike. A different world.

Posted by Robert Armin (# 182) on :

In the mid 70s a teacher disappeared from my all-boys school. Years later I discovered that this had been because he was abusing some of the pupils. What is different from today is that I don't know if the police were called in, and the chap in question was sent off with a decent reference to work in another school (the Head thought he'd learnt his lesson). No idea what happened to him later.

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

quote:
Originally posted by ken:

quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
For those of you that were around (and adults) in the 1940's - 1980's, I'd very much like to hear what your impressions of societal attitudes towards child sexual abuse were back then in the workplace and in the home.

Was there a culture of turning a blind eye? Was there a culture of not mentioning it or doing anything about it even if you knew it was happening in the home or the school or wherever? Was it distasteful but you just got on with normal life?

Have attitudes in the past changed from the attitudes of society today?
As far as I remember I never heard or thought about it or knew such a thing existed until I was about 11 years old, in the late 1960s. Over the next few years there were a number of notorious cases in the area I lived in that got into the national news. So my general impression was that it was very rare, and that everybody thought of it as one of the worst crimes there was, in the same general category of seriousness as rape and murder.

I am genuinely surprised, even slightly shocked, at other people here saying that child abuse was generally accepted in the 1970s and 80s. It really wasn't.

I'm afraid you're mistaken. I am just about the same age as you, as was my ex-husband, who was molested for a number of years in early adolescence (early 1970s). There were other victims, and more than one perpetrator in the church where this was taking place.

It wasn't "accepted"-- no one was saying "Oh, sex abuse, no big deal." But as Ken asked, it very much was "look the other way." Very much. There were clear and evident signs my ex's parents should have seen-- they chose not to. There were rumors and whispered stories all around the church-- but everyone chose not to look too closely. When the abuse was acknowledged there was no trial, no arrest, no therapy (for either victim or perp). "Distasteful but get on with it" was, indeed, the usual response.

Like Evensong, I was never abused and never heard of the concept til much later in adolescence. So it was easy to believe what Evensong believed-- that it was rare, everyone thought it was awful, and if it did happen, the adults would step in quickly and decisively to stop it. Sadly, I now know (both from my ex and from other friends who had similar experience in that time frame) that was very much not the case.

Posted by Flossymole (# 17339) on :

I don't think I ever heard the words 'child abuse' until the 70s (when I was in my 30s). During my childhood it was called 'interfering with little children' and was reported in a vague euphemistic way in the press. We were warned (very strongly) against accepting sweets from strangers but not told why. I think there was a general impression (amongst children) that any child who got 'interfered with' (whatever that was) must have been naughty and taken sweets, or strayed too far from home, or talked to tramps. Tramps always seemed to be portrayed as potential perpetrators. Later, I knew a girl my age who had been raped at the age of 10, by an 18-year-old neighbour. He went to prison. Remembering what was written on toilet walls I now think that there was incest going on in at least one family, but at the time it was just 'dirty scribblings on the wall'. This was on a large council housing estate with a fairly rough reputation, but I always felt completely safe.

Posted by bib (# 13074) on :

I knew nothing of sexual abuse as a child. In fact I knew nothing about sex at all. Even in my last year at high school I had a teacher whom I now realise was homosexual, but I knew nothing of this variation and just thought he was a bit unusual. I think I must have led a very sheltered life prior to my university days.

Posted by no prophet (# 15560) on :

quote:
Originally posted by PeteC:
Physical abuse by persons in authority was epidemic and accepted by parents and children alike. A different world.

Yes indeed. As I recall there was an official strap for use in the public (gov't funded) schools, and when I went to boarding school we were routine hit over the backsides, holding our knees with 2" by 3" by 3 foot long pieces of lumber, normally in front of the class or entire student body. It was also common to have neighbours spank others' children. They also whipped prisoners in the jails until the 1960s. It was a common sentence for violent crime: a certain number of months or years and a certain number of whipping strokes.

Posted by Palimpsest (# 16772) on :

Growing up in the 50's and 60's there was often an unwillingness to discuss homosexual sex of any sort with children except obliquely.

