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If she’s not going to protect herself, then how are we going to protect her?
Managing risk in child protection practice with sexually abused teenage girls
Article in Intervention · January 2021
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If she’s not going to protect herself, then how are we
going to protect her? Managing risk in child protection
practice with sexually abused teenage girls
Rosemary R. Carlton, Ph.D., Professor, École de travail social, Université de Montréal
[email protected]
ABSTRACT:
Drawing from a qualitative study designed according to a girl-centred interpretive framework, this
article addresses the influence of neoliberal and risk-thinking ideologies on child protection practices
with sexually abused teenage girls. The study revealed views of these girls as vulnerable and consequently
in need of protection while simultaneously autonomous almost-adults, responsible for identifying
and managing the risks in their lives. This article illustrates how these seemingly competing views
contribute to a transformation of sexually abused teenage girls into rational actors who are regularly
scrutinized for their capacities and failures to ensure their own safety in the aftermath of sexual abuse.
KEYWORDS:
Child protection, sexual abuse, female adolescence, neoliberalism, risk-thinking
She’s a petite thing – just turned 15, barely in the city for a month. She’s definitely been exploited,
taken advantage of and murdered. We know she was in care and was rebelling. She was running
away and had a history of that. I’m sure she didn’t realize the danger she was putting herself in.
The body of Tina Fontaine, an Aboriginal teenager who had been under the care of child protection
services, was found in Winnipeg’s Red River on August 17th, 2014. Sgt. O’Donovan, speaking
with reporters following the tragic discovery, painted a touching portrait of her vulnerability.
Underlying his words, however, was a contradictory message of individual responsibility that cast
Tina as having failed to protect herself from danger. A special report produced by the Manitoba
Advocate for Children and Youth (2019), made absolutely clear the numerous historical, social,
and personal experiences and circumstances of risk that contributed to Tina’s vulnerability. Yet
even in death, she couldn’t escape suspicions of responsibility. What did she fail to do in order to
ensure her own protection? Such coinciding yet conflicting views of vulnerability and responsibility
around risk are the focus of this article. Specifically, this article addresses the treatment of teenage
girls as simultaneously vulnerable and responsible in the particular context of the involvement of
child protection services (CPS) in the aftermath of sexual abuse.
“Child protection services” refers to that distinct segment of Canada’s welfare state responsible for
protecting children from maltreatment. Sociojudicial in nature – in that psychosocial interventions
are delimited and shaped by provincial/territorial legislation – CPS practice is carried out by
professionals legally mandated to intervene in the private lives of families when concerns relating
to risk to a child have been identified. In other words, CPS professionals are sanctioned by the
INTERVENTION 2021, numéro 152 : 65-82
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state to become involved with children and their families only when parental care or behaviour
is deemed to have fallen below a prescribed minimum standard and to have contributed to a
situation of serious risk to a child’s safety, wellbeing or development (Bala, 2011; Hetherington,
2006). Legislation serves as a guide for CPS professionals in their day-to-day activities of assessing
allegations that a child is at risk of abuse or neglect; taking protective actions to ensure the immediate
safety of a child determined to be at risk; and pursuing any intervention necessary to prevent the
recurrence of a situation presenting a danger to the child. CPS professionals are required to provide
evidence to justify interventions into family life, especially the most intrusive interventions such
as the apprehension of a child. There is no acceptance of imprecise reasoning as continued CPS
involvement is restricted to those situations in which there is obvious risk of serious harm to
the child (Bala, 1998). Anglin (2002: 238) noted that, in Canada, a legal perspective has come to
inform CPS to the point that, even beyond the “boundaries of the court,” CPS professionals often
experience “their activities as if a judge were continually looking over their shoulder.”
With children’s safety as the driving force guiding all CPS interventions rather than a wider
concentration on the needs and welfare of the child, CPS practice across Canada is narrowly
concerned with identifying and managing risk (Lonne, Harries, Featherstone et al., 2016; Swift
& Callahan, 2009). This preoccupation results in a practice emphasis on – quickly – identifying,
monitoring and regulating risky situations and individuals. Such an orientation reflects the
influence of prevailing neoliberal and risk-thinking ideologies, wherein individuals tend to be
treated as responsible for the creation and management of risk in their lives while, at the same
time, assessed and classified in terms of the risk they pose to themselves or others (Webb, 2006).
While CPS interventions necessarily involve parents, primary attention remains securely fixed on
the child deemed to be in need of protection. But what happens when that child is of an age nearing
adulthood? Even more specifically, what happens when that child is a sexually abused teenage girl?
Drawing from the findings of a larger qualitative study designed according to a girl-centred
interpretive framework, I suggest that neoliberal and risk-thinking ideologies combine to influence
CPS practice with sexually abused teenage girls. Simultaneous with an appreciation of these girls’
vulnerability and consequent need for professional care and protection, is a competing view of
them as autonomous almost-adults, responsible for identifying and managing the risks in their
lives. While their safety from risk remains the paramount concern of CPS, the added dimension
of sexually abused teenage girls’ proximity to adulthood contributes to a shift in responsibility for
protection from CPS professionals to the girls themselves. I argue that this shift contributes to
a common treatment of sexually abused teenage girls as rational actors capable of appropriately
managing risk if provided the information and guidance needed to identify and avoid dangerous
circumstances. I begin this article by elaborating on the influence of neoliberal and risk-thinking
ideologies on CPS practice in general, and more specifically CPS practice in situations of sexual
abuse. I then provide a description of the study from which this article derives. How protection is
pursued in CPS practice with sexually abused teenage girls is then presented according to themes
arising from the analysis of the study’s findings.
1. Risk and responsibility in child protection services
Risk and the management of risk have been defining features of Canadian CPS for well over
25 years. While the safety of children has always been at the heart of CPS involvement with families,
the attitudes and practices associated with ensuring that safety tend to swing in accordance with the
socio-political climate of the time and place. Today’s CPS legislation, policies and practices reflect
the influence of prevailing neoliberal and risk-thinking ideologies.
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Deeply entrenched in Canadian society and its range of social policies and programs is the
recognition that parents carry the responsibility for ensuring the wellbeing of their children and
they have the right to do so without the unwarranted intrusion of the state. While the welfare state
shares some responsibility for children’s wellbeing, today, its involvement is largely distant through
the provision of certain health and educational services as well as family benefits. Ultimately, parents
are expected to provide for their children’s basic needs through income garnered by participating
in the free market and by adopting behaviours deemed appropriate for ensuring children’s care
and education. But, in those instances in which parents struggle to provide basic care to their
children or to protect them from risk, the welfare state, in the form of CPS, is mandated to step in.
