Thoughts on Child Sexual Abuse and Perpetration

For my CSL project, I have been engaging with the Alberta Council of Women's Shelters document “Identifying Potential for Collaboration: Comparing and Contrasting the Service Delivery Needs of Clients of Women's Shelters with Clients of Sexual Assault Centres in Alberta.” In the document, five recommendations are made for areas of collaboration between women's shelters and sexual assault centres. One of the recommendations speaks to the link between male perpetrators and histories of child sexual abuse, hypothesizing that experiences of child sexual abuse and subsequent issues around “rage, shame, vulnerability, or the need for power and control” (17) are connected to perpetration by males. The document references a very limited number of sources that speak to this subject, and, in my own search for more recent sources, I was unable to find anything terribly relevant. This seems to be an area where not much research has been done.

This idea really problematized the way that I think about male perpetrators. I see two main problems. First, the way we socialize males to be strong, tough, etc. The distinction between men as perpetrators and women as victims/survivors of sexual assault makes it difficult to recognize males as the objects of abuse. Second, it seems that there is a lack of resources for males in this domain. I think there has been an increase in the number of resources for males, but this seems more recent. So what happens when a boy is sexually abused? As he grows up, he learns what it means to be 'masculine', and those childhood experiences don't fit into that ideal. He's silent about those experiences, and that keeps him from accessing the resources that could provide support as he heals from his trauma. Now he's an adult, and those experiences are still a part of him. Not that I want to excuse male perpetration or generalize that all perpetration is rooted in experiences of child sexual abuse, but, following this trajectory, is it any surprise that he becomes a perpetrator? This is just one hypothetical, but I wonder how much truth there is in it.

I don't know if the connection between child sexual abuse and adult male perpetration is a tangible one and, if it is, I don't know what identifying that link means, but I do think it's interesting! Thoughts?