The private school located near my school has recently had its past history of sexual abuse unearthed in the New Y. ork Times by a former student the Horace Mann schools secret history of sexual abuse

In general, the distaste for all homosexuality shadowed the specific dislike of child sexual abuse. Physical punishment by paddling or hitting was not uncommon. In particular the students who went to the local catholic schools got more physical punishment from nuns.

Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :

As I have mentioned in another thread, when I was teaching in a state high school (with pupils as young as twelve) during the seventies, the music teacher was a notorious paedophile, who was given a warning by the principal when he arrived, and AFAIK did nothing untoward during his time there.

These days, anyone with his reputation wouldn’t be allowed near a school in the first place.

He later committed suicide after being charged with paedophile offences.

Just as a tangent, there has been a huge change in the last decades about the acceptability of touching children at all.

I can remember when it was OK for adults to play with kids and even cuddle them, but these days, as an adult male I would not dare have physical contact with any children except my grand-son and grand-daughter, and would think twice about helping kids in difficulties or even danger if it involved touching them.

A little girl spontaneously threw her arms around me a few years ago, and my instant panic was only assuaged by the fact that her mother was there, and had seen that I had not encouraged her in any way.

This is sad in some respects, but probably necessary, given the way in which such opportunities were exploited in the past.

Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on :

I grew up in NE England in the 40's and 50's. The community was definitely anti-harm so far as children were concerned. The phrase I remember was "badly using". Another key phrase was "spoiling". "Spoiling" children meant over-indulging them, neglecting to correct them. Smacking was considered a normal part of that, but there were norms about going too far in smacking. Adults seemed to know what going too far meant.

You were a bad parent, a bad relative or family friend, either if you badly used or spoiled a child. It was a community which, by and large, regulated itself. Neighbours and family supported and corrected one another. It was a much less mobile community. In the street where I grew up, it was rare for families to move in or move out. We were a stable group, we got to know one another. Not everything, but sufficient for character assessment.

The only adult member of that community who fell into the "old Jonesy" mold was a "simple" man, moving into middle age, still living at home with his parents who were much loved and well-respected. On one occasion he "exposed" himself to two young girls and invited them to touch him. They thought it was funny and odd and as kids who played together we talked about it. It took a while for one of us to say something to a parent, after which it became known. The police were not called in, but a couple of adults (one was my mum) decided that his parents must be told. Which they did, the man's parents were shocked, took charge of the situation and it never happened again.

Sexual awareness seemed to come early. There was a good deal of "playing doctors and nurses" amongst the children, (a metaphor for childish sexual touching). That was always corrected when discovered, with varying degrees of understanding and force. Going through puberty seemed from memory to occur a little later than today, and brought in a new dynamic to birthday party games (such as postman's knock). There was a fair bit of groping, very little "going all the way". Getting pregnant out of marriage was still a very big thing. In fact anything which "let your parents down" (and getting pregnant, or getting a girl pregnant, fell very much into that category) was a big thing.

I grew up knowing nothing about the relatively secret world of abortion. My mum told me later in life that there was a woman who "knew what to do" when "girls got into trouble", but she thought that was wrong. Both the getting into trouble and the back street abortion.

Painting this overall picture is probably necessary to set the attitudes in context. I grew up knowing that kids could be spoiled and badly used and both of these were bad. And I grew up knowing that it was wrong for adults to touch children sexually, whether or not they were "simple". The community had to do something about that. It wasn't right.

How much this was a larger, secret, issue, I really can't say. The only other source of information I grew up with was the notorious "News of the World" which used to feature stories of trials of folks for various forms of sexual abuse. So I knew it "went on". But the stories never involved anyone I knew. Until ...

