children's narratives of sexual abuse: what characterizes them and how do they contribute to...

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Children’s narratives of sexual abuseWhat characterizes them and how do theycontribute to meaning-making?

Svein MossigeNorwegian Social Research (NOVA)

Tine K. Jensen,Norwegian Centre for Violence and Traumatic Stress Studies

Wenke GulbrandsenNydalen Child Guidance Centre

Sissel Reichelt, and Odd Arne TjerslandUniversity of Oslo, Department of Psychology

Personal narratives from ten children who all claimed to have been sexuallyabused were analyzed and compared to narratives of stressful events thechildren produced in therapy sessions. The narratives were compared to eachother along the following dimensions: level of elaboration, narrativestructure, contextual embeddedness, and causal coherence. Each child’sattempt to find purpose and resolution was also analyzed. The stressful eventnarratives were generally more elaborate, more structured, and morecontextually embedded and coherent than the sexual abuse narratives. Veryfew of the sexual abuse narratives contained resolutions or causalconnections that are considered important for contributing to meaning-making. It is suggested that in order to understand the difficulties childrenface, a narrative perspective needs to include the emotional significance ofthe events to be narrated, and a trauma perspective must include the culturalimpact of the event. A theory that intends to understand children’s narrationdifficulties should encompass both these perspectives. (Narratives, Childsexual abuse, Traumas)

Narrative Inquiry : (), ‒.

‒ ⁄ - ‒ © John Benjamins Publishing Company

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Svein Mossige et al.

Introduction

Understanding children’s difficulties with narrating their sexual abuse experi-ences is important to multiple disciplines. The current understanding of chil-dren’s reporting of sexual abuse has mostly drawn on research related to chil-dren’s event memory and suggestibility. This research has been important indetermining that even quite young children can remember both routine, novel,and traumatic events (Fivush, 1998), and also that under certain conditionsthey may misreport events (Ceci & Bruck, 1993). This strain of research focuseson what children can remember and report. Recently there has been an in-creased interest among scholars to understand more about the situations wherechildren do remember being sexually abused but choose not to talk or elaborateon the event despite compelling evidence that such abuse has occurred (see,for instance, Pipe, Lamb, Orbach, & Cederborg, in press). This line of researchconcurs with much of the clinical literature describing children’s reluctance totalk of sexual abuse, particularly if the offender is a family member. This clini-cal experience stands in contrast to the expectations often put on children, forinstance, in forensic situations in which they are expected to give a clear andconsistent account of their abuse experiences. Failure to do so makes the futureprotection of these children often difficult. The need to understand more aboutchildren’s difficulty with narrating abuse is therefore pertinent.

This paper contributes to the field by investigating the narratives from 10children given in a therapeutic context. All these children had disclosed sex-ual abuse and were referred to therapy. A central aim of therapeutic workwith children is often to help children narrate their experiences and particu-larly, events that are difficult to share with others. This was also the aim of astudy conducted at the University of Oslo, Norway. Through this study we be-came interested in understanding more about the difficulties children seemedto have with narrating their experiences and how they created meaning fortheir experiences.

From a psychological and developmental viewpoint, it is considered im-portant that children are able to narrate traumatic experiences. Through nar-rating, children learn about themselves and construct their autobiographic sto-ries (Fivush, 1997; Nelson, 2003). When children tell stories, they learn to re-

Requests for further information should be directed to Svein Mossige, Norwegian SocialResearch, P.O. 3223, 0208 Elisenberg, Oslo, Norway. E-mail: [email protected]

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Children’s narratives of sexual abuse

member their specific past and to imagine their specific future. They gain asense of continuity and learn to order action sequences to make a whole un-derstanding that can be shared with others. Narratives contribute to meaningmaking (Nelson, 2000), and are considered important for their construction ofidentity (Miller, 1994).

Even young children from the age of six seem to be competent storytellers.When narrating about everyday events, children are concerned about tellingthe listener the meaning of their experiences and are able to do so (Peterson &McCabe, 1983). They make use of psychological causality to explain why some-thing happened (McCabe & Peterson, 1985), and their story structure is mostcommonly in accordance with a classic pattern where the story is organizedaround a central point, followed by an evaluation and a resolution (Peterson& McCabe, 1983). The representation of events in a narrative often includesinformation on who, when, and where the events occurred, what the resultwas, and on how the person and/or others who were there reacted (Trabasso &Stein, 1997).

According to Jerome Bruner, it is particularly when deviations from the ex-pected occur that we create stories (Bruner, 1990). When children narrate theytherefore must have a sense of what is normal and what is exceptional. Studieshave shown that even small children are able to make such appraisals aboutwhat to expect about the nature, content, and unfolding of an event (Stein &Liwag, 1997). This seems to be applicable to their knowledge and understand-ing of the interactive routines and interactions that take place between parentsand children (Stein & Liwag, 1997). They activate their knowledge about whatshould have occurred in comparison to what did occur. One function of nar-ratives is to highlight the unexpected and to make the experiences understand-able in the light of culturally recognizable explanations or interpretations (Wal-ton & Brewer, 2002). When children talk about experiences of novelty theirtalk is generally narrative in form. The canonical ways of thinking within a cul-ture are made available for the children through stories (Bruner, 1990), andto construct stories is therefore an attempt to understand and reflect upon theunexpected (Ricoeur, 1981).

This is neither an individual nor a pure social construction but rather a col-laborate one. Narrativization is an act that takes place and develops in dialogues(Gergen & Gergen, 1988). The unfolding of a narrative may be driven both bythe intention of the teller to create meaning out of something and also by awish in the listener to understand what is being told. In this sense a narrative isan attempt both from the teller and the listener to co-create meaning.

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When children are involved in events that violate cultural norms and thatare emotionally difficult, they may find themselves in an ambivalent positionwhen it comes to talking about their experiences. On the one hand, the breachin the expected may promote narration. On the other hand, the event maybe difficult to understand and narrating it may be emotionally troublesome,particularly when the accused offender is a person to whom the children andmothers have emotional ties.

