The public child
The public child
The aim of this chapter is to provide a critical perspective on the public debates surrounding the Kilkenny case, an area that has hitherto been largely overlooked in academic research. A central issue is whether the inquiry team, the media and key stakeholders attributed responsibility for ‘why action to halt the abuse was not taken earlier’ to the individual practitioners involved in the case (doctors, police, social workers) or to the system and structures within which they operated. Comparisons will be made with the UK, where a number of high profile inquiries ascribed responsibility for professional ‘failures’ to individual practitioners, who were subsequently pilloried in the media. The chapter also consider the controversy surrounding the sentencing of the abuser. While the focus of public anger in high profile child abuse scandals is often on social workers and child protection, in the Kilkenny case much of the initial outrage was targeted at the judge and the criminal justice system. Finally, the chapter will explore the ‘emblematic’ features of the case – what appeared to be the wider implications of the Kilkenny case for Irish society at that time?
Keywords: abuse within the family, response of social services to abuse, Kilkenny incest inquiry
Policy Press Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