According to neoliberal and risk-thinking ideologies, individuals are ultimately expected to assume
responsibility for managing or, better yet, avoiding any variety of risks in their lives – while those
deemed unable to do so by virtue of their age, capacity, choice or action are potentially subject to
the intervention of state authorities (Webb, 2006). CPS is a clear example of such state authority.
Once a child comes to the attention of CPS, CPS professionals come to share with parent(s) the
responsibility for ensuring the child’s ongoing and future safety. The brunt of that responsibility,
however, remains with parents. While children remain at the heart of CPS interventions, their
individual responsibilities with respect to managing risk to themselves tend to hinge on external
perceptions of their capacities. This is a point to which I will return shortly as I consider how CPS
professionals and sexually abused teenage girls understand and negotiate girls’ involvement in their
own protection from risk.
Previously, in a publication co-authored with Julia Krane, we explored how CPS practice has been
transformed in a neoliberal climate preoccupied with risk (Carlton & Krane, 2013). We argued that
present-day CPS practice “assumes that parents are what Lupton (2013) and Kemshall (2006, 2010)
might call rational actors: capable of weighing and avoiding risks and able to take in information
relevant to risk and act in acceptable or expected ways” (Carlton & Krane, 2013: 94). The concept
of the rational actor is firmly situated in neoliberal ideology. Rational actors are envisioned as “free
actors who are constrained only by their ignorance about the threat to which they may be exposed
or their lack of self-efficacy in feeling able to do something about a risk” (Lupton 2013: 32). With
appropriate intervention, rational actors are considered able to take matters into their own hands
to resolve a situation of risk. Doing otherwise provides evidence that they are “irrational actors
and thus vulnerable to blame and likely to be subjected to regulatory interventions” (Carlton &
Krane, 2013: 95). Swift and Callahan (2009) observed this assumption of individual capacity and
appropriate intervention combining to resolve risk playing out in typical CPS practices with parents.
These authors explained that assessments of risk in CPS virtually always focus on the individual.
As such, protective interventions aimed at risk reduction tend to centre on educating individual
parents about what is needed in order for their children to be safe. Parents are thus charged “with
the responsibility to help themselves through solutions that continually monitor their efforts and
extend social control over them” (Swift & Callahan, 2009: 222).
“In other words, armed with the necessary information about the circumstances that
gave rise to risk and the appropriate responses to resolve it, the parent, as a rational actor,
is assumed to be in a position to make the right choice to protect her/his child” (Carlton
& Krane, 2013: 95).
Clients of CPS, “as rational actors, are judged against particular and predetermined norms and
ideologies of parenting and protection; they are made responsible for their decision-making around
risk and are rewarded for protection choices that are socially sanctioned as correct” (Carlton &
Krane, 2013: 95). Here the notion of failure to protect, which is written into CPS legislation across
the country, including Quebec’s YPA, becomes particularly salient as those parents who make
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flawed or risky choices are all too likely to be viewed as having failed to protect and thus, rather
than being rewarded, are subjected to further protective involvement, scrutiny and regulation.
The degree of CPS intervention often relies on individual compliance with a particular CPS
plan aimed at managing risk. Lupton (2013) conceptualized compliance as the acceptance and
internalization of the objectives of organizational authorities. In the context of CPS, compliance
“means demonstrating a capacity to immediately take on the expectation to protect one’s child
from risk – with little if any room for ambivalence or confusion and uncertainty – at all costs and
irrespective of the social and emotional context of such protection” (Carlton & Krane, 2013: 95).
Noncompliance with a protection plan can result in intensified interventions or even the eventual
removal of a child from his or her home environment. With the child’s safety paramount, there is
no room for tolerance of risk.
2. Risk and responsibility in protection from child sexual abuse
Quebec’s Youth Protection Act (YPA) stipulates that the ultimate goal of any CPS intervention is “to
put an end to and prevent the recurrence of a situation in which the security or the development
of the child is in danger” (article 2.3(a)). Specific to concerns around sexual abuse, when a CPS
professional becomes involved, s/he is responsible for (1) finding sufficient evidence to substantiate
the allegations of sexual abuse; (2) removing any risk of sexual re-victimization usually by ensuring
the separation of the victim from the perpetrator of the abuse; and (3) taking steps to address
any physical or emotional harm experienced by the victim as a result of the abuse (Daigneault,
Hébert, & Tourigny, 2007). Protective decisions may involve recommending placement outside of
the child’s home environment; interdiction of contact with specified individuals, including most
notably the alleged abuser; involvement in therapeutic interventions; or, surveillance and control
over the child’s involvement with peers or movement in his/her surrounding community.
As previously stated, the recognition of parents as carrying the primary responsibility for ensuring
the safety and wellbeing of their children is central to CPS legislation and practice. Indeed, parental
responsibility to protect does not disappear with the involvement of CPS. Rather, parents’ capacities
(or failures) to protect are regularly made the object of CPS scrutiny and intervention. The current
presence of failure to protect in CPS legislation makes explicit the expectation that even a nonoffending parent – one who did not perpetrate an abuse – should be able to recognize risks to a
child and to act so as to either prevent abuse or bring an end to the circumstances of risk (Krane,
Strega & Carlton, 2013). Thus, in situations of child sexual abuse, a CPS determination of risk may
result not only from the substantiation of the sexually abusive acts of an alleged offender but also
from observations of the presumed failures of the non-offending parent – usually the mother – to
protect the child when s/he is thought to have known of the sexual abuse or to have had reasonable
cause to suspect it.
Before moving forward, I believe it pertinent to point out that despite the pervasiveness of genderneutral language in official documentation as well as much of the academic literature dealing with
CPS, CPS tends to produce gendered practices wherein scrutiny and intervention efforts are chiefly
concentrated on mothers rather than fathers regardless of the a father’s presence and regardless of
his potential identification as the principal contributor to the situation of risk (Coohey & Zhang,
2006; Risley-Curtiss & Heffernan 2003; Scourfield, 2003; Strega, Fleet, Brown et al., 2008; Trocmé,
Fallon, MacLaurin et al., 2010). This observation combined with the fact that stepfathers and fathers
were identified as the perpetrators of sexual abuse in a minority of cases (13 percent and 9 percent
respectively) (Trocmé, Fallon, MacLaurin et al., 2010), is suggestive of a tendency in CPS practice
to focus on mothers despite the possible availability of fathers or father figures.