In this study we explore how children try to make meaning of experiencessuch as sexual abuse. What characterizes children’s narratives of sexual abuse?What characterizes children’s narratives of other stressful events? How can pos-sible differences in narration contribute to our understanding of children’smeaning-making?

The study

In this study, narratives from 10 children referred to therapy because of claimsof child sexual abuse from a close person to the family were analyzed. Six ofthe children had disclosed sexual abuse to their mother and one to an unclebefore therapy. Three disclosed to their mothers while in therapy. In four of thefamilies the offender had admitted to sexual abuse. The children, eight girls andtwo boys, were between 7 and 16 years old. All the children came from middleclass families and were part of a project conducted at the University in Oslo,Norway.1 A total of 32 children from 23 families were involved in the project.Since the purpose of this paper is to understand children’s narratives, only thechildren who narrated or made efforts to narrate their abuse experiences intherapy were included in this analysis.

The data consisted of therapeutic sessions, interviews with the children atthe end of therapy, and one-year follow-up interviews. The number of sessionsthe children attended varied according to their therapeutic needs. The total

. The FOBIK-project: Suspicion of sexual abuse in families: Reactions and interventions.Treatment and research team: Wenke Guldbrandsen, Tine K. Jensen, Svein Mossige, SisselReichelt, Odd Arne Tjersland (project leader). The study was funded by The NorwegianResearch Council, the Ministry of Children and Family Affairs, the Department of Psychol-ogy at the University of Oslo, and Norwegian Social Research. The National Committee ofEthical Medical Research approved the Study.

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number of sessions analyzed for the whole group was 95, with a variation from3 to 26 (mean= 9.5 sessions).

All the therapeutic sessions and the interviews were conducted by trainedtherapists who met the children from a “not knowing” position (Anderson &Goolishian, 1988). By appearing as an involved listener, by supporting the chil-dren in expressing themselves, and by confirming the children’s utterances, thetherapists offered a scaffold in an effort to make it safer for the child to moveinto areas of difficult experiences. Both positions, to invite the child openlyinto a dialogue and to offer the child this kind of scaffolding, were regarded asimportant therapeutic efforts to involve the child in developing narratives.2

The children were invited to elaborate on their own experiences and wereinitially asked open-ended questions such as: “Tell me what happened, tell meabout that incident?”, “What did he do?”, and “How did that make you feel?”These open-ended questions most often did not lead to any narratives aboutthe abuse experience and further probing was needed. The data analyzed inthis study were thus not the children’s passive recapitulating of events that hap-pened, but their response to an invitation from the therapist to speak about andco-create meaning for the events.

Procedure

The therapeutic sessions and interviews were transcribed. Narratives were se-lected through the following procedure. First, the entire transcripts were readand reread. Extraction took place of all the children’s narratives that fulfilledthe minimal requirements for what should be regarded as a narrative accord-ing to Kintsch’s definition (1977). The narratives selected thus had to containa sequence of episodes that consisted of an exposition, a complication, and aresolution.

Second, from the sample of narratives, narratives that dealt with the fol-lowing topics were sorted out: 1) narratives about the sexual abuse event (sex-ual abuse narratives) and 2) narratives about other stressful events (stressfulevents narrative). This procedure revealed that four of the children had nar-rated the actual abuse experience to the extent that they fulfilled the definitionof a narrative. For the other six children, the narratives were about circum-

. For a more detailed description of the study and therapy process see Tjersland, Mossige,Gulbrandsen, Jensen, & Reichelt, (in press).

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stances surrounding sexual abuse, such as what happened when they disclosedthe abuse or how they felt towards the offender (surrounding abuse narratives).

The third step involved singling out the most elaborate abuse or abuse re-lated narrative for each child and the most elaborate narrative of another stress-ful event in the children’s lives. For the children who were able to narrate aboutthe sexual abuse event, this narrative was used even though they may have hadmore elaborate narratives about surrounding events. For the children who werenot able to narrate the sexual abuse, the most elaborate narrative about the cir-cumstances surrounding the sexual abuse was singled out. The criteria used fordefining what narratives were the most elaborate within each category was thefollowing six-part classification system ranging from least to most elaboratenarrative (Stein & Albro, 1996; Trabasso & Stein, 1997):

1) Descriptive Sequences – Stories that contained descriptions of states andobjects with no temporal order.

2) Action Sequences – Stories that contained descriptions of actions and end-states with a temporal but no causal order.

3) Reactive Sequences – Story sequences where the events causally impact oncharacter and cause reactions and emotional responses but goals and goal-directed actions do not occur.

4) Incomplete Episode – Stories in which the events are causally structuredinto episodes (settings, initiating events, internal responses, attempts, con-sequences, reactions) but one or more of these categories are omitted.

5) Complete Episode – Stories that are the same as in (4) but include all basicepisodic categories.

6) Embedded Episodes – Stories that are the same as in (5) but the episodesare now causally connected by goal plans or outcome failures (Trabasso &Stein, 1997).

Using this classification system, the two most complex narratives for each childwere singled out, one pertaining to sexual abuse – either a sexual abuse nar-rative or a surrounding abuse narrative – and one involving another stress-ful event narrative. The result of this classification was 20 stories, two foreach child.

Analysis

The aim of the analysis was to describe and analyze the emergent characteris-tics of the narrative activity, that is, the narrative structure, the narrative con-

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tent, and the narrative performance (Bamberg & Reilly, 1996). The analysisconsisted of two processes. First, the two types of narratives were compared toeach other using the following narrative properties: 1) level of elaboration, 2)narrative structure, 3) contextual embeddedness, and 4) coherence (Peterson& Roberts, 2003).

Level of elaboration: Here Steins’ classification of level of elaboration wasused to assess elaborateness (Stein & Albro, 1996; Trabasso & Stein, 1997).

