An oral history project of women born from 1945 to 1976 who experienced child sexual abuse

The present study describes the oral narratives of eighteen women born between 1945 and 1976, who experienced child sexual abuse (CSA). The purpose of this investigation was to find out if women's private memories of CSA conformed or differed from past public representations such as delinquency? An oral history approach as theorized by the Popular Memory Group, which purports that memories are composed or constructed with public and private sources to create individual memories, was used as the basis of this inquiry. Data analysis consisted of using women's life histories as a collection of narratives within chronological time periods and of analyzing shared emergent themes using feminist and trauma models. Eight of the nine women born between 1945 and 1958 (the first cohort) described incidents of child sexual abuse that began in their preschool years. In comparisons, three of nine women born between 1961 and 1976 (the second cohort) experienced sexual abuse as preschoolers. Not all women were able to specifically identity media images and stereotypes of child sexual abuse, but many were able to identify general trends of how CSA was depicted by the "media" (this term was not defined by many women). For example one trend identified by women was that CSA is still under the carpet. Among those women who did identity specific media sources and images, only a few sources of media were found to represent women's experiences of child sexual abuse with some degree of accuracy and these were autobiographical books, and a select group of movies and fictional books. Women rejected stereotypes of being pathetic and heroic survivors.