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In situations of child sexual abuse brought to the attention of CPS, a non-offending mother may
well be viewed as having already failed in her individual responsibility to predict and prevent risk
to her child. By concentrating efforts on mothers, the emphasis is shifted from the actions of the
alleged (predominantly male) offender to inadequacies and “in/actions of women as mothers”
(Krane, 2003: 70). Thus, what a non-offending mother does – or how she acts – after learning of the
sexual abuse of her child is frequently made the focus of CPS intervention. Her presumed maternal
responsibility to protect does not disappear with the involvement of CPS. If anything, it intensifies.
Given the paramountcy of child safety in CPS legislation and practice combined with the fact that
the removal of a child from his/her family environment remains an intervention of last resort, CPS
professionals tend to rely heavily on non-offending mothers in their efforts to ensure children are
protected from further harm. In her case study of the protection processes undertaken in situations
of child sexual abuse in a CPS agency in Ontario, Krane (2003) observed that the CPS mandate to
protect was often shifted from individual CPS professionals to non-offending mothers. This shift
was seen in practices wherein CPS professionals encouraged mothers to express their belief and
support of their sexually abused child; to take measures to restrict contact between the child and
his/her alleged abuser; and to engage in any other measure deemed appropriate to address any
physical and/or emotional harm resulting from the sexual abuse. Krane (2003) posited that placing
expectations on non-offending mothers to take on the daily tasks of protection effectively serves to
transform them into “mother protectors.” She further observed that this transfer of responsibility
to protect tended to be done with little regard for non-offending mothers’ respective social contexts
or circumstances. The underlying assumption appeared to be that women as mothers are (and
ought to be) willing and able to make choices and to take actions appropriate to the best interests
and wellbeing of their children.
But what happens when the child in question is a sexually abused teenage girl? Embedded in Quebec’s
YPA is the requirement that “the child’s” active participation in interventions and decision-making
on their own behalf be encouraged, especially when that child is aged 14 or older. CPS professionals
and courts are thus mandated to share information in a manner that supports girls’ understanding
and to take into consideration their views and wishes throughout the intervention and decisionmaking process. Whereas a number of feminist authors have brought attention to CPS practices
with non-offending mothers around the protection of (or failure to protect) their child, left out has
been a consideration of sexually abused teenage girls’ implication in their own protection.
3. The study and its objectives
This article is drawn from my doctoral research the overarching aim of which to provide an indepth understanding of how teenage girls and CPS professionals understand and negotiate
concerns for risk and aspirations for girls’ autonomy in the aftermath of sexual abuse. While
significant scholarly attention has been given to understanding risk as the driving concern of CPS
and integrating risk assessment and management tools into protection practices, less attention has
been given to understanding the influence on CPS involvement of expectations surrounding the
developing autonomy of youths and, more specifically, girls. Even less attention has been given to
intersecting experiences of CPS involvement due to concerns relating to sexual abuse and female
adolescence. Responding to these gaps, my research aims were twofold: to provide insights relevant
to enhancing CPS policy and practice involving sexually abused teenage girls, and to encourage
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dialogue within two seemingly disparate academic domains – social work scholarship on child
protection and sexual abuse and Girls’ Studies1.
The study was designed as a qualitative case study informed by a girl-centred interpretive
framework. This framework emerges from efforts of Girls’ Studies researchers to elaborate “what
it means to do girlhood research” (Mitchell & Reid-Walsh, 2009: 214). At the core of a girl-centred
interpretive framework and in keeping with the principle focus of Girls’ Studies is a research
concentration “on issues about girls, for girls and by girls” (Reid-Walsh & Bratt, 2011: 9). Such
inquiry involves more than simply naming girls or phenomena particular to girls as the subject
matter under study. Rather, researchers adopting a girl-centred interpretive framework seek
to confront essential or universalized/universalizing notions of “girl” and “girlhood.” Bringing
attention to the intersections of age, gender and generation (amongst other facets of identity)
allows for and encourages research that challenges and deconstructs simplistic and homogenous
understandings of girls as women-in-the-making and girlhood as a temporary period of maturation
within women’s life cycle. A girl-centred interpretive framework for research encourages deep
and thorough examinations of the complex circumstances and contexts of girls’ lives and their
influence on girls’ identities, experiences, choices and behaviours.
Data collection involved semi-structured in-depth qualitative interviewing and document review.
Seven sexually abused teenage girls with a history of CPS involvement and nine CPS professionals
practicing within a local agency took part in the research. The study also involved a review of official
CPS documentation as well as the CPS case files of select participants. Collection of data from
multiple sources also worked as a strategy for validating my findings. It allowed me to note points
of convergence and divergence, to see the phenomenon under study “from different angles,” “to
pursue interpretations further,” (Simons, 2009: 131) and, eventually, to develop a comprehensive
portrait of CPS involvement with sexually abused teenage girls.
The teenage girls who participated in the study, while not a homogenous group, shared certain
characteristics. At the time of the research, all seven girls were aged between 15 and 18. All were
born in Quebec, English-speaking, and all but one were white. The seventh girl described herself
as “brown.” Six were attending high-school or adult-education programs while the seventh was
working full-time. All but one of the girls had lived or were living in residential or foster care. All
had been subject to CPS interventions due to concerns for sexual abuse during their adolescent
years. Each girl had been sexually abused by a male family member or a male adult with a close
relationship to the family and most (5) reported multiple experiences of sexual violence, including
rape by a peer, “gang rape,” and/or sexual exploitation.
All nine CPS professionals who participated in the study had direct CPS practice experience
working with sexually abused teenage girls. Six were women, three were men. Six were born and
raised in Quebec while three had immigrated to Canada as adults. While being the first language
of only three of the professionals interviewed, all were fluent in English. They ranged in age from
31 to 57 and ranged in years of CPS experience from 3 to 27. In terms of education, all but one held
a certificate, or bachelor’s and/or master’s degree in social work. The ninth had a bachelor’s degree
in psychoeducation. These professionals came from different points of service within the agency
and carried titles of child-care worker (1), social worker (5) and manager (3).
1 Girls’ Studies, now considered to be well-established as an academic domain, is a “unique and significant area of critical inquiry”
occupied by scholars from various disciplines committed to researching and theorizing around girls, girlhood and girls’ cultures
(Kearney, 2009: 2) and with close ties to third-wave feminist research and writing (Wald, 1998: 587).
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Heeding advice offered in literature on qualitative research (Merriam, 2009; Patton, 2015; Simons,
2009), I began my data analysis concurrent with my data collection, thus allowing me to go back
and forth between various sources of information, explore tentative hypotheses (Merriam, 2009:
165), and eventually produce trustworthy findings responsive to my objectives. Analysis included
being attentive to how understandings of risk and autonomy intersected with perceptions of girls
and girlhood to influence the protective efforts of CPS in situations of sexual abuse.