Narrative structure: The analysis of structure was based on a 1 to 4 levelrating of overall structure and organization. More highly structured narrativesare assumed to reflect more organized and more articulate representations ofone’s own experiences (Buckner & Fivush, 1998; Peterson, 1994; Peterson &McCabe, 1983). In Level 4 the narrative builds to a high point, evaluativelydwells on it, and then resolves it. A Level 3 narrative builds to a high point,then ends; there is no “wrap up” or resolution. At Level 2, the narrative de-scribes successive events that are sequentially and logically ordered. In Level 1,the narrative is too confused, disoriented, or contradictory for the listener tounderstand.

Contextual embeddedness: This measures whether the narrative orients thelistener to what, who, where, and when the events took place (Buckner &Fivush, 1998). It notes how much information the narratives contained aboutdetails related to a) persons, b) location, c) time, and d) activity. To place a nar-rative about own abusive experiences in such a spatial-temporal context maybe demanding for the child because it implies that the child has to go into somedetail about what happened.

Causal coherence: Causal coherence is considered the most important typeof coherence (Habermas & Paha, 2001). Causal coherence answers the ques-tion of why something happened and includes both physical causality and hu-man motivation. Causal coherence in a narrative is the result of efforts to makeconnections between events. Such coherence plays a major role in the mentalpresentations of narratives (Fletcher, Briggs, & Linzie, 1997). Sexual abusive ex-periences may be difficult for the children to understand, and narrating causalrelations between events may be an important part in these efforts. The narra-tives were analyzed to identify sequences that sought to explain why somethinghappened.

In the second part of the analysis we wished to understand more of thechildren’s efforts to make sense of sexual abuse events. Each individual child’sattempt to find purpose and resolution to the sexual abuse was traced. As anextension of the analysis of causal coherence, of why something happened, the

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sessions and interviews were analyzed with the following question in mind:Is there a particular topic or question the child is most concerned about andwants to understand?

The analysis was initially done by the first two authors independently.Where there was disagreement, this was resolved by cross checking the tran-scripts and videotapes and then consensus was reached. The research team thenreviewed the findings in order to assure that the analysis and interpretationswas in accordance with the data.

Results

All the children were encouraged both in the course of the therapeutic sessionsand in the interviews to talk about what abusive events had happened. Onlyfour of the ten children were nevertheless able to say anything specific abouttheir sexual abuse experiences in what could be deemed a narrative accordingto Kintsch’s definition. For three of these children, the offender had admittedto sexual abuse. The other six children evaded the subject and spoke of sur-rounding themes related to the abuse. They told narratives about precipitatingevents before the abuse, when and where “it” happened, how they were able todisclose it, and what happened in the aftermath of the disclosure. Some chil-dren also talked about why it was difficult to disclose, and they talked aboutbeing disappointed either in their mother or the abuser. All these narrative areinitiated by questions from the therapist.

The stressful events narratives covered a wide range of topics. Many ofthe topics were about serious problems such as mother’s use of drugs or alco-hol, witnessing domestic violence, being hit by mother, being maltreated by ateacher, almost being lured by a strange man, and being teased at school. Theseevents were clearly experienced as traumatic for several of the children. Thechild initiated two of these stories; the rest came as answers to questions fromthe therapist. Although there were wide-ranging differences between the narra-tives of sexual abuse and other stressful events, no typical patterns concerninggender or age were found.

Level of elaboration

The stressful events narratives are generally more elaborate than the narrativesabout sexual abuse, whether the narratives were about the sexual abuse event

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or surrounding abuse narratives, except in one case in which there is an equallevel of elaboration. When sexual abuse narratives and surrounding abuse nar-ratives were combined into one group, the difference regarding level of elabo-ration between abuse narratives and stressful event narratives was significant(Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test p < .01).3

Table 1. Level of elaboration from least to most elaborated (1–6)

Child Bent Hanna Ine Cecilia Freddy Jane Eirin Ann Diana Gail7-year 7-year 9- 10-year 8-year 8- 10- 10- 13- 16-

year year year year year year

Sexual abuse 4 4 2 3narrativeSurrounding 1 1 3 3 6 4abuse narrativeStressful event 5 5 4 6 5 4 4 6 6 6narrative

(Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test, p < .01)

For five of the children the narratives of the sexually abusive events lacked de-scriptions of goal or goal-directed actions while this was present in their stress-ful event narratives. The change from Level 3 elaboration to Level 4 marks animportant qualitative change from fragmented events (Level 3) to episodes thatare causally structured into episodes (Level 4). Causally structured episodesturn the narratives into a meaningful entity. The episodic character of all nar-ratives at level four implies that these narratives do contribute to the creation ofconnections between the events, thereby giving the events a certain meaning.All the children’s narratives of stressful events consist at least of one or moreincomplete episodes (Level 4 or higher). Only four of the children’s narrativesof the sexual abuse have this level of elaboration (see Table 1)

Ine’s narratives serve as a good illustration.

Therapist (T): Can you remember what he said?Ine: That. . . that he wanted me . . . that he wanted me to. . . to touch. . . hesaid pleeeeease.T: He said pleeeese, and did you say anything?Ine: I said NO.

. In all the statistics the abuse narratives and surrounding narratives were combined intoone group.

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T: You said NO. How many times do you think he asked?Ine: About six maybe.T: What did you do?Ine: I was drawing. . . He took out his penis and pulled it back and forth ..likethis. . . (pause).T: What happened afterwards?Ine: I can’t remember.T: How did it stop?Ine: Maybe my mother came, or..I don’t know.

Ine’s narrative has some degree of elaboration. It contains some descriptionswith some temporal but no causal order. Ine does not state what impact theevent has on her. The narrative does not contribute to create connections be-tween events. It can be questioned whether the narrative serves any function ofmeaning-making for her.

In her stressful event narrative she talks about a scary stranger.