The biggest local scandal involved a local curate who was charged with abuse of three young boys, one of whom I knew. It made the headlines in the local papers. The curate had recently married the rector's daughter, which added to the talk. He was eventually acquitted. But there were knock on effects. The boy I knew moved out of the area with his family very soon afterwards, as did the curate and his wife. It was a cause celebre, all the more for being regarded as very shocking. Nothing like that had ever happened before. Opinions were sharply divided about whether the court had got it right. My mum was in the "no smoke without fire" camp. I didn't know what to make of it. I was in the church choir at the time, knew the curate, liked him for his unstuffy and mercifully short sermons, never saw or experienced any inappropriate behaviour. The whole event shocked and saddened me. It felt very alien in the world in which I was growing up.

Evensong, I'm not sure if this sort of personal narrative was what you had in mind but it seemed better to me to tell stories and give personal reactions, rather than present any more researched picture.

Posted by Sleepwalker (# 15343) on :

quote:
Originally posted by PeteC:
Physical abuse by persons in authority was epidemic and accepted by parents and children alike. A different world.

If you're talking about punishment by smacking (either using a hand or another implement) then such was not considered abuse. I left high school in 1981, aged 17, and at the time of my leaving there was still corporal punishment in place: cane for the boys, slipper for the girls. This was at a state comprehensive. Nobody saw any problems with that. Only the worst infringements of school discipline resulted in it and everyone who I spoke to simply thought that whoever got it deserved what they got. If we wanted to avoid corporal punishment we didn't disobey the school rules. Simples!

That was an improvement on my Mum's day. When she was at school her maths teacher used to hit her on the hand with a ruler every time she made a mistake. Consequently, my Mum (now in her 70s) turns into a dribbling wreck every time she is put on the spot in maths, even though there are elements of the subject she enjoys and is good at. I would call what she suffered abuse any day of the week. But perhaps that is because I went to school in more enlightened times (although bullying was rife, including the bullying of children by teachers).

[ 18. November 2012, 15:30: Message edited by: Sleepwalker ]

Posted by Sleepwalker (# 15343) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
Another key phrase was "spoiling". "Spoiling" children meant over-indulging them, neglecting to correct them.

Spoiling still exists and some children are still spoiled. I have a neice who is thoroughly spoiled and as such she behaves terribly when she doesn't get her own way. At almost 7 years old that isn't good.

Posted by Solly (# 11919) on :

It was another world, really: teachers threw chalk, clipped ears, whacked without fear and women expected to be whistled at and groped - and just dealt with it. In those days there wasn't so much law and you were free to carry out your daily life as long as you kept within ithe law - now there are so many rules and regulations that your daily life is restricted and along with it, your freedom. I suppose for the vulnerable - children in care for example, life is safer now, but for the rest of us it is not so good - there is less self-reliance and less personal responsibility because the State interferes so much.

Posted by Bullfrog. (# 11014) on :

I'm too young to speak of the pre-1980s, but remember the stranger danger talk. It's funny to me to be told that this went back to the 50s if not before. I think somewhere in my adolescence the talk started shifting and the big pedophilia cases started to emerge.

Playing off of thoughts that bounced off of something I read online via facebook* (saying this only for clarity, hoping not to cross pollinate discussions) I think it might be a case where there's a problem that exists in isolated incidents in particular communities, but it took a mass media and a willingness to engage in a lot of public humiliation to change the story from a crazy uncle or a creepy guy down the street or that awful priest who passed through to a systemic problem. One problem happening in one place is one problem. One problem happening in a hundred places is a hundred problems. It took a mass media and a lot of really awkward talk to realize that this wasn't just one problem in one place, methinks.

That might be one hypothesis toward the "why" question.

*An article concerning, of all things, hipsters. Getting from this to the thread here is a bit of a chain reaction, now that I look at it.

Posted by PeteC (# 10422) on :

Patdys:

quote:
It was another world, really: teachers threw chalk, clipped ears, whacked without fear

Did you go to school with me?

Posted by five (# 14492) on :

The other thing that's only been mildly touched on here is the lack of understanding about the pathology of abuse of children. Namely, that if you got caught and a severe ticking off, you'd be too embarrassed to do it again, and in a misguided attempt of not wanting to ruin anyone's lives (including, often, the victims) the person would be given a reference and sent on to another job with no warning or heads up to the next job, which was often far away. While they were supposed to be chastised enough to not do it again, this just moved them from one fire to another and left them free to abuse again and again and again.