4. Establishing protection with sexually abused teenage girls
Consistent with neoliberal and risk-thinking ideologies, the reasonable next step flowing from the
identification of risk is the regulation of that risk. In terms of CPS, managing risk means adopting
specific strategies aimed at eradicating or reducing the identified risk to a child and its effects.
As laid out in legislation, once a CPS professional determines a child to be at risk and in need of
protection, the ensuing tasks are to “decide on the direction of the child” (YPA, article 32(c)), to
enact protective measures, and to monitor the child and his/her family in their efforts to manage
and reduce the situation of risk. The goal of such intervention, of course, remains that of ensuring
the child’s safety.
Common throughout the participants’ accounts was an understanding that establishing protection
in situations of sexual abuse involves three principal areas of intervention: 1. removal of the risk of
revictimization by putting in place strategies for prohibiting contact between the victimized child
and the perpetrator; 2. Supporting the child in coping with the fallout of abuse by ensuring the
child’s access to appropriate therapeutic resources; and 3. Scrutinizing, regulating and controlling
the risky choices and behaviours displayed by the abused child. This last strategy emerged as
particularly characteristic of interventions with teenage girls in the aftermath of sexual abuse.
4.1 Removing the risk of revictimization
As noted, once concerns for sexual abuse have been identified, an essential first step in establishing
a child or youth’s safety involves prohibiting contact with the abuser. Indeed, CPS professionals
commonly cited prohibition of contact as a “concrete” protective measure applied with the goal of
removing the risk of revictimization:
We’re very focused. Our mandate is clear. To make sure that the sexual abuse doesn’t
happen again, to protect them from the perpetrator. (Elise)
Concrete measures. “Uncle Joe can’t come to the house” or something like that. … There’s
not much clinical to it, you know, just… “You better listen, or we’re calling the police”
(Michael)
And so, this man, today, has no contact whatsoever with his children or with the family.
But the mom still has contact with him because when she wants money, she calls him, and
they meet somewhere in [the city]. (Alberto)
Michael made clear the authority of CPS underlying expectations of prohibition of contact.
Given the paramountcy of child safety, there is no option but for the family to respect the CPS
measures. Alberto’s comment was in reference to a situation in which the oldest of seven children
in the family had been sexually abused by her mother’s boyfriend. The mother, a refugee to
Canada, was unemployed and, having only limited connection with family in her country of
origin, found herself isolated in her new home city. Overshadowed by the priority of protecting
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her daughter from revictimization were the struggles she faced in suddenly being responsible for
caring for her children all on her own. While Alberto was quite sensitive to the challenges facing
this mother, his disapproval over her continued contact with the abuser was clear. He explained
that she was “making progress” but had yet to demonstrate to him her capacity to ensure the
safety of her children.
This latter situation described by Alberto provides an example of Krane’s (2003) observation
of the transformation of mothers into “mother protectors” in the context of CPS involvement
in situations of child sexual abuse. Expectations of maternal protection were common in CPS
professionals’ discussions of protection, as were expectations that sexually abused teenage girls
assume responsibility for their own protection. For example, CPS professionals regularly spoke of
the expectation that girls stay away from the perpetrator of sexual abuse. Still, despite Michael’s
above-mentioned suggestion that a prohibition of contact is a straightforward protective measure,
CPS professionals repeatedly noted that putting such a ban into effect with teenage girls was fraught
with challenges:
We ask for it in Court. I mean, if a 16-year old wants to go see her perpetrator, she’ll do it.
Regardless of a court order. You try your best to keep the kid away from the perpetrator.
You try the best to get the perpetrator out of the house but it doesn’t always work like that.
(Evelyn)
The reality is that they’re 16 and we have a “no contact” order, and they want contact,
they’re going to do it behind our back anyway, so… (Meghan)
While acknowledging teenage girls’ autonomous choice, CPS professionals questioned the safety of
their choices to pursue contact with their abusers “behind our back.” Discussing the situation of a
16-year old girl who had been sexually abused by a family friend, Evelyn commented, “she has both
pieces to her,” a capacity to act autonomously and vulnerability. Despite the prohibition of contact,
this girl continued to visit her abuser:
She has a head on her shoulders, but that doesn’t mean that she doesn’t want to belong
somewhere. She makes stupid decisions. She was back there all the time and lying about
it. She put herself repeatedly in that situation, but so do a lot of sexual abuse victims.
You know, most teens don’t have the knowledge or the ability to say, “I’m going to avoid
this situation. This is bad.” There’s some emotional need that’s being met, even though
it’s completely inappropriate and if you could take a step back and see it clearly from an
outside perspective, you would say, “Oh, well then, just don’t put yourself in that situation,”
even when it’s not so straightforward. (Evelyn)
Evelyn recognized the complex dynamics evident in the relationship between this girl and the
perpetrator and displayed a sensitivity to the girl’s confusion as she was being asked to understand
her situation as risky and accept responsibility for CPS’s prohibition of contact. Nevertheless, while
appreciating that it was not “straightforward,” Evelyn remained consistent in her conviction that
the girl’s choice to be in contact with the perpetrator was a “stupid” decision that left her open to
revictimization and continued risk.
The teenage girls interviewed were well aware of the CPS-imposed responsibility to avoid contact
with their abusers. They were equally well aware of a range of difficulties associated with this
specific responsibility to self-protect. Dora (age 16), for example, talked about the expectation that
she stay away from the young men who had gang-raped her and threatened her into prostitution.
According to Dora, after having expressed her insecurity and fear and her doubts that she could
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assert herself in the face of her abusers, her CPS social worker advised “that when they [abusers]
see you they need to go away. If they don’t go away, you call the cops so they can find them and put
them in jail.” But Dora doubted her ability to control contact with her abusers. She explained that,
since being raped, she did not feel safe anywhere; she was terrified her assailants would find her
and exact their retribution for her having reported them to the police. Unfortunately, in making
Dora responsible for self-protection, the CPS social worker, from Dora’s perspective, was unable
to hear her feelings of vulnerability and powerlessness. In a manner similar to Dora’s experience
of responsibilization, Sanni (age18) spoke of being made responsible for managing her father’s
potentially sexually abusive behaviour. In her case, rather than an absolute prohibition of contact,
Sanni was given the choice as to whether to see her father. The expressed expectation, however, was
that she not allow any inappropriate behaviour on her father’s part:
My worker was telling me, “if ever you see him again, what are you going to tell him?” And,
I told her, no, I’m not going to talk about it because it would be just way too awkward. For
me and for him. But then she said, “well, okay you have to let him know that it’s never going
to happen again.” And then she gave me ways to sneak it in to let him know it’s never going
to happen. (Sanni)
Paralleling Krane’s (2003) observation that preserving a child’s safety in situations of child sexual
abuse was largely reliant on the availability and ability of non-offending mothers to carry out the
work of a protection plan, the success of protective measures relating to prohibiting or managing
contact between sexually abused teenage girls and identified perpetrators relied largely on the
compliance and capabilities of the girls themselves.