Ine: Do you want me to tell you about that time I was at my friend’s house,and right outside her yard there was this lady sitting there. And then thisman comes, with black pants. . . he had like a suit on, nice shoes and stuff,and then he just came into the yard. And he asks us if we know where thesoccer field is. And the soccer field is right by the woods we call the kidnapperwoods, because that’s where some kids have been chased.T: Like by the woods?Ine: Yes, and it’s a dark. . . dark and scary woods, you know. Lots of kids havebeen followed by strange men there and stuff.T: OKIne: Almost nobody dares go in there. The soccer field is right by there. Thenhe asked us about the soccer field, and we thought it was odd that he wasgoing to the soccer field in a dress. And why did he ask us and not the ladythat was sitting there.T: HumIne: So we just pointed and said “It’s down that way.” And he said “I don’tunderstand. Can you show me?” “No It’s right down there” “Can’t you showme? Can’t you follow me down there?” But luckily her mother came thenand he left.

Ine narrates a whole story with a start, middle and end. Her story is causallystructured into an episode with a setting, an initiating event, internal responses

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and reactions. She tries to explain why those involved reacted as they did. Thenarrative does contribute to creating connections between the events.

Contextual embeddedness

Contextual embeddedness measures whether the narrative orients the listenerto what, who, where, and when the events took place, the spatial-temporal con-text of the narrative. Table 2 shows the number of the main spatial-temporaldimensions (who, where, when, what) in each group of narratives. When sex-ual abuse and surrounding abuse narratives are combined into one group thedifference between this group and stressful event narratives was significant(Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test p < .01).

Table 2. Number of main spatial-temporal categories (who, where, when, what) (1–4)

Child Bent Hanna Ine Cecilia Freddy Jane Eirin Ann Diana Gail



For all of the children the stressful events narratives are more contextually em-bedded than the sexual abuse related stories. The children take care in present-ing the stories what, who, where, and when in much more detail than the sexualabusive stories. The sexual abuse narratives vary according to how much detailthey narrate. Four of them contain some information about what the abusiveevents were. Bent, for instance, gives a short but very precise description ofwhat happened when his cousin sexually abused him in the bathroom.

“We were in the bathroom. I had shorts on. Then he put his penis into my butt. Ithurt. He told me that if I told anyone he would beat me up. . . Then I didn’t daretell Aunt Ingrid, but I told mommy later.”

Bent tells about a short course of actions; the abusive acts, the offender, and hisown immediate reaction to the threatening comments from the offender. Weare informed about who did what to whom and where.

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Six of the children’s surrounding abuse narratives are about circumstancesaround the abusive events but nothing specific is told about the abusive actsthemselves.

Gail’s narratives illustrate the differences concerning contextual embed-dedness between sexual abuse narratives and the narratives of stressful events.Gail was never able to tell her therapist precisely what happened when her fa-ther abused her. The closest she comes to a narrative about an abusive event iswhen she tells her therapist about when she told her mother of some imagesabout her father.

“I told her that I saw myself and dad. I saw that he. . . is standing in the bathroomand that he. . . was supposed to wash me. I was small, do not remember how old. . .he touches me and things like that .. I told her this.”

The narrative contains some elaborating events. By telling a narrative about anarrative Gail may create a distance to the events and help herself to elaborateon the events.

The stressful event narrative is also about a traumatic event but she isnevertheless able to narrate a more contextually embedded story. The storyis about her father being physically violent towards her mother:

“I never saw anything, but I saw the bruises and heard her scream. He ruinedthe telephone all the time so we couldn’t call for help or anything. I rememberspecially one evening when mom was at work. I came home and dad had beendrinking and was acting strange. He talked about all this stuff about my motherthat I shouldn’t have heard about. And then my mom came home and we heardthat he beat up on her. I tried to make my sister and brother occupied with sometoys or watch TV. I tried to get help on the phone when he came and took it. Momtold me to run to the neighbor who is a doctor. And then I ran down stairs andhe came after me and said that I couldn’t go out. And then my sister came, and Istarted pretending to play with her. And then he went upstairs again, and I ranout and got a hold of the doctor. This was before he moved out the first time. Thiswas when my mother said he had to move.”

In this narrative Gail tells about what happened, when it happened, who wasinvolved, and where it happened. Although the sexual abuse narrative containssome of these elements there are very clear differences concerning details incontextual embeddedness between the two.

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Level of narrative structure

The analysis of structure was based on a 1 to 4 level rating (Peterson & Mc-Cabe, 1983). For every child, except one, the level of structure of the narrativesabout sexual abuse (abuse narratives and surrounding abuse narratives) is at alower level than the corresponding level of structure of the stressful event nar-ratives (see Table 3). The difference regarding level of structure between thetwo groups of narratives was significant (Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test p < .01).

Table 3. Level of narrative structure (1–4)

Child Bent Hanna Ine Cecilia Freddy Jane Eirin Ann Diana Gail



In three of the cases the narratives about sexually abusive events is too confusedor disoriented to understand. There are no descriptions of successive eventsor the descriptions are incomplete or very confusing. In five cases the narra-tive describes successive events that are sequentially ordered but with no causalconnection. There are no “off the timeline” comments in these narratives.

Ann’s narratives represent an example of a very clear difference with re-spect to narrative structure between the narrative about sexual abuse and thenarrative about a stressful event. Her stressful narrative builds up to a highpoint, dwells, and has a resolution (Level 4). The events are sequentially andlogically ordered.

“My mom had been shopping. And a friend of hers that lives on the firstfloor. . . had some kittens. . . And she came up to visit and my mom wasn’thome, so she said she could come back later.So when someone rang the doorbell later I thought it was her. . . I usually lookthrough the key hole to see who’s there but, I didn’t this time because I wascertain it was her.And then I open the door and this . . . and this totally drunk was out there inher bath robe and nothing underneath! She says she wants to talk to..I don’tremember the name, lets say it was Erik. She said “I want to talk to Erik”.

