A narrative approach to exploring the life experiences of female and male offenders of child sexual abuse in South Africa

Abstract

Child sexual abuse is a widespread crisis that has lasting detrimental effects on the victims, offenders, and the systems in which they exist. The risk factors associated with child sexual offending, such as poverty and violence, are rife in South African communities and possibly exacerbate the rate of offending and reoffending. It is essential to explore the life stories and identity constructions of offenders of child sexual abuse to contextualise the offence and inform effective treatment and prevention strategies. This study was therefore designed to explore how child sexual offenders in South Africa construct stories to make meaning of their life experiences and events. A qualitative, narrative approach was used to elicit the life stories of 12 offenders who were convicted and sentenced for child sexual abuse in South Africa. Adult male and female offenders were purposively sampled from the Department of Correctional Services to participate in two individual interviews, in which oral and visual narratives were collected. Narrative analysis was applied to the life stories to preserve the uniqueness of individual stories while collating themes across the sample. Child sexual offenders in this study constructed redemptive narratives of personal transformation, continuous morality, and ongoing purpose across the lifespan. Offenders utilised various narrative techniques such as denial, minimisation, externalisation, and justification of their offences to convert their criminal identities into prosocial self-definitions. To circumvent a ruptured identity by the crime, offenders romantically constructed criminality as a catalyst for their personal transformations and overall purpose in life. The emergence of a transformed and moral identity seemingly allowed child sexual offenders to present a positive sense of self to persuade the audience of their realignment with the morals of normative society. Exaggerated tales of transformation, stories of inflated morality, romanticised accounts of offending, and neutralisation strategies are associated with criminal desistance and behavioural reform in offenders who re-story their lives and then enact these prosocial identity constructions. By decentralising their criminal identity, offenders may avoid confronting their deviance, trivialise the impact of the harm caused to others, and therefore maintain criminality. However, offenders in this study extended their accounts of transformation to current and intended prosocial actions and roles instead of criminality and deviance. The process of identity (re)construction and its possible association with behavioural reform is relevant for researchers, mental health practitioners, correctional officials, and communities that feature in the lives of child sexual offenders.