This is one thing that certainly seems to not be accepted to happen any more.

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Solly:
It was another world, really: teachers threw chalk, clipped ears, whacked without fear and women expected to be whistled at and groped - and just dealt with it. In those days there wasn't so much law and you were free to carry out your daily life as long as you kept within ithe law - now there are so many rules and regulations that your daily life is restricted and along with it, your freedom. I suppose for the vulnerable - children in care for example, life is safer now, but for the rest of us it is not so good - there is less self-reliance and less personal responsibility because the State interferes so much.

I know, it's just awful the way the State won't let us whack kids and grope the womenfolk these days...

Posted by five (# 14492) on :

So you're saying that the law helps protect the vulnerable but overall it's a bad thing? Should the vulnerable just have been left there to be squandered and ruined?

I really don't think there's much more law. And in many ways more personal responsibility because the law is holding you to account in a way it didn't before. But the laws aren't particularly new - just their enforcement.

Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :

quote:
Originally posted by PeteC:
Patdys:

quote:
It was another world, really: teachers threw chalk, clipped ears, whacked without fear
Did you go to school with me?

And I claim my toaster.

Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on :

[tangent on sexism and corporal punishment]

I'm with cliffdweller on this. A lack of corporal punishment in the home does not mean that children will grow up spoiled. There's a better understanding of how to correct and how to explain things to children.

The world I grew up in was also sexist and male-female stereotyping was normal. There were very many good things in the immobile "village" culture I grew up in, but I think on both the sexist and the corporal punishment fronts the world has changed for the better.

And we've been part of that change. We learned to "do different". Moving for work meant that we brought up our children with limited family support in a community which, initially, did not know us. Being "on our own" a lot was often hard, but it did mean that we were not overseen or pressurised by a particular cultural view. So we tried to "keep the best and ditch the rest". And made some new mistakes on the way. Grandparents' visits were always welcomed, but we had some "interesting" conversations about the way we'd decided to do things! We weren't always understood, but they were good at recognising in practice that day to day was very much down to us. And they did give us much needed "care breaks".

[/tangent]

Posted by Belle Ringer (# 13379) on :

It was sort of your responsibility to make sure bad things didn't happen to you. Look both ways before crossing the street, don't accept rides from strangers even if he says "Mommy sent me to pick you up."

Police didn't get involved in "domestic disputes," no matter how violent (except for murder, I guess), so it it was someone in your household, there was no outside help.

In my university some professors required sex to get an A (age of majority was 21, we were minors), protest to the dean and get told it was the student's problem to work out, not the dean's territory.

"Boys will be boys, girls just have to deal with it."

In one wage families (help wanted ads were segregated by gender, women's jobs low paying, can't just go get a job and support yourself as a woman, and cleaning and cooking for a household were a long hard day's work before appliances and polyesters etc!), the wife and children were utterly dependent on the wage earner, you don't risk annoying the wage earner because if he leaves you all starve. So, kid, put up with it, we all depend on him.

As to that nice respectable man, or your brother or cousin, it didn't happen, because -- you have to remember adults in the 50s had lived through so much stress for so long, the illusion of calm predictability was the strongest craving. Motto of the 50s - Don't make waves.

Accuse your family member and you are creating chaos again, we can't stand any more chaos! Children tell stories, don't believe them. Don't want to believe them. Can't afford to believe them. And besides, life is hard, sometimes you just have to live with what life hands you.

To people who close to starved for a decade and then saw Hitler gobble the world in an endless war, "a bit of unwanted sex" (how I once heard a man describe rape) may have seemed relatively minor -- wrong, but nowhere near as bad as starvation and war.

And children were not the center of the culture, the "youth revolution" had not happened. The world revolved around adult concerns. Whatever happened to kids, they would outgrow it.

Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Belle Ringer:

And children were not the center of the culture, the "youth revolution" had not happened. The world revolved around adult concerns. Whatever happened to kids, they would outgrow it.

Was that your experience or are you commenting in general? Lord, that's awful. Those attitudes, particularly the last, would certainly foster an abusive environment.

Where I was, the universe certainly didn't revolve around us - that was part of the "don't spoil your kids" thing. But one of the major adult concerns I grew up knowing was that my family, my community, wanted us to have better lives than they had had (as a result of two World Wars with a depression in between). We were invested in.

Along with that also came early insights into the truth that growing up is when you realise "it's not all about you" (as a Shipmate put it a few years ago).

Posted by Chorister (# 473) on :

There were children at my primary school who exhibited very odd behaviour when at play (remember at that time play was very rarely supervised), including talking about what their dad and/or mum did with each other and with them, revealing things they talked about at home and showing pictures that they took. Later I realised that they were probably being abused in some way at home and that this experience was twisting their play, showing scarily highly-sexed attitudes for eight- or ten-year-olds. But even at that age, the rest of us in the class knew instinctively that we shouldn't 'tell', that somehow, by being party to those children's disclosures, we would also be punished. To an eight- or ten-year-old, adults were very definitely an alien species, and what was talked about and demonstrated between children stayed between children.

Posted by Fr Weber (# 13472) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
For those of you that were around (and adults) in the 1940's - 1980's, I'd very much like to hear what your impressions of societal attitudes towards child sexual abuse were back then in the workplace and in the home.

Was there a culture of turning a blind eye? Was there a culture of not mentioning it or doing anything about it even if you knew it was happening in the home or the school or wherever? Was it distasteful but you just got on with normal life?

Have attitudes in the past changed from the attitudes of society today?

If so, why?

They've changed incredibly, in my experience. Through junior high & high school (mid 70s-early 80s), I lived in a small Midwestern town with a population of just under 2000, in a primarily rural county. In our area, there were 3 or 4 men known to be interested in young boys, and though it wasn't much discussed there was a general sense that one stayed away from those men.

One of them was my high school choir director's husband, a president of a local bank who was also an organist at a local church. He would come and assist at rehearsals for concerts & musicals at times, and at one rehearsal he engaged me in what in retrospect was a completely inappropriate conversation (asking whether I masturbated and so on), culminating with asking me if I wanted to assist him in church as a page-turner--"If I promise not to feel you up," he said laughing. I made some excuse as to why I couldn't, and avoided him as best I could thereafter.

Nothing was done about any of these guys for a long time. Recently I became curious as to whether anyone had ever reported their misdeeds, and was somewhat gratified to find that one of them is now listed as a registered sex offender for fiddling with teenage boys.

Looking back at all that, I'm really amazed that everybody knew about the state of things and nobody did anything about it. I can't imagine it being allowed to continue these days. And in such a small town, 4 molesters out of 2000 inhabitants seems like a lot!

Posted by Fr Weber (# 13472) on :

Apologies for the multiple post; apparently some network issue caused this. Host(s), please delete the duplicates.

[Done - DT, Purgatory Host]

[ 19. November 2012, 19:53: Message edited by: Doublethink ]

Posted by ken (# 2460) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Solly:
It was another world, really: teachers threw chalk, clipped ears, whacked without fear...

That's certainly true. A number of the teachers in the secondary school I went to were notorious for throwing things at boys or hitting with rulers and so on. And the cane was used, though rarely and as a last resort. As far as I remember those punishments ended almost entirely when we became co-educational and girls arrived in the school, which would have been in about 1973 The teachers didn't feel they could hit girls, and didn't want to treat girls and boys differently. (For what its worth the whole place cleaned up its act - the boys also became less violent and behaved less crudely - the wexperience of being in a school that changed has helped to give me a strong hatred of single-sex education)

Some schools would hit girls though. The head of the primary school I went to in the 1960s used to use the cane often, on both boys and girls. Even then beating 7-year-old girls with sticks was regarded as odd, though not illegal.