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I said: “he’s not here”. She said “I know he’s here!” No he’s not here! Andthen she threw me against the wall and barged in. Mom didn’t understandanything so she just stood there. . . And she was looking under the pillowsand then she tried to go into the bathroom but my mom stopped her and shescratched and hit my mother and stuff like that.And she was a really fat lady. . . it was gross. . .But then it turned out that she was looking for her husband! She was lookingfor her husband under the pillows!!”

The story is indicative of the narrative competency of this 10-year-old girl. Sheknows intuitively how to build up a story and tell it in a way that engages thelistener. Her narrative competency seems to break down when she tries to tellabout her sexual abusive experiences. The story structure now turns out as con-fused and disoriented (Level 1). Ann is answering a question from the therapistabout what happened in one of the sexual abuse incidents. She never managesto tell anything about the incident in spite of the support she receives from thetherapist. In her story there are some sequential events but they are not logicallyordered. Together the therapist and Ann have identified some occasions wheresexual abuse has taken place, but they have not yet explored what happened onthese occasions. The therapist invites Ann to explore what happened:

Ann: . . . but it happened on some other occasions too, for instance in the carTherapist: What happened?Ann: When we should. . . because we had a quarrel, me and mommy. . . be-cause I wanted to have some candy for 2 $ and she gave me only 1 $ ..and thenwe had a quarrel. . . and then I did not get any candies at all. . . and then Imanaged to take a whole glass of. . . I do not remember what was in it. . . therewere some vitamins. . . and then I was allowed to go outside together with. . .and then I was allowed to drive the car. . .

No doubt Ann is trying to explain something. She presents a setting or an occa-sion that is confusing. If we did not know the context –the story’s “what, whereand when” – the story would be quite unintelligible for us. The story leaves thelistener in a state of confusion and the question as to what happened remainsunanswered. The therapist tries to overcome the confusion by putting herselfin a not knowing position in relation to what took place at that particular oc-casion. Ann makes an effort to answer. She also presents a kind of problem orconflict but we do not know if the problem is solved and we do not know ifthere are any connections between this problem and the abusive events thattook place. The problem is not about remembering the abusive incident. The

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problem is connected to the narrating. Not only does she have insurmountableproblems in telling about the abusive event, but also, her narrative competenceseems to break down when she attempts to tell about the circumstances, theevents that took place before the abuse. In the continuation of the sequenceabove Ann is using the word “it” as if she takes for granted that the indexical“it” has been understood by the therapist.

Ann: And it has happened many timesTherapist: What took place in the car has happened many times?Ann: Yes

With the help from the therapist, Ann manages to tell a kind of story. Thescaffolding offered by the therapist through her willingness to understand andmake intelligible what Ann is trying to tell by using the same word “it” makesit possible for Ann to proceed in the telling of some fragments of her story:“It has happened many times.” The sequences above indicate that Ann has astory to tell, but that her narrative competence, clearly demonstrated when shetold the stressful narrative, is not “available” for her when she is invited by thetherapist to tell her story about abuse.

Coherence as causal connections

The narratives were analyzed for both explicit and implicit formulations thatimply a causal connection between events in the children’s narratives. In two ofthe four sexual abuse narratives we do not find any formulations – explicit orimplicit – about causal connections between events. Four of the six surround-ing abuse narratives contain formulations about some kind of causal connec-tions. In each of the 10 stressful event narratives, we found formulations thatimply explicit or implicit causal connections. (See Table 4).

Causal connections in narratives about sexual abuse have implications forhow the children understand their own or the abuser’s behavior. Only two of

Table 4. Distribution of stories with and without causal connections

Sexual abusenarrative

Surrounding abusenarrative

Stressful eventnarratives

Stories with causal 2 (Bent, Hanna) 4 (Diana, Eirin, 10Connections Gail, Jane)Stories without causal 2 (Cecilia, Ine) 2 (Freddy, Ann) 0connections

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the sexual abuse narratives contained explanations about the possible cause ofthe abusive act itself. In three of the six narratives the causal connections arerelated to their fears about what they were afraid would happen when theydisclosed their secret. It is their own silence they try to explain: “ .. (if I toldsomeone) “then he would beat me up”; .. (if I told someone) “then he wouldgo to jail”; .. (if I told someone) “then everybody would get sad. . .” These causalconnections do function as an explanation for why the child was reluctant todisclose, as in the case with Bent: “Then I didn’t dare tell Aunt Ingrid, but I toldmommy later.”

In Gail’s narrative she expresses concern about whether her mother knewanything about the abuse. A possible connection between some events makesher assume that her mother had a suspicion about abuse: “I think she had alittle suspicion because she saw that I went into the bathroom every time that dad(the abuser) was alone in that room with my younger brother or sister.” Thesecausal connections are important for how she experiences the relationship toher mother. For a very long period she felt that it was unforgivable that hermother had not stopped the abuse.

In all 10 narratives about stressful events we found utterances about causalconnections, and the use of causal terms like “because” is more frequent inthese stories than in the sexual abuse stories. “I usually look through the keyhole to see who’s there, but I didn’t this time because I was certain it was her.”,“He called me nigger and then I became angry”, “my mother started using drugs,because her boyfriend did.” The aim of the narrative is explicitly to explain thereason why something happened and the causal connection most likely helpsthe children in their process of making sense out of the situation.

What questions are the children struggling to make sense out of?

Several of the children’s narratives conveyed throughout the therapy wereabout their struggle to make sense of the sexual abuse; in other words, to findsome resolution for it. Two of the children were struggling with issues relatedto revenge, and three about how to go on with their life. Five of the children areasking themselves “Why?” Three of these were wondering why they were sexu-ally abused, one child was struggling with the question of why her mother didnot understand what was going on and intervene, and one could not under-stand why her disclosure had such severe consequences for her and her family.The efforts to make sense of these questions were self-initiated and character-

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ized by an exploring attitude, much in contrast to their reluctance to involve innarratives about abuse.

