NCJ Number
163003
Date Published
1995
Length
18 pages
Annotation
This article examines inscription, the process whereby a socially deviant category, when placed in print by the media, appears to change from an idea to a fact.
Abstract
The Hughes Royal Commission of Inquiry into an alleged sex scandal at a Christian Brothers orphanage recreated an assumption that already existed in society, the link between homosexuality and child sexual abuse. The media then took up this imputed link, representing violence at the orphanage as homosexual acts. Media inquiry into events at the orphanage focused attention on the physical and sexual abuse of male children by adult males in an institutional setting. In the process, child abuse, a term originally developed to describe the abuse of female children in families, became inscribed with new meaning, as abuse outside families. Through the second inscription of homosexuality and pedophilia, the danger was posed so as to focus blame on an already stigmatized group. Danger was marginalized and legitimation was restored. Such inscriptions make invisible the violence against female and male children in the home and miss the point that abuse of power and authority is not about sexual orientation. Figures, notes