As others said limited corporal punishment in schools, or by parents, wasn't regarded as abuse. We can;t assume that because most people thought that punishment liek that was normal, they would also have thought that life-threatening violence against children or sexual activity with children was normal. They didn't.

Opposition to corporal punishment was building in the 1960s and 1970s. Which has to be evidence that it wasn't universally accepted in those days, even if it had been a generation or two earlier. There were political campaigns against it in the 1960s, and the first LEAs banned it in the late 70s, and it was made illegal in the 1980s - by a Tory-dominated Parliament. Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister.

Attitudes to thing like bringing up children don't change overnight. A majority of MPs were against it in the late 1980s and MPs mostly socially conservatiuve men aged between about 50 and 70. So the practice must have been going out of favour for a long while. In the 1960s there were large majorities in favour of corporal punishment, in the 1970s it was close. So at a wild guess, if the attitudes of MPs were at all representative of people around them, maybe the age cohorts born after about the mid-1930s were mainly against corporal punishment, and those born in the 1910s or earlier mainly for. So if there was a time when attitudes changed, it was perhaps between th the 1940s and 1960s - but the laws were changed later when that age group got to be running things.

But corporal punishment - or general mild violence from teachers - is differrent from what would have been thought of as child abuse in those days. And serious violence against children, or sexual violence, or violence against very young children, or sex with children, was regarded with horror then, and wasn't thought of as at all normal.

As I said before there were some notorious cases in the area I lived in that became national news. When I was 10 in 1967 a 12-year old boy was murdered walking on a path near our school - I didn't know him, he was a year or two above me at school, at the time I would have been just about to go into the 4th year juniors and he woudl have been just starting at secondary scool (also I think the one I went to later). I just googled hois name to remind myself of when it happenbed - I hadn't realised, or had forgotten, that the knife that was used to kill him had been found right outside our school and the murderer or murderers had apparently broken in to the school to wash in the toilets there. A new article from 2006 says that two men were arrested for the murder after 39 years.

A few years later when I would have been about 15 a young girl called Maria Colwell from the next council estate down the hill from that school was killed by her stepfather. - the case was notorious, you can easily find reports of it online (but I'd not recommend reading them, what happened was terrible)

My Mum taught for a while in a school in yet another council estate in East Brighton, the one my Dad had been brought up in. (Though not the school he went to because he went to the Catholic school). While seh was at that scool there were a number of instances of children at that school, or thir younger brothers or sisters, being violently abused in their families, and I think a few of sexual abuse. These would not have been reported in the same way of course because the victims were still alive.

But people in general did not overlook such things. They did nto ignore them, did not treat them as normal or to be expected, they were horrified. Really.

Posted by The Undiscovered Country (# 4811) on :

quote:
Originally posted by ken:

quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
For those of you that were around (and adults) in the 1940's - 1980's, I'd very much like to hear what your impressions of societal attitudes towards child sexual abuse were back then in the workplace and in the home.

Was there a culture of turning a blind eye? Was there a culture of not mentioning it or doing anything about it even if you knew it was happening in the home or the school or wherever? Was it distasteful but you just got on with normal life?

Have attitudes in the past changed from the attitudes of society today?
As far as I remember I never heard or thought about it or knew such a thing existed until I was about 11 years old, in the late 1960s. Over the next few years there were a number of notorious cases in the area I lived in that got into the national news. So my general impression was that it was very rare, and that everybody thought of it as one of the worst crimes there was, in the same general category of seriousness as rape and murder.

I am genuinely surprised, even slightly shocked, at other people here saying that child abuse was generally accepted in the 1970s and 80s. It really wasn't.

I agree. Children in the 1960s and 1970s were brought up with a constant reinforcement of 'don't talk to strangers'. What society generally did have was a better sense of keeping that risk in perspective with an unspoken greater recognition that stranger-related incidents were (and continue to be) very rare indeed.

Posted by Alogon (# 5513) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
For those of you that were around (and adults) in the 1940's - 1980's, I'd very much like to hear what your impressions of societal attitudes towards child sexual abuse were back then in the workplace and in the home.