Hanna, for instance, is concerned about why her uncle abused her.

“I do not understand why he did it .. (takes a deep breath) .. maybe he wasdrunk ..but it did not look like he was... I don´t know.. it was a little strangethat he did it”.

The question remains unanswered. The answer that he was drunk and ir-responsible does not appear to her as a convincing answer to why theabuse happened.

Ine has also a main concern about why she was abused – in her case, by herolder half-brother. Her relationship to her half-brother is ambivalent. Therehave been both some good and some bad experiences in their relationship. Shearrives at two contradictory explanations. On the one hand she says that: “.. itwas not his fault in a way because he had problems with himself. . . because hisstepfather was not kind to him.” On the other hand “. . . he knew he was doingsomething wrong. . . ” Although he admitted to the abuse after she disclosed it,he threatened her to silence while it was going on. So she thinks he is to blame.She cannot tell the story about her half-brother having emotional problemswithout telling the other story and vice versa. Like Hanna, Ine cannot find anelucidating answer.

Gail struggled with the relationship to her mother. She is concerned aboutwhy her mother did not discover that her father was abusing her and conse-quently stopped the abuse. Gail wanted her mother to suffer because she hadfailed her, and at the same time, she wanted reconciliation. These contradictoryprojects made her relationship to her mother difficult to handle. Through thetherapy and in conversation with her mother Gail came closer to accept thather mother indeed was not aware of the sexual abuse and consequently that itwas difficult for her to protect her from abuse.

A recurrent question that concerned Bent was why his cousin sexuallyabused him. One of his answers is that he himself may be gay. The questionof “becoming” or “being” gay is brought up by Bent in the therapy. Other thanthe fact that he was abused by another male he does not really “feel” that he isgay, so the question of why his cousin abused him remains unanswered.

Jane is very reluctant to say anything about the abuser and the abusive acts,but she says that he should apologize for what he has done. The abuser has notadmitted to the sexual abuse, and for Jane an apology would represent somesort of confirmation that he has committed abuse and also a possible resolu-

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tion. Since the alleged offender does not admit to the abuse nor apologize, thisissue remains unanswered to Jane.

Resolution and meaning issues are also central to Cecilia: “What I want isthat he says he’s sorry and tells me why he did it”. Her why-question remainsunanswered.

Fred and Eireen are also concerned with resolution, but their narrativesare more related to revenge and punishment. The relationship to the abuseris a concern to Fred. He should be punished. Fred narrates a story about ahypothetical event:

“If he came here I would throw a flowerpot in his head . . . and I wouldthrow the whole house on him ... and then I would put it back in its placeafterwards”.

In this hypothetical narrative, Fred turns the relationship to the abuser upsidedown and situates himself as the one in power and control.

Eireen also tells a hypothetical fantasy story about her stepfather. In thestory he has become homeless. He is arrested and put in jail because of a bankrobbery. He is punished, but for something else than the abuse. The story hasno direct connections to Eireen. The abuser gets the punishment he deserveswhile Eireen cannot be blamed.

The relationship to the abuser and its meaning is also a difficult and impor-tant issue to Ann. A possible solution to this issue is to get him at a distance. Inher story about gifts she has received from the abuser she deliberately discardedeverything he gave her accept one thing: “ ... there is one thing he gave me whichI kept, but that is a thing that was not made by him. It is a dollar.” Her evaluationof the events in the story is important for the meaning of it. It is the absenceof a personal connection to the abuser that matters, so she can keep the dollar.Ann also initiates a drama with a possible solution to what position the abusershould take in her life. In a drama in the sandbox the abuser is involved in sev-eral traffic accidents: “And then he was hit by a car again and again and again. . .and now he is dead . . . now I will dig a grave.” The story, told both through hermetaphorical acts in the sandbox and her verbal comments to these acts, buildsto a high point and a metaphorical solution.

Diana struggles with the consequences of her disclosure. Her father wasarrested, and her mother lost the custody of all the children. Things happenedcontrary to what she wanted and what she expected:

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“I never believed that something like this would happen in my family. WhenI was younger, before all this happened, it seemed to me ... from my point ofview, that my life was ok”.

It is the consequences of the disclosure, the punishment of her family, thatbothers her and that is impossible for her to understand. The course of theevents, both when the abuse happened and after the disclosure, has been outof her control and influence: “I am fifteen years old and I feel I have not beenheard.” Diana never found an acceptable answer as to why her disclosure led tothe consequences it did.

The questions that revolve in the children’s narratives are why-questions:Why did he do it? Why did not mother discover the abuse? Why was the wholefamily punished for the abuse? It is the bits and pieces of the narrative thatfind no resolution. Some of the questions require a dialogue with the abuser inorder to be answered. The children are never in the position to get involvedin such dialogues. These children continue to struggle with their questionsthroughout the therapy and they are not able to develop narratives that pro-vide answers to their questions. Only in the three cases where the children getinvolved in developing hypothetical or metaphorical narratives did they cre-ate a kind of resolution at an “as-if” level. The absence of an answer to thewhy-question may explain some of their silence about the abusive events.

Discussion

Despite the fact that the therapeutic situation in many ways was optimallysuited so that the children could talk of their experiences in a non-threateningenvironment, only four children narrated their specific sexual abuse experi-ences. Furthermore, both the sexual abuse narratives and the surroundingabuse narratives were generally less elaborate, more disorganized, less con-textually embedded, and less coherent than the stressful event narratives. Themost important difference between the sexual abuse narratives and the stressfulevent narratives is connected to the meaning aspect. In the absence of explicitcausal connections in their abuse narratives, the children struggled to find an-swers to important why-questions. Their efforts most often do not result inany resolution, whereas they do end up with some kind of resolution in theirstressful event narratives

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Although all of the children’s narratives were about things that botheredand concerned them, there were significant differences between them. Howcan these differences be understood? We will look into some of the complexissues that may be involved.

