#michael salter

[finalgirlfall]

In contrast to the individualising and clinical accounts of sex offences that dominate the modern scientific literature on sexual offences, Sade offers a thoroughly sociological perspective. He contextualised the acts of organised abuse that he described within a 'black market' of exploitation, abuse and pain that is produced by, and inextricably bound up within, the gendered structures of the free market, in which the economic and social privileging of men finds expression through the debasement and enslavement of women and children. The excesses of free market forces may be kept in check in the 'public' sphere by the force of law and custom, but Sade reveals that, behind the veil of 'privacy' lies a sexual marketplace red in tooth and claw. He suggests that beneath the formal symbolic order of liberal theory and its high-minded ideals are the profoundly unequal relations of power they legitimate, and the sadistic drives and urges they produce. These tendencies are evident not only in organised abuse but in a range of sexual atrocities committed mostly by men against women and children in a hapless search for the transcendental masculine identity celebrated by liberalism.

Michael Salter, "The historical context: Liberalism, libertinism and ideologies of masculine sexuality," in Organised Sexual Abuse, EPUB ed. (New York, NY: Routledge, 2012).

[thewitchofwonders]

— Michael Salter, Organised Sexual Abuse

[litteraeignotae]

[mention of csa, ritualized csa]

Organized Sexual Abuse, Michael Salter

[finalgirlfall]

Žižek [in The Metastases of Enjoyment] describes how, during the Balkan conflict, Western journalists competed with one another to provide images of 'lacerated child bodies, raped women' as 'fodder for hungry Western eyes'. Implicitly, these images delineated the savage Balkan 'other' from the normal Western citizen. The unbearable fact, he suggests, is that 'there is no difference', and that the efforts of citizens of Sarajevo to 'maintain the appearance of normal life' in the midst of war have many parallels with our own efforts to 'live in the fiction of peace'.

Michael Salter, “The historical context: Liberalism, libertinism and ideologies of masculine sexuality,” in Organised Sexual Abuse, EPUB ed. (New York, NY: Routledge, 2012).

[finalgirlfall]

A number of participants reported witnessing and/or being subject to their father's domestic violence in the home. In their accounts, the police refused to intervene when men battered their wives, and their battered mothers were provided with no alternatives by family, friends or the authorities. Most participants grew up prior to the advent of domestic violence services and no-fault divorce in the 1970s and hence their mothers had few options available to them if they sought to bring their abuse, or the abuse of their children, to an end. Even where abuse was absent in their house, participants indicated that, if they wanted, fathers could, and did, impose silence when faced with distress, ignore and invalidate unwanted opinions, withhold healthcare if they did not view an injury as deserving of attention, and control the flow of economic resources in such a way as to curtail the freedoms of their wives and children.

Michael Salter, "The experiences of survivors: Extraordinary crimes in everyday life,” in Organised Sexual Abuse, EPUB ed. (New York, NY: Routledge, 2012).

[finalgirlfall]

The conundrum of 'I don't want to go, but I have to go' articulated by Jo was evident in many participants' accounts of organised abuse. Gaspar and Bibby (1996: 50) observe that it is often difficult for investigators of organised abuse to understand 'why children keep going back to be abused, sometimes in the most degrading manner, and why, when away from the offender, they do not disclose'.

Michael Salter, "The experiences of survivors: Extraordinary crimes in everyday life," in Organised Sexual Abuse, EPUB ed. (New York, NY: Routledge, 2012).

[finalgirlfall]

In her early 20s, Sarah was no longer willing to obey the demands of the abusive group, and she stopped acquiescing to their instructions to meet them for abuse. They responded with a barrage of emails and phone calls threatening to harm her and the people she cared about if she did not comply. Sarah tried to manage these threats by herself but the abusive group began to intrude further and further into the boundaries that Sarah had established around her 'day-to-day life'.

Michael Salter, "Down the rabbit hole: My story," in Organised Sexual Abuse, EPUB ed. (New York, NY: Routledge, 2012).

[finalgirlfall]

[Jean M. Goodwin] suggests that contemporary reports of ritualistic abuse are neither unprecedented nor inexplainable, as sceptics suggest, nor are they evidence of underground 'cults' or a trans-historical 'Satanic' tradition. Instead, it seems that cases of ritualistic abuse may be evidence of the persistence of the libertine notion of the male sexual prerogative which is derived from the historical patterning of gender relations and the associated practices of group sexual violence and ritualistic abuse.

Michael Salter, "The historical context: Liberalism, libertinism and ideologies of masculine sexuality," in Organised Sexual Abuse, EPUB ed. (New York, NY: Routledge, 2012).