4.2 Recommendations for psychological follow-up
CPS professionals made frequent mention of the trauma associated with sexual abuse as well as
their hope that sexually abused teenage girls might eventually heal from the abuse and be able to
go on to form healthy relationships with themselves and others. Therapy was oft cited as important
to girls’ healing process as well as to helping them learn to manage the secondary risks associated
with sexual abuse. Equally often, however, CPS professionals noted challenges to engaging sexually
abused teenage girls in therapy. Along with common complaints over a lack of resources, the CPS
professionals spoke of their powerlessness to force these girls to seek and follow through with
treatment. Manon, for example, commented, “A lot of those teenagers come into care and some of
them just don’t want to deal with it. We have therapy available for them. We have psychologists.
It’s free. It’s here. It’s therapeutic … but they have to be willing.” Thematic throughout CPS
professionals’ discussions on recommending therapy for teenage girls in the aftermath of sexual
abuse was a respect for their choice to participate or not: “it’s their choice; they have to be willing;
you can’t force them.” In this instance, a recognition of girls’ autonomy earned through their age
superseded CPS professionals’ recommendations. But how much leeway is really given to girls’
autonomy? Evelyn and Elise provided some insight in this regard:
If you have a teenage girl who’s going to fight you on getting help, then what are you going
to do? What kind of services are you going to give them? You’re going to force them to
sit in therapy? How’s that going to – they aren’t going to show up. Like it needs to be
something that you’re ready to do …which is unfortunate because then they spend years
putting themselves at risk. (Evelyn)
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Here Evelyn recognized girls’ refusal to participate in therapy as a risky endeavour but also accepted
that she could not force any girl to participate in “getting help.” Elise voiced a similar perspective in
speaking of a particular case of a sexually abused teenage girl:
We were searching for a psychologist for her, but she was telling us that she was ok, so we
waited. We were trusting what she was telling us until something happened. Not too major.
So we decided to push it because she needs it. (Elise)
The “something” that happened was that the girl became violent at school with her teachers and
classmates, had been caught getting drunk with friends, disrespected her curfew, and had put
herself in a position where there was potential for being in contact with her abuser. Provided that
the girl presented as protected from revictimization and displayed no risk-taking or acting out
behaviours, there was no need for Elise to use her authority to urge her to participate in therapy.
However, once concerns for risk escalated due to the girl’s behaviours, the need to privilege her
safety superseded respect for her autonomous choice. As expressed by Evelyn, and repeating the
CPS credo of privileging child safety, “sometimes we give them the credit of being adults, and
sometimes we don’t. We do it when it’s convenient … and if they’re not in danger.”
4.3 Scrutinizing, regulating and controlling risky behaviour
“Safety isn’t only about the sexual abuse,” Evelyn told me. Ensuring the safety of sexually abused
teenage girls was consistently linked to scrutinizing, regulating and controlling girls’ risky choices
and behaviours. A common thread weaving throughout the interviews with the CPS professionals
was a view of sexually abused teenage girls as complicit in their own risk through their participation
in risky, irresponsible and acting-out behaviours. Correspondingly, girls were regularly expected
to take individual control of their behaviours as a means of ensuring their safety and avoiding
more intensive CPS interventions. The sexually abused teenage girls interviewed were well aware
of such assumed accountability and equally well aware that being identified by CPS as risky and
irresponsible would lead to increasingly intrusive protective interventions.
As explained by Manon (CPS professional), a shift in concern from the sexual abuse to the risky
behaviours of sexually abused teenage girls brings about a corresponding shift in CPS interventions:
Girls are initially signalled, right… Youth Protection initially comes into their lives because
of sexual abuse. Risk. And often, by the time they come to need to be placed in residential
care, a lot of other issues have developed, such as acting out, running away, drug use,
alcohol use, gang involvement. So, the interventions then – a lot of times – become more
focused on these new problems that have developed. (Manon)
The interviews revealed that focusing on “these new problems” translates into efforts to ensure the
safety of sexually abused teenage girls by raising awareness and educating them to be able to identify
and avoid risky situations while simultaneously closely monitoring their choices and behaviours.
In this way, sexually abused teenage girls are cast as rational actors, free to make appropriate safe
choices once they have the right information. For example, Meghan spoke of educating girls about
how to identify and respond to perpetrators’ efforts to manipulate them into reinitiating contact:
The father owned two restaurants, and it was going to be an issue because the girl worked
in one of them. We had a Court order. He wasn’t to be there when she was there, but he
started calling, and her reaction was, “Well, what’s the big deal? It’s just the phone.” So we
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talked about – not so much risk factors, but grooming, what is he’s saying? … How could he
be influencing, because in her mind, it was, “It’s okay. I could manage it” – “he’s not” – you
know. I needed to educate her. (Meghan)
Equipped with necessary information about the circumstances that could give rise to risk and the
appropriate ways to manage such circumstances, it is assumed that, as rational actors, sexually
abused teenage girls are able to make the right decisions to ensure their own safety.
Compliance emerged as an important element contributing to CPS professionals’ interpretations of
the self-protection successes and failures of sexually abused girls and their corresponding decisions
about how to preserve the girls’ safety. Molly’s (age 18) struggle with compliance was evident in her
CPS file:
Molly goes through times of compliance, and then she does behaviours that put her at risk
or make her vulnerable to risk. Molly AWOLed from the back-up unit … and was prepared
to have an adult male store owner drive her back to [her group home]. Molly, with a lot of
counselling from staff and the worker, and in much conversation with her mother, began to
see that these choices put her at serious risk.
