The Social Construction of the Child Sex Offender Explored by Narrative

Authors

Helen Gavin, University of West England

Abstract

The notion of "child sex offender" provokes aversion, but it may be that it is a social construction. We suggest that a Dominant narrative, in which child sex offenders are constructed as irredeemable, persists, despite the emergence of assumption challenging Alternative narratives. A story completion method was used to elicit themes of Dominant or Alternative narratives, theory-led thematic analysis was used to identify them. The use and analysis of narrative and free-form stories are well established in social research, but remain a novel concept in the study of offenders. The results support the persistence of the Dominant narrative with two notable exceptions. Conclusions centre on utility of the narrative method to examine offender constructions, and the pervasiveness of Dominant narratives.

Keywords

Dominant and Alternative Narrative, Social Construction, Child Sex Offenders, and Thematic Analysis

Publication Date

9-1-2005

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.

DOI

10.46743/2160-3715/2005.1835

Recommended APA Citation

Gavin, H. (2005). The Social Construction of the Child Sex Offender Explored by Narrative. The Qualitative Report, 10(3), 395-415. https://doi.org/10.46743/2160-3715/2005.1835