Citation

Sidebotham P. Child Abuse Rev. 2013; 22(3): 151-154.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2013, John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1002/car.2285

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Melrose's paper provides a very thought-provoking commentary on the current discourses around sexual exploitation of young people, drawing on questionnaires and interviews with practitioners working with young people in this field. She found that practitioners sometimes 'struggled to define or understand precisely what sexual exploitation was', and that, 'in any one place, there are several forms of sexual exploitation occurring simultaneously and not all of these will involve abuse through prostitution or commercial sexual exploitation' (p. 161). Melrose paints a far more diverse picture of the nature of sexual exploitation, which does not always sit comfortably with those being exploited seeing themselves as victims, but rather that they may, in some cases, be exercising agency and seeing their engagement in such sexual activity as 'just having a good time' (p. 162). This leads Melrose to take a deeper look at some of the cultural assumptions underlying this, including the whole partying culture, the mainstreaming of pornography and what several practitioners described as trading 'sex for popularity' (p. 162).

Language: en