CSAReps Podcast: Understanding Child Sexual Abuse through Historical Research (and connections with CSA fiction) with Dr. Ruth Beecher

The CSAReps podcast is back with our sixth episode.

Our guest speaker for today’s episode is Dr. Ruth Beecher. Ruth is a historian and Senior Research Fellow at Birkbeck, University of London. One of her works is an open access book, Community Health Practitioners and Child Sexual Abuse in the Family, 1970s – 2010s that was published last year. Currently, Ruth is the Principal Investigator of Recovery Histories – a Wellcome Trust-funded project that focuses on the histories of abuse, trauma, and recovery from survivors’ and support professionals’ perspectives in Ireland and the UK.

In this episode, we discussed many things, such as:

– Why is it important to look into the history of child sexual abuse (CSA) and how this can increase our understanding of the issue.

– Ruth’s open-access book, Community Health Practitioners and Child Sexual Abuse in the Family, 1970s to 2010, which examines the responses (or non-responses) of general practitioners (GPs), health visitors, and mental health workers in England and Wales to CSA.

– Her on-going, ground-breaking Recoveries Histories project which analyses archival records, records oral histories of CSA survivors and support professionals and includes an ethnographic study of contemporary experiences of ways of living in the aftermath of CSA in Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales. This is the first social, cultural and medical history into recovery from child sexual abuse in the second half of twentieth century Britain and Ireland.

– Stereotypes in characters who experienced CSA in fictional works.

– Ruth’s love for creative writing and how it might help academics process harms associated with their research and develop self-care skills through creative writing techniques

Watch the podcast episode and check out the overview on our website.

Interviewed and written by Olivia Susilo | Research Assistant