Earlier, I introduced Lupton’s (2013) conceptualization of compliance as the acceptance and
internalization of the objectives of organizational authorities. In the context of CPS involvement,
noncompliance tends to result in intensified interventions. In Molly’s case, despite demonstrating
progress in terms of being able to recognize her choices as presenting a risk to her safety, her
continued struggle to fully internalize and adapt her behaviour to expectations of self-protection
meant remaining in protective custody rather than returning home. Indeed, sexually abused teenage
girls’ failures to integrate information about risk and self-protection and their noncompliance
with the protective measures put in place by CPS professionals were regularly cited as reasons for
pursuing placement:
My part is to work with the family. But it depends. With sexual abuse, that’s not always
evident. I can think of a girl where the interventions were focused on acting out, running
away, drug use – a lot of times the interventions can seem punitive. When a youth, fourteen
years old, runs away, places herself at risk, you know, does not return to her group home at
night, well, we will back them up. (Manon)
I say to her, I say, “Listen, if you don’t follow your mom’s curfews and behaviours, you’re
going to the hellhole, again, of a group home.” (Alberto)
Recommendations of removal and placement of the child in a CPS resource typify the peak of
restrictive measures. Both Manon and Alberto indicated that in those situations in which sexually
abused teenage girls continued to make flawed choices, thus placing themselves at risk, placement in
the protective custody of a CPS residential resource is the obvious next step. The following excerpt
from Nicole’s (age 17) CPS file further illustrates CPS decision-making around placement when
risk is understood to lie with the sexually abused teenage girl and the dangers she poses to herself:
The risks that Nicole is exposing herself to now outweigh any inherent risks (recruitment
by gangs and contact with adolescent prostitutes) of placement. Furthermore, the
undersigned is of the opinion that placement provided the only hope for Nicole to be
contained in a safe environment.
In this case, despite the CPS professional’s recognition that placement itself carries with it “inherent
risks,” ensuring Nicole’s safety from herself remained the paramount concern.
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CPS professionals have recourse to a network of diverse placement settings when deciding that a child
or youth be placed outside of their home environment. This network includes settings providing
varying degrees of observation and regulation with the most extreme being “intensive supervision
units” (YPA) or, as the participants in my study referred to them, “locked units,” “closed units,” or
“back up.” Andrew, speaking of his concerns for Nicole, told me he “would have liked to put her
in a closed unit for 6 months a long time ago, before she got herself into trouble.” The “trouble”
Andrew referred to was Nicole’s abduction and consequent sexual exploitation after having run
away from her residential unit. Well aware of the restrictions of liberty experienced by individual
girls placed in closed units, yet committed to the paramountcy of safety, Andrew wondered whether
protecting sexually abused teenage girls from the “threats they pose to themselves” ought to take
precedence. In a manner similar to Evelyn’s comment cited in this article’s title – “If she’s not
going to protect herself, then how are we going to protect her?”, Andrew’s conveyed sentiments of
frustration and powerlessness with respect to the futility of his interventions aimed at protecting
Nicole from her individual failures to identify and manage risk. He concluded that for Nicole, “a
closed unit is at least somewhere where she can’t run and put herself in harm’s way.” The irony of
locking up Nicole in order to protect her was not lost on Andrew. Still, rather than concentrating
on the emotional and concrete circumstances that may have precipitated her repeated AWOLs,
Nicole was consistently identified as the problem to be managed. With a strict focus on risk and
a corresponding expectation of individual responsibility for managing risk, there is limited space
for CPS professionals to engage in interventions aimed at understanding and supporting sexually
abused teenage girls in coping with the fallout associated with their histories of victimization.
Averting risk remains the principal focus of intervention.
4.4 Collaborative decision-making or continued scrutiny, regulation and control?
Article 2.3 (b) of the YPA stipulates that any intervention “must, if the circumstances are appropriate,
favour the means that allow the child and the child’s parents to take an active part in making
decisions and choosing measures that concern them.” This stipulation becomes particularly salient
once the child in question reaches the age of 14, given that upon reaching the age of 14, citizens are
awarded certain rights of consent – or refusal to consent (Civil Code of Québec, 1991).
Speaking about her practice with youth, Manon told me “you have to remember that they have
something to say and can influence things in their lives.” She added, however, that encouraging
youth to speak up and be influential, is complicated by their implication in a context wherein
scrutiny, regulation and control regularly take precedence over shared decision-making: “being
in the Youth Protection network, they’ve had a lot of people make a lot of decisions for them.
There’s not a lot of leeway for teenagers to make their own decisions or to have a voice.” CPS
professionals’ discussions about decision-making revealed that efforts to work collaboratively are
commonly mediated by interpretations of right and wrong, of safe and risky. Collaboration with
sexually abused girls tended to hinge on perceptions of the girls’ capacities to identify risk and
adopt risk-management strategies. Elise explained, “I tell them you have the right to disagree with
me. And in court you have the right to say what you want, but right now I don’t think you are ready
to make the right decision about you. It’s not safe.” Similarly, Corrine claimed,
We should give them choices, because they’ll make their own decisions without telling us,
and maybe not good ones. If we don’t give them choices, they’re going to choose maybe
running away, maybe acting out … you can explain their choices but they need to learn
how to make good choices, … not negative choices. (Corrine)
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Such comments suggest that aspirations for girls’ autonomous choice are constrained by expectations
of rational action and continued concerns for flawed decision-making. Corrine’s deliberations
revealed how choice can be transformed into an opportunity both to scrutinize a girl’s capacities to
choose correctly and to educate by referencing “negative” choices. This process worries me in terms
of the potential for sexually abused teenage girls’ voices to be treated as evidence of their inabilities
to conform to the risk-averse expectations of CPS interventions and, as a result, silenced.
For Evelyn, involving sexually abused teenage girls in decision-making is “not straightforward” and
often confounded by their misdirected understandings of risk:
Oftentimes, their opinion about what’s keeping them safe and what isn’t is very different
than what the Law defines as risk… It’s complicated because they deserve to be included
in decision-making, but their ideas, or what they want, is often very different from our
perspective. It goes back to our job – to keep them safe. (Evelyn)
Evelyn’s comments give weight to my suspicion that sexually abused teenage girls are excluded
from decision-making when their responses to risk diverge from those sanctioned by CPS. Within
the context of CPS, safety trumps collaboration. Girls’ demonstrated internalization of official
understandings of risk as well as their capacity to negotiate risk the right way thus become central to
CPS professionals’ determinations of the pertinence of girls’ contributions to decision-making and
protection planning on their own behalf. Often left out of collaborative efforts circumscribed by
official understandings of risk and risk management are opportunities to integrate girls’ complex
experiences and nuanced understandings of risk into planning for their safety. This observation
is intended neither to minimize the sensitivity I heard in the comments of Evelyn and other CPS
professionals nor to deny that CPS decision-making and planning can be appropriate to ensuring
the girls’ safety. My concern is that a reliance on strict understandings of “what the Law defines as
risk” and the appropriate ways of ensuring safety, may result in confining sexually abused teenage
girls within one of two opposing identities – successful, safe rational actor or failing, at-risk or
risky irrational actor. In a context driven by concerns for risk, encouraging autonomy through
collaboration is easy with the first of these two groups of girls. Encouraging autonomy through
collaboration is distinctly harder and, indeed, likely to be discouraged with those girls displaying
the latter irrational identity.
