Social Work with Sex Offenders. Cowburn, Malcolm
and ‘moral panics’, we encourage a critical attitude to media reportage and raise some questions about social reactions to sex crimes. A key social reaction linked to popular knowledge is denial. Denial in relation to sex crimes has many manifestations; we explore personal, societal and professional forms of not recognising sexual violence, its prevalence or its impacts. Denial is both a cognitive and an emotional response to uncomfortable information; in the penultimate section of this chapter, we explore the emotional impacts of working with sex offenders. The final section of this chapter addresses issues of race, ethnicity and sex offending. These issues evoke strong feelings and social prejudices, and present distinctive challenges for social workers. We explore issues of representation, racism and the difficulties of engagement with criminal justice services.
Values and terminologies
‘Value(s)’ is a nebulous term potentially covering areas as diverse as economics, theology, philosophy, business studies, medicine and all of the social sciences, to name but a few. It is a slippery concept to engage with and can leave more confusion and less clarity in its wake. However, Sarah Banks (2006, p 6) provides a gentle introduction: ‘“values” can be regarded as particular types of belief that people hold about what is regarded worthy or valuable’. This section clarifies the terms we use throughout the book and why we use them. Gregory and Holloway (2005) have shown how language socially constructs social work, the social worker and the people that social workers are required to professionally engage with. This means that the language used in legislation, social work texts, social work reports and social work records creates, through description and analysis, the social work role, tasks and methods. It also constructs the social worker and the different groups of people s/he engages with (eg some people are portrayed as being vulnerable, some as alienated and some as criminal). Gregory and Holloway (2005) identify three forms of language through which this occurs: ‘moral’, ‘therapeutic’ and ‘managerial’. Social work is variously described in terms that highlight its moral, therapeutic or managerial purpose. We explore these (and other) perspectives in the next chapter; however, it is important to recognise that the language we use is never value-free. Clarifying terminology is therefore not merely a process of using the ‘right’ language; rather, it is a constructive process that embodies particular value orientations of social work.
Underpinning value base of the book
Social work values are concerned with respect for the individual; these values recognise the equal moral worth of every human being. Social work practice seeks to respect and sustain individual dignity. Closely linked to this is social work’s commitment to social justice; unlike most professions, social work explicitly includes the social context in its statement of values (IFSW and IASSW, 2004). Social justice in the context of sex crimes is a central concern of this book. This has implications for the language we use and the way in which we construct not only social work and the social worker, but also sex crimes, the people that commit them and the people that are harmed by them.
To aspire to social justice requires scrutiny of the knowledge(s) that underpin the formulation of social policy and the development of penal practices. Most sex crimes are never reported and most people who inflict sexual harm on others are unconvicted, yet public concern about ‘sex offenders’ is high. Social and penal policy is shaped around what is known about convicted sex offenders. This knowledge is necessarily partial and limited, yet these limitations are rarely acknowledged.
A commitment to social justice carries a requirement to understand sexual harm through a range of academic disciplines, including sociology, anthropology and psychology. Our understanding of sexual harm is summarised thus:
■ Men and/or boys commit most, but not all, sex crimes. In most societies, and communities, culture and values privilege male power and denigrate women and girls (patriarchy). Such cultures are supportive of sex crimes and minimise both the extent and the harm caused by sex crimes.
■ People who sexually harm others can be male, female or have indeterminate gender. They can be of any ethnicity, social class or faith group. Many offenders may not have a faith. They can have any sexuality. Sexually harmful behaviour can be demonstrated by children and young people even when they are below the age where this is legally a crime. Intellectual and physical ability is no determinant of whether or not someone becomes a sexual offender.
■ Victim-survivors of sexual harm can be male, female or have indeterminate gender. They can be of any ethnicity, social class or faith group. Many victim-survivors may not have a faith. They can be of any age or sexuality. They can be of various learning and physical abilities.
This book adopts a challenging approach in relation to some of the conventional forms of knowledge surrounding sex offending and sex offenders. Throughout the book, we highlight the importance of critically examining the values that underpin both knowledge of, and practice with, sex offenders; nowhere is this more important than in the language we use to discuss sexual harm, the people that perpetrate it and the people who are hurt.
Naming the person committing sexual harm
The use of the phrase ‘sexual offences’ needs qualification, as does the term ‘sex offender’. Offences are acts that are both defined and proscribed by law. Legal definitions of (sex) crimes embody the values of dominant groups in particular societies at specific times. Behaviours defined in law as sexual offences vary significantly across time and culture. However, legally defining sexual offences does not guarantee that a person will feel able to report the sexual harm they have experienced. A study by Percy and Mayhew (1997), using a number of international victim self-report surveys, estimated that there are 15 times more unreported sex offenders than reported ones; in 2011, Rape Crisis South London (2011) suggested that only 11% of women who are victims of serious sexual assault report the crime. Therefore, under-reporting remains a constant problem.
However, once an offence has been reported, the vast majority of reports do not result in anyone being convicted of an offence. Court processes differ across countries, but attrition is an international phenomenon. Approximately 10% of cases reported to the police result in a criminal conviction (for further details, see Figure 2.2, p 37). Thus, to write or speak of ‘sex offenders’, with the implication that these people are defined by a criminal conviction, is problematic insofar as this excludes many people who may have harmed others but not been convicted.
Conversely, some innocent people may be convicted of sexual offences (see Locke, 2013; Falselyaccused.co.uk, 2015). This is a very difficult area because social workers may be required to engage with people on the basis of their conviction and a person who maintains his/her innocence will be unable to engage in any formal risk assessment process because this requires her/him to reflect on their offending behaviour. While issues related to this group of people are not centrally considered in this book, we suggest that social workers should advise ‘offenders’ who maintain their innocence to seek legal representation in order to challenge their conviction.
The aforementioned complexities pose challenges for the sensitive, but economic, use of language in this book. A person who contravenes the law relating to sexual offences is a ‘sex offender’, so named because they have been convicted of the offence in a criminal court. However, many people sexually harm others without their actions being reported and the offender being convicted; in such cases, the harmful person is known as the ‘perpetrator’. Social workers work with both offenders and perpetrators. In some cases, a person accused of a sexual offence may be innocent and yet be convicted; unless the conviction is overturned by a court, this person remains (technically) an ‘offender’. The word ‘offender’ is, however, problematic for (at least) two reasons: it dehumanises the person referred to and it describes her/him solely in terms of their past actions. Yet, completely avoiding the use of the word ‘offender’ in this book is stylistically problematic. We use the term consciously, recognising its shortcomings. Throughout the book, we also use other phrases, as we have done in this introduction, to dilute the impact of the ‘offender’ word.
Naming the person harmed by sex offences
When