Accounts of Innocence: Sexual Abuse, Trauma, and the Self (review)

These days, it seems nearly everyone is a victim of something. In Accounts of Innocence, Joseph Davis explores the cultural power of accounts of victimization. Davis begins with a synopsis of the media coverage of the scandal leading to the resignation of Bernard Cardinal Law, Archbishop of Boston, in 2002. The preceding year had revealed that Law had known about John Geoghan's long history of sexual abuse involving more than 100 minors, but had continued to allow Geoghan to minister without oversight. As other cases came to light, concerns about the Boston Archdiocese in particular and the Catholic Church in general sparked activism by and on behalf of the victims of childhood sexual abuse. What struck the public was the numbers of victims, not that they were speaking out in the first place. Davis' book sheds light on how it came to be that children who experienced sexual encounters with adults are considered victims, and why those children, after becoming adults, can still claim that status. To be clear: Davis does not dismiss the exploitation of children by adults. His project is to understand how a particular model of victimizer, victim and trauma has become paramount in conceptualizing a wide range of experiences.

Davis examines how the trauma rationale emerged, came to prominence and disbursed to individuals through therapy. Prior to the 1970s, the term "sexual abuse" was seldom used. In the context of sexual offenses, the bulk of the attention went to rape; adult/child sexual encounters within the family were thought not to have harmful, long-term psychological effects. Moreover, children who experienced incest were considered willing participants, if not initiators. Survivors' stories did not exist because the designation of "survivor" had not yet become a social possibility. This all changed following a 1971 anti-rape conference. A child protection activist named Florence Rush took the podium and called child molestation an attack on innocence, openly describing her own experiences. She argued that the victim-blaming in existing research represented a fundamental flaw. She urged women and girls to speak out against their offenders. Rush changed the kinds of stories that could be told in public and, in so doing, laid the foundation for collective accounts that emanated from victims and emphasized innocence.

Rush's speech informed a sea change. Clinical and professional opinion took on terms that avoided blaming the victim. The new discourse maintained that sex between adults and children was inherently and inevitably damaging. Without treatment, the victim would experience a host of psychological troubles now seen through the lens of trauma and dissociation. Not only was the victim not to blame for the sexual abuse, but she or he was also not to blame for the variety of "coping" behaviors – the anxiety, depression, nightmares and detachment – that were the abuse's effects. Within the trauma rationale, those who experienced childhood sexual abuse became "survivors."

Once the meaning of sexual abuse was reconceptualized, the new meanings were applied to clients through individual therapy, self-help books and self-help groups. Davis devotes the bulk of his analysis to therapy, where clients learn to construct a victim account of their experience and consequently acquire a new identity. Therapists urge clients to reject their own interpretations of the past and retrofit everything – memories and current complaints – into an account of abuse. The therapist points out the omnipresent effects of the abuse and leads the client from "victim" to "survivor" to a new identity of "thriver."

Davis then takes readers into the "memory wars:" the controversy sparked when "survivors" retrospectively accused parents, teachers and others of abuse. The controversy was rarely over sexual abuse per se; it was over accusations that therapists led clients to create memories of abuse where none existed. In what is called "false memory syndrome," therapists pressured clients to "recover" memories of abuse, even planting memories when the client had none. Several hundred clients subsequently retracted their stories of abuse. The emergence of...