A review of Nicole’s file revealed a clear preoccupation with her identity as an irrational actor
unable to help ensure her own safety, an identity that served to marginalize her wishes in protective
plans and actions. She was portrayed as untrustworthy and as lacking the capacities to recognize
appropriate means through which to manage risk:
Nicole has intellectual abilities in the low average range. Nicole is faced with interconnected
issues of security and belonging, presenting post-traumatic stress symptoms. These
symptoms are interfering with Nicole’s ability to use her common sense and social judgment
in interpreting and evaluating life situations, consequently affecting her consideration of
appropriate ways of action. She is unable to link how her own behaviours and attitudes
affect her present situation.
Noted in the file was Nicole’s desire “to return home to her mother;” her “feeling uncomfortable
in group homes;” and, her wish of “not wanting to remain in placement.” She had purportedly
identified her mother’s home as “the safest place for her.” While conceivable that a return to her
mother’s home may have been incongruent with ensuring her safety, there is also truth to Nicole’s
stated belief that, in the context of CPS involvement, she had “little control in her life” or “say” in
decision-making:
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I get pissed off. “Yeah, yeah, whatever. Go f— yourself. Do whatever you want!” Because if
they’re going to make my decisions then basically I have no say. You’re running my life. Do
whatever the f— you please, but don’t expect me to follow it. (Nicole)
Assuming she had no voice in decision-making and planning on her own behalf, Nicole saw her
only recourse as being to disengage from participating in CPS planning. While Nicole may have
found some power in her resistance, it is more than likely that such resistance further contributed
to CPS perceptions of her irrationality.
5. Concluding thoughts: Taking risks with risk
Understandably, taking risks is generally well beyond the usual domain of CPS practice. Evident
throughout the interviews with both CPS professionals and sexually abused teenage girls involved
with CPS was a narrative of prudence characteristic of neoliberal and risk-thinking ideologies.
With the common identification of sexually abused teenage girls as both vulnerable and risky,
management of risk in the context of CPS is largely taken up with the scrutiny of girls’ willingness
and ability to self-protect and the regulation and control of girls’ acting-out, risky and irresponsible
choices and behaviours.
In a general sense, CPS determinations of risk lead to the establishment of specific strategies aimed at
eradicating or reducing the identified risk to a child and its effects. This process of risk management
is identified in CPS legislation and policy as an official responsibility of CPS professionals. With
respect to sexually abused teenage girls’ involvement with CPS, however, this study uncovered a
transfer of responsibility for managing risk from CPS professionals to individual sexually abused
teenage girls. I observed these girls to be paradoxically viewed as vulnerable to risk – and thus the
object of CPS intervention – yet simultaneously responsible for its regulation through processes of
self-protection. But what happens with those girls unable to self-protect?
The notion of failure to protect is not new to CPS. Novel, however, is the observation of its
implication for sexually abused teenage girls. Feminist scholars have observed the inclusion of
“failure to protect” in CPS legislation, policy and practice in situations of sexual abuse as shaping
practice with non-offending mothers such that determinations of risk are based not only on
the substantiation of the sexually abusive acts of an alleged offender but also on observations
of the presumed failures of the non-offending mother to protect the child (Krane, 2003; Krane,
Strega & Carlton, 2013). Earlier in this article, I asked, what happens when the child in question
is a sexually abused teenage girl? I found that in ongoing CPS assessments of risk, considerable
attention is given to sexually abused teenage girls’ inadequacies and failures to self-protect. As
such, sexually abused teenage girls tended to be treated as being safe or at risk on the basis of their
ability to recognize and avoid risks of revictimization as well as their ability to choose and act
within expected and safe bounds.
There is no doubt that CPS professionals are sensitive to the various challenges and disadvantages
facing sexually abused teenage girls involved with CPS. Indeed, throughout my conversations with
CPS professionals, I heard their compassion and thoughtfulness with regards to the girls with whom
they intervened. I also heard their shared commitment to ensuring the girls’ safety. This commitment
often translated into efforts to mobilize sexually abused girls to take responsibility for resolving
situations of risk regardless of their difficult and/or marginalized circumstances. The underlying
assumption appeared to be that sexually abused girls, largely by virtue of their age and proximity
to adulthood, and armed with guidance and information about risk, ought to be willing and able to
make choices and take actions appropriate to their own wellbeing and safety. Such transformation
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of sexually abused teenage girls into self-protectors relies on an understanding of girls as rational
actors. Girls’ failures to live up to such expectations tended to produce identifications of them as
irrational actors and to trigger intensified CPS interventions centred on the scrutiny, regulation,
and control of girls and their behaviours. While the obvious goal of such interventions is the
protection of sexually abused teenage girls deemed to be failing to self-protect, girls were inclined
to experience these interventions as anything but protective. Girls spoke of CPS interventions as
carrying with them a range of potential consequences associated with losses of freedom and voice.
The transformation of sexually abused teenage girls involved with CPS into self-protectors reveals
an influence of neoliberal ideology. The successfully self-protecting sexually abused teenage girl
looks remarkably like the ideal autonomous neoliberal subject who is adept at identifying and
managing risk and prepared to perform as – or, in the case of sexually abused teenage girls, become
– a productive citizen able to participate in the surrounding world without the need for intensive
welfare state intervention. Performing as a neoliberal subject, or a self-protecting sexually abused
teenage girl, involves an individualization of risk management. But, as Beck (2007) suggests,
individualization should not be mistaken as a process of engaging free and conscious choice or
preference on the part of the individual. Individualization, according to Beck (2007), is compulsory
and involves exhortations for individual participation in managing our own biographies and risks
according to institutional guidelines – such as those of CPS – shaped by a neoliberal ideology.
Individualization represents a downloading of responsibility for managing risk to individuals, thus
opening up the possibility of success and failure, celebration and blame.
Perusing my research findings raised questions for me as to what could be done differently in the
context of CPS involvement with teenage girls in the aftermath of sexual abuse, a context driven by
concerns for risk. In response to such questioning, I arrived at three potential avenues for enhancing
practice: (1) collaborate with girls as essential resources in ensuring their protection; (2) develop
and nurture relationships with girls; and, (3) support CPS professionals in investing time in and
taking risks with girls. Rather than aiming to absolve girls of any responsibility for self-protection,
my suggestions are intended to encourage a collaborative practice truly respective of girls’ complex
experiences and situated knowledge.
Largely overshadowed in the responsibilization of sexually abused teenage girls is attention to the
complex influence of girls’ varied circumstances of difference and disadvantage on their capacities
to effectively identify and resolve situations of risk. Taking account of such influence, however,
might well contribute to developing collaborative interventions with girls. I suggest that protective
interventions aimed at implicating girls in the identification and resolution of risk – that consider
girls as collaborators in ensuring their own protection – ought to be founded on a deep appreciation
of girls’ individual risk-management efforts as well as their complex and varied circumstances.
