New Article: Eisikovits et al, The Social Construction of Disclosure: The Case of Child Abuse in Israeli Society

Eisikovits, Zvi, Jonathan Davidov, Laura Sigad, and Rachel Lev-Wiesel. “The Social Construction of Disclosure: The Case of Child Abuse in Israeli Society.” In Mandatory Reporting Laws and the Identification of Severe Child Abuse and Neglect (ed. Ben Mathews and Donald C. Bross; Dordrecht and New York: Springer, 2015), 395-413.

 

URL: http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-017-9685-9_19

 

Abstract

Based on 40 in-depth qualitative interviews with professionals, including law-enforcement personnel, educators, and mental health and health-care professionals, this chapter presents a study that describes and analyzes an insider’s view of the ways in which child abuse professionals perceive and understand the disclosure of violence. We found that disclosure is a function of social processes related to the values, ideologies, ways of thinking, and interests of the various social agents involved in the process. Thus, disclosure is not an objective fact-finding process and the subsequent assignment of visibility and proper societal reaction, but rather a social construction.