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sessment is often based on whether also other authorities are aware of occurred violence.
In the assessment process, social workers’ own observations about parents and
children are used very often. They observe whether the parent-child interaction is warm
and close or filled with tension. In addition to observations about children, children’s
stories about violence and fears can be detected from the conclusions made by social
workers. These factors as well as parents’ behaviour during meetings with social workers
have an impact on how the use of violence is assessed. Threats targeted at social
workers and the language used with them during meetings are taken seriously, and correspondingly,
a civil, business-like demeanor as well as calmness in relation to social
workers are also mentioned in the reports.
How much more differently was then mothers’ alleged use of violence dealt with
than that of fathers in the reports in the data? When I examined the invisibility of violence
in the reports, I concluded that mothers’ potential use of violence and its assessment
was mentioned more rarely than fathers’ potential use of violence. Still, there are
several factors that are in common to both mothers’ and fathers’ alleged use of violence
in the reports. Invisibility of allegations of use violence, use of euphemisms and the fact
that the conclusions made by social workers are open to interpretation were linked to it.
Although the blurring of the responsibility of the perpetrator of used violence could be
most clearly seen in stories about fathers, also violence used by mothers could be written
about in a corresponding manner. In a few cases, mothers’ violent behaviour was
described to have had an impact on the suggestion made by social workers.
Sexual abuse in child custody disputes
Chapter 9 deals with child sexual abuse. My data offers only examples of the theme of
child sexual abuse, because allegations of sexual abuse have not been systematically
collected in the data. There are altogether 25 cases containing descriptions of possible
child sexual abuse. Of these 25 cases, 17 also contain allegations of physical intimate
partner violence or violence against children. Most of the suspicions of sexual abuse are
directed at fathers, and a majority of the victims of alleged sexual abuse are girls.
My main research result is that the road from presenting suspicions of sexual abuse
to the fact that they would actually have an effect on the decision over custody disputes
is long and winding. Institutional measures and interpretations are not preordained, and
in different cases the flow of the process can be very different. For example, the exten-
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