Masking and Unmasking the Sexual Abuse of Children: Perceptions of Violence Against Children in “the Badlands” of Ontario,1916-1930

Abstract

This article explores the legal and social understandings of incest in early-twentieth-century Canada, examining the way in which sexual abuse was identified in sensational court cases but ideologically masked in social consciousness. First, the legal treatment of incest is examined through court cases, with special focus on one case that animated a grand jury report on a rural area where incest and violence supposedly flourished. Second, the grand jury’s legal, medical, and social assumptions about incest, reflecting eugenic priorities as well class and ender prejudices, are surveyed. Third, the actual use of the grand jury report in subsequent cases is probed. The report became a generalized explanation for all kinds of familial violence, placing blame for violence on poor, degenerate, and immoral parents but ignoring the structural problems of power and patriarchy.