The Spinster and Her Enemies - Feminish

‘THE SORT OF THING THAT MIGHT HAPPEN TO ANY MAN’
Departmental Committee recommended that schoolteachers
should be told of offences so that ‘contamination’ of other
children could be prevented. 37 The idea lying behind such
statements is, presumably, that the ‘contaminated’ children
would go out and seduce men. It is another form of victimblaming
which removes responsibility from adult men.
The reformers were anxious to end the punitive forms of
care traditionally given to the child victims. The practice at the
time was to remove the assaulted child to a detention home
pending trial and possibly for some years thereafter, This form
of treatment effectively punished the child. It was strongly
criticised by the NSPCC. In reply to the idea that victims should
be put in a home, a 1926 NSPCC paper states, ‘It appears to me
that as the child assaulted is the victim not the offender the
course suggested indicates an altogether wrong view.’ 38 Mrs
Nott-Bower at the 1914 conference showed grave doubts about
sending the victims to industrial schools. She asked whether
there was no other way to deal with them, and suggested state
guardianship and adoption. Her main concern was that the
child should not have to mix with thieves just because it had
been the victim of ‘outrage’.
The NSPCC suggested that the girl should remain at home
with her mother; ‘a girl’s best friend is her mother and…she
should remain with her at home.’ 39 The Departmental
Committee was of the same opinion. The report stated that
some witnesses had recommended that all victims go to
institutions for care and training, to avoid neighbourhood gossip,
strain on the child and the perpetuation of ‘bad habits’ from the
offence. 40 The report was categorically of the opinion that
victims should not be removed from their parents save in
exceptional circumstances. Removal to a home, it said, was an
extra hardship for the victim, especially in cases which the
writers had heard of, where children with good homes were
removed for years because their parents were persuaded that
such action was necessary. If removal was necessary in a
particular situation, the report recommended boarding-out
rather than a home. The report was remarkable for its lack of
punitive attitudes and criticised some rescue homes which it
described as being like ‘old-fashioned penitentiaries’ and quite
unsuitable to receive victims of abuse.
A particularly sympathetic, child-centred approach is
described in a Shield article on ‘Protective Work among
Children’. Here Evelynne Viner writes of what some children’s
66