The children’s narrative competence

In a study by Peterson and McCabe (1983) of a non-clinical sample, the nar-ratives of 96 white children were analyzed concerning qualities like narrativestructure, contextual embeddedness, causality, and evaluation. Their conclu-sion was that children in general are not poor narrators, contrary to some ear-lier conclusions made by Labov (1972). All the children in our study showedthat they had well developed narrative competencies similar to the children inthe Peterson and McCabe study. During the course of therapy they often toldthe therapist narratives about events that were important to them, such as thelast soccer game they played in, a school play they participated in or, a travelexperience. These narratives were often elaborate, coherent, highly structuredand contextually embedded in accordance with the classical pattern describedby Peterson and McCabe. Moreover, the children themselves often initiatedthese narratives. They bear in this sense resemblance to what Överlien andHydén (2003) call “stories one likes to tell.” These stories were often about ac-complishments the child was proud of or enjoyed. Furthermore the children’sstressful events narratives were also in accordance with a classical pattern. Con-sequently, the differences in narration cannot be explained by the children’slack of narration capacity.

Absence of mitigating circumstances

By their strong deviation from the expected and their violations of culturalnorms, the events of sexual abuse would impose upon the child a need to makethese events understandable through a narrative configuration (Nicolopoulou,1996). When children do not narrate their experiences of sexual abuse, onepossible explanation is that they are not aware of the normative breach suchan act represents. This may indeed be the case for some very young children;however, this is not a reasonable interpretation in this study. On the contrary,through the children’s avoidance of the topic, the impression is made that itis their awareness of the violation of cultural norms that prevents them fromnarrating. Such awareness presupposes knowledge about these acts, in which

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context they belong, and in which context they do not. It is not reasonableto assume that the children do lack the necessary and relevant knowledge tointerpret the abusive events they experience, which otherwise might explaintheir trouble with the episodic structuring of these events within a narrative(Trabasso & Stein, 1997).

While experiencing a father hitting mother may be as emotionally upset-ting as being sexually abused, the cultural impact of the event may be different.The cultural stigma, taboo, and privacy related to sexual abuse may make un-derstanding and narration difficult. Their struggle to understand may be toinvoke what Bruner (1990) calls the mitigating circumstances. When Ann inher stressful event narrative about the drunken lady tells that “She was lookingfor her husband ..” it has “ .. the effect of framing the idiosyncratic in a ‘life-like’ fashion” (Bruner, 1990, p. 67). In this way, by presuming circumstancesthat are mitigating and turning to culturally recognizable interpretations, Anngets the story right. In relation to the abusive events, to invoke mitigating cir-cumstances becomes a problem. When Ann tells her abuse narrative there is nomitigating circumstances available to her.

Absence of a dialogue with the abuser

It is particularly in the relation to the abuser that the children try to invoke mit-igating circumstances. But only one child, Diana, makes reference to a dialoguewith the abuser, where her father tells her that what he was doing was wrongand that he was responsible for what took place. The episode did contributeto how Diana understood what happened. She got a clear opinion about herfather as the responsible one. Still she had difficulties in understanding why hedid it. It is interesting to note that the structural analyses of her narratives aboutthe surrounding circumstances to the abuse indicate a very high level of narra-tive structure and elaborateness. Her dialogues with her father, the abuser, helpto clarify questions about responsibility and contextual embeddedness. Theseare no doubts mitigating circumstances.

According to Bruner (1990), “The function of the story is to find an inten-tional state that mitigates or at least makes comprehensible a deviation froma canonical cultural pattern” (pp. 49–50). There is nothing in Diana´s narra-tive about her dialogue with her father about mitigating circumstances in thesense of intentions and goals. The reason why her father involved her in sexualactivities is still not available to Diana.

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In the case of Ine, there is a partial admittance of responsibility fromher half-brother. Ine narrates a kind of dialogue with him when he asks herto touch his penis and she says “no.” The dialogue is not of much help toIne in understanding why her brother abused her and what his goals andintentions were.

The absence of exchanges of communication about feelings, intentions,and goals connected to the abuse can explain the character of the sexual abusenarratives as being reports of happenings more than narratives with an episodicstructure. When Cecilia states that “ It is not fun. . .when he sort of. . .just doesit . . .” her complaint can be understood as a complaint about the absence of adialogue that at least could explain to her the abuser’s intentions, why he “doesit,” and an expectation that such a dialogue would contribute to an answer.

The children in this study do not come up with any idea about intentionsand goals that could otherwise mitigate the deviation from the canonical cul-tural pattern. The absence of such ideas can partly explain the children’s dif-ficulties in narrating about their abusive experiences. The culture not only of-fers ideas that make a deviation within that culture comprehensible, it also setsome limits as to what can be mitigated through dominant narrative accounts,prevailing attitudes, the law system, and moral standards.

Walton and Brewer (2002), in their study of how narratives function toposition children as moral agents within their culture, point to the importanceof what the protagonists know and think. The only thoughts we are told thatare delivered to the children are the abusers concern about secrecy. This lim-its the children’s possibilities for making moral evaluations and positioningthemselves in relation to what is good or bad in a dialogue with the personwho involved them in the sexual activity. When the abusive event is somethingthat “just happens,” the children are left alone with the project of construct-ing meaning and with the evaluation of their own moral stance relative to theevents. The odds of reaching an explanation of how the abuse started or why ithappened are very small.

