”Jag tror just att våra traditionella könsroller har betydelse” : En intervjustudie med socionomer och poliser om bemötandet av pojkar där misstanke om utsatthet för sexuella övergrepp finns

Sammanfattning: ”I believe that our traditional gender roles do matter”. An interview study with social workers and police officers about the meeting with boys where suspicion of sexual abuse is found. Lately, media and several famous people have claimed attention to the issue of sexually assaulted boys. It has been argued that these boys are being failed by society. The purpose of this study was to explore how professionals who meet boys in suspicion of having been sexually assaulted, reason about attitudes towards these boys and how they are being met. The method used was semi- structured interviews with police officers and social workers who in their jobs meet boys who are suspected to have been sexually assaulted. The theories applied for the analysis were Social Constructivism, with the sub-concepts of Gender and the Ideal Victim, and the theory of Professions. The result showed that both groups of professionals stress that the response the boys receive when telling someone about the assault, affect the level of shame and guilt they experience. The interviewees also highlight that there is a silent rule that this doesn’t happen to boys, and that there is a large number of boys that never report their assault. According to the interviewees, there is a lack of knowledge both among professionals who work with the boys and more generally in society, leading to that the problem is not enough acknowledged. Gender roles, it is shown, have to be taken seriously also when boys are victims. The result also showed that personal aptitude played an important part when meeting the boys: somebody with a lot of experience and education could do a worse job than someone with social skills but less experience and education.