Orwell's 1984 was not published until 1949; and when I studied it as an adolescent in the mid 1960s, the techniques of Newspeak were still contemplated with universal horror. The deliberate manipulation of language in order to short-circuit the human mind was something done by Communists and despised by free people. It took a few more years for "Orwellian language" to be attempted by our own authorities.

The now-unconscious use of the term "child sexual abuse" has created our first thought-crime. What a success story its promotion has been. Of course attitudes were different before it was invented.

Posted by Bullfrog. (# 11014) on :

One small story. When I was younger, I remember reading a book on parenting on my dad's shelf that was published in the 1950s. Several things struck me. I recall that the author, who grew up in a crowded tenement, disapproved of cribs and isolated bedrooms for little ones. Another thing I remember vividly was how he thought that the disapproval of corporal punishment was excessive, that when he grew up (and this is close to a quote) "If your father didn't beat you when he got home from work, you'd think he didn't love you."

And this was written in the 1950s by someone who I think must've grown up in the early 20th century. [Eek!]

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Alogon:

quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
For those of you that were around (and adults) in the 1940's - 1980's, I'd very much like to hear what your impressions of societal attitudes towards child sexual abuse were back then in the workplace and in the home.
Orwell's 1984 was not published until 1949; and when I studied it as an adolescent in the mid 1960s, the techniques of Newspeak were still contemplated with universal horror. The deliberate manipulation of language in order to short-circuit the human mind was something done by Communists and despised by free people. It took a few more years for "Orwellian language" to be attempted by our own authorities.

The now-unconscious use of the term "child sexual abuse" has created our first thought-crime. What a success story its promotion has been. Of course attitudes were different before it was invented.

I would agree that changes in terminology can signal-- or reflect-- changes in emotive response. That's not always bad. The shift from "alternate lifestyle" or "gay agenda" to "marriage equality" has, for example, correctly reframed what is, at least on the State level, a civil rights issue.

In this case, adopting a more shocking term reflects appropriately IMHO the seriousness of the crime-- signaling a more appropriate response than in earlier eras where calling it "badly using children" or whatever signaled a "shove the problem out of the way" response.

Posted by Alogon (# 5513) on :

quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
In this case, adopting a more shocking term reflects appropriately IMHO the seriousness of the crime-- signaling a more appropriate response than in earlier eras where calling it "badly using children" or whatever signaled a "shove the problem out of the way" response.

The most objective description is sexual experience (of whatever kind) between one over a certain age and one under a certain age-- ages defined by the law in whatever jurisdiction. If it is observed a posteriori (no pun intended) inherently and invariably to be as serious as the coiners of the term want us to find it, then why the need to shut down discussion by declaring it so a priori? That is what it amounts to. In most circumstances we find such a tactic (be it a euphemism or its opposite) suspicious, especially if it's a good career move.

Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on :

quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:

In this case, adopting a more shocking term reflects appropriately IMHO the seriousness of the crime-- signaling a more appropriate response than in earlier eras where calling it "badly using children" or whatever signaled a "shove the problem out of the way" response.

I think the language is more accurate, not more shocking. It is abuse of children, and the abuse is sexual. So far as both punishment, recidivism and rehabilitation are concerned it covers a spectrum of behaviour, with varying levels of harmful effects on its victims.

I'm quite clear that the society in which I grew up both detested any form of sexual abuse of children and under-estimated its damaging effects. In particular, it's clear to me now that pathological sexual abuse, including grooming and manipulating, and inducing secrecy, was not really understood at all. Particularly if it was "all in the family".

[ 19. November 2012, 23:29: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]

Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :

Corporal punishment was debated throughout the 70s. IIRC birching was on the statute book in the Isle of Man and that was a public discussion at the time.

The school I attended for sixth form (late 70s/early 80s) was unusual in that the headmaster* was a member of STOP, a campaign to stop corporal punishment in school. It wasn't the best school to pioneer this - it was an upper school in a town with an army camp and those children were still seeing a lot of corporal punishment.