Absence of dialogues with others

The development of children’s personal narratives is influenced through so-cial interaction. Through discussing events with others, children become ableto organize events in more coherent, temporally extended and integrated ways(Fivush, 1998; Nelson, 1993). Such narration also helps the child to interpretevents (Bruner, 1990; Fivush & Haden, 1997). According to the caregivers, the

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children’s experiences with being sexually abused had not been talked muchabout, perhaps with the exception of Diana. The caregivers avoided the topicfor different reasons (Jensen, Gulbrandsen, Mossige, Reichelt, & Tjersland, inpress). In contrast, several of the stressful event narratives had been addressed.Furthermore, many of these events were experienced with other people presentthat the child most likely had talked to during and after the event, such as Ine’snarrative about the scary stranger, Ann’s narrative about the drunken lady, orGail’s narrative about domestic violence. This previous narrativization con-tributed most likely to some of the variations between the children’s narrativesof the different events. So although the emotional impact may be great in boththe events, the children had previous narratives to lean on when they spoke tothe therapist.

The dialogue with the therapists

The narration of the children’s sexual abuse experience was a collaborative en-deavor between the child and the therapist. It is not unreasonable to assumethat the cultural impact of child sexual abuse, the traumatic aspect of the event,the lack of previous narrating about sexual abuse, and the emotional qualityof the event (representing something personal, shameful, and embarrassing totalk about) also make this a delicate topic for the therapists. We therefore haveto consider how these aspects influence the therapists and the dialogical col-laboration in order to understand the children’s difficulties in narrating abouttheir sexual abuse experience.

A trauma perspective

From a trauma perspective one would not necessarily expect children to nar-rate their experiences. According to trauma theory, events that remind the childabout the original traumatic events would activate aversive emotional reactionsassociated with the trauma. In order to avoid these reactions the child mayevade narrating topics that activate these feelings (Koverola & Foy, 1993). Insome cases where the traumatic events repeats itself and the aversive reactionsare strong enough the avoidance may take the form of dissociation (Furniss,1991; Terr, 1991). However, since the children in this study had made efforts tonarrate and in some way had disclosed the sexual abuse to their caregiver, thisdoes not favor an argument for dissociation as an explanation of the children’sdifficulties. The children did nonetheless show signs of emotional distress and

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avoidance that may partly explain why narration was difficult. This does, evenso, not fully explain the differences in narration between the stressful eventsand the sexual abuse narratives. Clearly many of the stressful events narrativescould be characterized as traumatic for the children, and they were able to nar-rate these experiences. This indicates that differences in the type of emotiontraumas evoke may influence narration. What determines which type of emo-tion a trauma will evoke is definitely not the trauma per se. It is the meaningthat is attributed to it. Thus the trauma- perspective cannot by itself explainthe difference between the two types of narratives.

The question of false allegations

Regarding the six children where the offender did not confirm abuse, one couldargue that their narrations were limited because they were lying about beingsexually abused, or that their mothers had coerced them to make false allega-tions through repeated suggestion. The question of the validity of children’sallegation of child sexual abuse is always an issue in cases such as these, andthe findings must be viewed in light of this. However, there were differencesbetween the narratives of abusive and stressful events for the children whoseoffender admitted abuse. Furthermore, Diana was one of the children that didnot narrate the sexual abuse event despite that her father admitted to sexuallyabusing her.

Conclusion

The ability to organize and understand our experiences is a fundamental partof how we make sense of events (Fivush, 1998). This study has shown how thechildren struggled to construct meaning-configuring narratives about sexualabuse. The point is not that all sexually abused children need to narrate theirexperiences in detail to a therapist. The study rather shows how difficult it isfor children to narrate their experiences despite encouragement to do so.

The way professionals interpret a child’s lack of narration has importantimplications for the child, the child’s caregivers, and for the suspects. The studyis not designed to give an exact answer to why narrations are so difficult, butsome interpretations have been brought forward.

Children’s difficulties in narrating has been interpreted as a matter of doubtif sexual abuse has happened (Ceci & Bruck, 1993) or that the experiences

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are not accessible to the child’s memory and therefore cannot be spoken of(Terr, 1991). While this may be the case for some children, this study points tohow the dialogical, cultural, and emotional aspects can contribute to narrationdifficulties.

Several studies indicate that children are at least partly dependent on anadult’s guidance in order to organize their experiences in narratives (see Fivush,1998, for a review). Child sexual abuse is often, for different reasons, not spo-ken of either with the offender or other adults. According to Fivush (1998)),children experiencing events in the absence of adult-provided narration tendto have a less organized and less accurate representation of what happened.Because of this it is likely that it will be more difficult for the children to inte-grate these events with other events in their lives. In the absence of discussingsexual abuse events with others, the children may have particularly difficultyunderstanding and coping with the event.

The stressful narratives were also about events with a traumatic contentfor several of the children. The stronger refusal and difficulties to tell aboutnarratives about sexual abuse cannot solely be explained by a difference be-tween traumatic and non-traumatic events. The trauma dimension may be ofimportance to capture some of the reactions among children who experiencetraumatic events, but it does not encompass the whole phenomena explored inthis study.

To be a witness to domestic violence or a mother who all of a sudden be-comes a drug addict may be defined as traumatic events for a child. But the chil-dren who experienced these events still could bring them into narratives wherethey are given a certain meaning. The same children did not manage to bringtheir abusive experiences into a meaning-configuring narrative. Part of the dif-ference may be explained with reference to the differences in topic or content ofthe events themselves. The children in this study are sufficiently aware of whatkind of violation of canonical rules the abusive experiences represent.

When people talk about child sexual abuse they draw on culturally avail-able notions about these phenomena. The struggle of sexually abused childrento make meaning of their history of abuse and to invoke mitigating circum-stances is therefore culturally embedded. Within both trauma and narrativeperspectives, understanding the sociocultural context in which the narratingof child sexual abuse takes place in is therefore imperative. In order to under-stand the difficulties children face, a narrative perspective needs to include theemotional significance of the events to be narrated. The trauma perspectiveencompasses the emotional aspects of an event but overlooks the specific cul-

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tural impact of the event and previous lack of narration. A theory that intendsto understand children’s narration difficulties should encompass both of theseperspectives.

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