Cover image for Children as 'risk' : sexual exploitation and abuse by children and young people
Title:
Children as 'risk' : sexual exploitation and abuse by children and young people
Author:
McAlinden, Anne-Marie, author.
ISBN:
9781107144842
Physical Description:
viii, 356 pages ; 24 cm.
Series:
Cambridge studies in law and society.
Contents:
Conceptualising children as 'risk': an introduction -- Child sexual exploitation and abuse: a contemporary history of concerns -- The social and political construction of sexual offending concerning children -- The emergence of harmful sexual behaviour -- Peer-to-peer grooming: a reappraisal -- The nature and scope of peer-to-peer exploitation and abuse: towards a typology of 'harm' -- Legal and societal responses to 'risk' -- Conclusion: reimagining 'risk'.
Abstract:
This book critically examines socio-political constructions of risk related to sexual offending behaviour by and among children and young people and charts the rise of harmful sexual or exploitative behaviour among peers, drawing on a range of theoretical frameworks and primary research. Discussion of these behaviours is exhibited against a backdrop of the premature cultural sexualisation of contemporary childhood, which challenges traditional conceptions of childhood, victimhood and gendered sexual identities more broadly. It examines the complexities of peer-based sexual behaviours in a range of settings, including within organisational contexts such as schools and care homes, within families and peer-based relationships, as well as online contexts including sexting and cyberbullying. It draws out the myriad legal, practical and policy challenges of negotiating the boundaries between normal/experimental, risky/problematic and harmful sexual behaviour, and in particular the demarcation between coercion and consent, both for professionals as well as children and young people themselves.