In certain areas corporal punishment, to the point that would now be seen as physical abuse, continued much later than ken's post would suggest.

* said headmaster was later arrested and charged for certain actions in the men's toilets in a bigger local conurbation.

Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Alogon:

quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
In this case, adopting a more shocking term reflects appropriately IMHO the seriousness of the crime-- signaling a more appropriate response than in earlier eras where calling it "badly using children" or whatever signaled a "shove the problem out of the way" response.
The most objective description is sexual experience (of whatever kind) between one over a certain age and one under a certain age-- ages defined by the law in whatever jurisdiction. If it is observed a posteriori (no pun intended) inherently and invariably to be as serious as the coiners of the term want us to find it, then why the need to shut down discussion by declaring it so a priori? That is what it amounts to. In most circumstances we find such a tactic (be it a euphemism or its opposite) suspicious, especially if it's a good career move.

Given that this thread is still current, I think it might be better if wider discussions over current attitudes, nomenclature etc, continued there. So please consider that approach and feel free to copy over any parts of the discussion from here if you feel that is appropriate.

(I'm pointing this finger at me as well)

Barnabas62
Purgatory Host

Posted by Moo (# 107) on :

I think my generation's experience with stranger-danger warnings may have been unique. I was born around the time that the Lindbergh baby was kidnapped and murdered.

All the warnings we got about strangers were related to kidnapping; no other danger was mentioned. I assume the adults told us this because we already knew about the kidnapping, and so they did not have to introduce the idea of new dangers to us. I'm glad it worked out that way.

There were several people in my neighborhood who were to be avoided because they were verbally abusive, but I'm fairly certain that those people were not sexual predators. I don't know how much sexual abuse there actually was.

Moo

Posted by North East Quine (# 13049) on :

Back in the 70s I knew a playground ditty in two parts, about a dirty old man trying to lure a girl into the woods, ending with "I'll tell the vicar!" "I am the vicar!" I've just googled the bits I can remember and found this which is along the same lines, and apparently dates from the 1950s. Anyone else remember this?

We thought it was funny at the time.

[ 22. November 2012, 19:35: Message edited by: North East Quine ]

Posted by Stercus Tauri (# 16668) on :

I must have had a very sheltered childhood. In fact, I know I did. I still remember reading the word 'paedophilia" for the first time and asking what it meant. "Liking children", I was told. What on earth could be wrong with that?

Fast forward numerous decades to a clergyman in Canada who was deposed not very long ago, after his history of molesting boys was made public. Part of his defence was that standards have changed... He didn't get a lot of sympathy for that, yet I suspected he really meant it. He had persuaded himself that it was harmless .

On the other topic on this thread, the classroom brutality by teachers - physical and psychological abuse - is a memory that refuses to fade. Being slow to answer a question, or worse, not understanding the question, was at least as severe an offence as mischief in the classroom.

Posted by Eigon (# 4917) on :

North East Quine - I remember that rhyme, too - and there was a skipping rhyme which included the lines:
"Ooh, aah, I lost my bra - I lost it in the vicar's car"
That was sung back in the 1960s.

Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on :

[Hot and Hormonal]

I reckon this might be inappropriate, but the additional lines I remember to North East Quine's link are not without significance.

a. I'll scream, I'll scream.

b. How loud can you scream?

a. (Muffled) Ah. Ah

b. To the woods, to the woods!

We used to laugh too. It really doesn't look at all funny any more.

[Hot and Hormonal]

Posted by Doublethink (# 1984) on :

I found John Lloyd's memories of boarding school scarily astounding, in terms of the total lack of recognition of abuse and neglect.

Posted by Gramps49 (# 16378) on :

In a way, one form of sexual abuse for the females was, if they got pregnant they were not allowed to finish school. I remember one very bright girl that sat beside me in my 11th year. We used to joke with each other. Then one day she did not come to class, and it seemed she dropped off the face of the earth. About a month later I heard she was pregnant. I often wonder what happened to her.

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