Here, I envision a CPS practice that treats sexually abused teenage girls as social rather than rational
actors. A consideration of individuals as social actors means recognizing their situated knowledge
of their respective experiences and contexts and respecting their understandings and negotiations
of risk as complex, diverse and positioned in time, location and circumstance (Kemshall, 2010).
Attending to the details of a girl’s identity, circumstance and experience as well as how she
recognizes and manages potentially risky situations allows for the development of protection plans
that are realistic, suited to girls’ particular situations, and attainable. Ignoring or glossing over girls’
situated knowledge or reducing girls’ accounts of their experiences to a list of risk factors runs
the risk of alienating perhaps the most essential resource for ensuring the girls’ protection – the
girls themselves. Integrating girls’ situated knowledge into collaborative risk management involves
a certain tolerance for risk and uncertainty on the part of CPS professionals. It also requires
transparency and a willingness to negotiate where to potentially draw the line about risk in girls’
respective situations.
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Of course, such an approach relies on the development and nurturance of relationships as well
as an ability and readiness to engage in conversation. Both, however, are likely to be complicated
by the contemporary context of CPS practice which, with its concentration on the identification,
documentation and quick management of risk, allows limited space to individual CPS professionals
to take risks with time and alternate visions of risk (such as those grounded in girls’ situated
knowledge). Adding to this challenge is the caution with which the girls I interviewed suggested
they engaged with CPS professionals. The girls expressed being acutely conscious of the scrutiny
of the CPS professionals with whom they were involved. For a number of them, their awareness
of the potential to be judged as posing a risk to themselves or failing to protect provoked a lack of
trust and led them to censor their conversations with CPS professionals. With little doubt, such
censor limits opportunities for CPS professionals to fully appreciate the details of girls’ intersecting
experiences of sexual abuse and CPS involvement or to learn from girls’ situated knowledge. Simply,
it is difficult to imagine the possibility of developing collaborative relationships within which girls
might feel safe to voice their thoughts, feelings, doubts or experiences when fear of scrutiny weighs
so heavily.
As we concluded our interview, Sanni, one of the participants in the study, told me, “It’s cool that
you hear me out because I wouldn’t talk about all of this with [my social worker] … I’ve been really
comfortable.” In reflecting back on this exchange, I wish I had taken time to explore it further with
Sanni. What contributed to her feeling “comfortable talking” with me? What did she understand
to be the obstacles or possibilities of engaging in conversation with CPS professionals? Without the
benefit of Sanni’s reflections, I suggest that CPS professionals explore with sexually abused teenage
girls what might facilitate or impede conversations about their thoughts or experiences. Adopting
ways of communicating that respond to girls’ concerns about being scrutinized also means being
ready to deconstruct patterns of talking that are largely based on gathering information to assess
and manage risk. To this end, I urge CPS professionals to continue in their efforts to pursue
conversations characterized by attentive listening, transparent communication, cooperation, lack
of judgement, and expressions of caring and empathy (Carlton & Krane, 2013). I say “continue”
because I believe that individual CPS professionals already go above and beyond their CPS mandate
in order to connect with sexually abused teenage girls. But, as the CPS professionals I interviewed
suggest, they tend to do so “on their own time” and without the explicit endorsement or support
of CPS agencies.
In May 2019, Quebec’s Special Commission on the Rights of Children and Youth Protection
(Laurent Commission), convened to conduct a review of the province’s youth protection services
in the wake of the tragic death of a 7-year old girl in April 2019. A preliminary report released by
the commission in November 2020 included a list of recommendations to be submitted to the
government. A critical element noted therein was the inhospitable and untenable organizational
climate within which CPS professionals carry out their protection mandate. According to the
testimony of numerous interested parties, CPS professionals struggle to fulfill their protection
mandate within an underfunded system characterized by heavy caseloads, cumbersome bureaucracy
and increasingly technocratic approaches to practice. In such an atmosphere, it is difficult to
imagine CPS professionals being able to invest the time and energy necessary for nurturing trusting
relationships with girls, eliciting teenage girls’ situated knowledge of their circumstances and
experiences relating to risk, and privileging their voices and perspectives in risk assessment and
protection planning. In concluding this article, I add my voice to calls to not only increase funding
to CPS but also to recognize and support the clinical expertise and judgement of CPS professionals.
Historically, changes to child protection systems have arisen in the wake of tragedy and have
largely been shaped by fears of failing to protect children from risk. As such, over past decades,
CPS reforms have included efforts to standardize practice, facilitate quick decision-making, and
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reduce uncertainty in assessing and managing risk through the introduction of specific guidelines,
timeframes and systems of accountability (Brown, 2010; Munro, 2004; Parton, 2008). I hope one
day to see a radical shift in CPS policy and practice that would privilege the voices, experiences
and knowledge of CPS professionals and the families and children with whom they work while
allowing for a degree of tolerance for risk and uncertainty. Tolerance for risk, however, cannot
be shouldered by individual CPS professionals. Rather, organizational support in the form of
reduced caseloads, clinical (rather than administrative) supervision, access to ongoing professional
training, etc., ought to be integrated into the day-to-day functioning of CPS agencies. With the
benefit of organizational support and an ideological shift towards a degree of tolerance for risk,
CPS professionals ought to be able to slow down their involvement with sexually abused teenage
girls and invest in collaborating to explore and develop risk management strategies grounded not
in preconceived notions of appropriate self-protection, but instead in girls’ situated knowledge of
their identities, circumstances, and experiences.
RÉSUMÉ :
S’appuyant sur une étude qualitative conçue selon un cadre interprétatif axé sur les filles, cet article
porte sur l’influence des idéologies néolibérales et de la pensée sur le risque sur les pratiques de
protection de l’enfance auprès des adolescentes ayant subi des abus sexuels. L’étude a révélé que ces
filles sont considérées comme vulnérables et ont donc besoin de protection, tout en étant des quasiadultes autonomes, responsables de l’identification et de la gestion des risques dans leur vie. Cet
article illustre comment ces points de vue apparemment contradictoires contribuent à transformer les
adolescentes ayant subi des abus sexuels en acteurs rationnels qui subissent régulièrement un examen
minutieux de leurs capacités et incapacités à assurer leur propre sécurité à la suite d’un abus sexuel.
MOTS-CLÉS :
Protection de l’enfance, abus sexuels, adolescence féminine, néolibéralisme, pensée sur le risque
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