Sexual violence against children and young people is a wider problem than one of “grooming gangs”—it is rooted in the way the family operates in class society
The family can be a haven and a hell
The right has used genuine outrage around “grooming gangs” to build its base of support. But if you’re a child, the person most likely to rape you isn’t your local taxi driver or takeaway worker. It is your father.
This abuse probably won’t be reported when it happens, and is unlikely to be noticed by local authorities.
That’s one devastating insight from the Centre of Expertise on Child Sexual Abuse think tank, which published a report into familial sexual abuse in September 2023.
It found that child sexual abuse (CSA) within the family accounted “for almost half of all sexual offences reported to the police in England and Wales”. This is despite the fact that this type of abuse is often not reported to the authorities, making the true scale of CSA hard to quantify.
“One in ten children, 15 percent of girls and 5 percent of boys, experience some form of sexual abuse before the age of 16,” the report estimated.
“It may be especially traumatic because of the betrayal, stigma and secrecy it involves. For those who are abused, it has been linked to poor physical and mental health, lower income, relationship difficulties and re-victimisation across the life course.”
One survey showed 64 percent of respondents who had experienced rape or penetrative sexual abuse from a parent or parent figure didn’t disclose it at the time.
This isn’t the picture painted by the right wingers and racists looking to capitalise on the genuine horror of the high profile child sexual exploitation (CSE) cases. They are spreading lies about the nature of abuse in an attempt to further their racist hatred.
As a result, it’s more important now than ever to understand what CSE looks like, who is perpetrating it and how.
CSE is a specific form of abuse, where children and teenagers are groomed by men who then rape them, often in exchange for money, or items such as cigarettes or food.
Some of the victims are promised the possibility of affection and attention after a programme of manipulation and coercion makes them believe they’re in a consensual relationship. Many victims do not even understand that what they have experienced is CSE until they reach adulthood.
Every case of CSE is shaped by cruelty and violence—where some of the most vulnerable young people in our society are deliberately targeted.
But these young women aren’t just victims of violence at the hands of their attackers. They are routinely belittled, dismissed and sometimes criminalised by authorities that should protect them.
They aren’t believed partly because sexual violence and abuse is generally not taken seriously in society. But, when the victims are children, and especially poor children, it means they are ignored more than usual.
From churches, to youth offender institutions, care homes to boarding schools, child abuse is a recurring feature. Hierarchal cultures within these environments makes it easy to dismiss people who complain of abuse and harassment. And these are environments where dangerous adults are placed in positions of trust, supposedly to care for children, instead take it as an opportunity to abuse.
The recurring themes of children being dismissed and ignored also reflect the way young people are not taken seriously as human beings in their own right.
Children are not always treated as independent human beings—with their own rich lives, experiences and pressures.
They are too often just seen as walking reflections of their parents, or as representatives of their wider community.
This is partly reflected in law. For instance, children have less legal defence against physical violence than adults. In England, it is legal for parents to smack their children if it is considered “reasonable punishment”.
It’s also legal for a childcare worker independently contracted by the parents, such as a nanny or a babysitter, to smack children if mum and dad say it’s okay.
There is a specific context for why the home under capitalism provides such a fertile breeding ground for abuse. The capitalist nuclear family isn’t just a product of the wider system—it plays an important role in reinforcing it.
It’s through the family that children are taught to trust their parents above everyone else, and to obey adults more generally.
There is a cloud of secrecy that envelops and obscures domestic life. There is an idea that “blood is thicker than water” and it’s important to “keep it in the family”.
It is through the family that most of our basic human needs are met—the need to eat and sleep, the need for human interaction and security. We are taught to prioritise familial and romantic relationships above all other types of kinship or connection. And a lot of the time, it is a positive experience and our family members support us in a difficult and hostile world.
Everyone in the working class is left exhausted by the experience of the grind under capitalism. But as a result, people—even those who love each other—can treat each other terribly.
This is partly because the experience of the family doesn’t match up to the ideal we’re told to expect. We are told that it is with our parents, partners and children that we will find the love, fulfilment and connection that human beings need.
And families today are put under increasing pressure due to attacks on health, education and social services.
If all this is true, that family life can be extremely dangerous, why isn’t anyone doing anything? The answer is simple—the nuclear family unit is simply too beneficial to capitalism as a whole.
It is the environment where people are most likely to experience abuse—but it’s also the vehicle through which most care in society is delivered. This is mostly performed by women, who overwhelmingly shoulder the burden of cooking, cleaning and caring.
They do this mostly for free, with almost no state intervention.
By essentially outsourcing the caring of everyone—especially the young and old, sick or disabled people—to individual women, the ruling class can wash its hands of any financial responsibility. The capitalist class as a whole has an interest in maintain familial relationships as they are—even if that degrades human relationships and puts individuals in harm’s way.
They want to protect the family from criticism because it is a hugely efficient mechanism for keeping people generally healthy, educated and socialised.
As such, it plays a vital role in the transmission of ruling class ideology.
Human society under capitalism is not arranged in a way that fosters good relationships. Instead, family life is organised around trying to exploit adults and care for children in the cheapest way.
The ideology that insists that each family is its own isolated unit means parents are forced to accept total responsibility for their children, even when they don’t have the resources to care to a high standard.
Because the private family unit is judged to be above criticism it means that people can do terrible things that often go virtually unnoticed.
Today, the state has a complex but critical role in supporting the institution of the family that goes beyond simply valorising its role. The state intervenes directly through legislation on marriage, divorce, property ownership and so on. But it also does it in a more indirect fashion through how it reinforces the ideology of the family.
So politicians regularly espouse the importance of “family values” and claim to support “hard working families.”
This ideology—that keeps the family together in the face of almost any circumstance—can actively place children in harms’ way.
This provides a fertile breeding ground for CSA to flourish within the family home.
It is within this context that billionaire Elon Musk and Tory leader Kemi Badenoch are mischaracterising abuse as they whip up racism over CSE scandals.
Meanwhile, the situation for children abused at home is getting worse. The Centre of Expertise on CSA argues that, “It’s been estimated that only one in eight victims of child sexual abuse in the family environment comes to the attention of statutory authorities.”
It explains that one factor endangering children is how local authorities have focused on other forms of abuse outside the family, such as CSE.
It is possible, and indeed necessary, to condemn the actions of violent individuals while drawing on a wider analysis about the structural reason why and how people behave the way they do.
And it is impossible to understand the reality of familial abuse without interrogating why it takes the form it does within the capitalist system.
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