Understanding the domain of child sexual assault, policies and practice
Rayleigh Joy
University of Queensland
Contact Email:   r.joysocial.uq.edu.au

The focus point for this paper is to examine the particular sets of truth games articulated and enacted through two significant policy documents produced within the Queensland context in relation to child sexual abuse and the governance of it. The first is commonly known as the Sturgess Report of 1985, and the second is the Evidence of Children of 2000. Both documents were produced in response to growing concerns about the nature and treatment of children who had or were experiencing sexual contact

The paper will demonstrate how sexuality, especially that of children, is central to the overall rationale of both the Sturgess Report and Evidence of Children. Using the Foucaldian framework of governmentality, my work demonstrates how oppositions (for example sexual/asexual, theory/practice, personal/political) and hierarchies of truth function within the two policy documents These function both as explanatory devices and sets of practices to establish the ‘truth’ about sex, and also offer a remedy for what is then considered ‘sick sex’ (Sturgess.1985).

Although this paper is theoretical, it is also highly pragmatic and empirical. It demonstrates how, in the policy process, particular discourses compete for the status of truth and how truth is actually established and maintained. I also map out how, in the process of concretizing particular truths, sets of practices become institutionalized and often attract alongside them, a foray of disciplinary experts and mechanisms that invite and reward the maintenance of particular subject positions.

In summary then, this paper traces the dominant discourses operating within two governmental policy documents, maps the rules of production, identifies the rules that delimit the sayable, locates the practices of erasure and identifies opportunities and acts of resistance.

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