The Social Construction of Disclosure: The Case of Child Abuse in Israeli Society

As shown in the above illustration, the discourse of each professional group defines the disclosure “issue” by using slightly different terminologies, rooted in its professional orientation. In a broader sense, “passing the buck” is the key feature of avoiding responsibility in every professional group, as practitioners transfer the responsibility among themselves and between themselves and their clients. Thus, the co-creation of the avoidance of disclosure is the most viable option. The process is a constructed social reality of joint making between the clients and the professionals coming in contact with them.

How can we explain the fact that the professional groups responsible for disclosing and treating child abuse are making every effort to conceal it? To understand this, we need to turn to the cultural context of being a victim in the Israeli culture. Since the establishment of the modern State of Israel, the image of the victimized Jews was viewed as part of the humiliating past of the Diaspora (Sand 2009; Zimmerman 2002) and assumed a highly undesirable and negative connotation (Almog 2000). Therefore, the professionals in question can be seen as attempting to “normalize” victimhood by denying victims the status of abused and neglected children. This move is associated with an increased emphasis on the conscious break with the perceived Diaspora Jew seen as a timeless and placeless victim. Increased personal responsibility and empowerment have been regarded as an important building block in the changed narrative of the newly emerging society (Mayer 2005).

The theme of silencing and devaluing perceived victims, and at the same time valuing strength in the face of extreme hardship, may be a primary aspect of the Israeli culture (Segev 1991; Soloman 1995; Zimmerman 2002). Cultural contexts shape the construction of nondisclosure of child abuse by professionals, so that the social construction of child abuse disclosure in Israel can be seen as a way of silencing the victims. Moreover, it may be a primary aspect of any culture, as is illustrated in the theoretical frame of theory of basic values (Schwartz 2012). In this framework, human behavior stems from a basic value structure, which is identical in all cultures, from which all normative behavior is derived. This structure is not linear but circular, and thus for each basic value there is a contradicting one. The derivative normative behavior is paradoxical. It seems that this theoretical frame is applicable to the emerging construction of disclosure, as professional norms of mandatory reporting are countered by the basic human need to exercise gaze aversion in the face of recognizing victims and thus revealing the paradox of the disclosure process.

The cultural context serves as the primary and knowledge-independent source from which society constructs itself and its different professions and services. In this respect, it is the lived communal experience by which modern society identifies social problems and constructs intervention. In the case of disclosure among child abuse professionals in Israel, these cultural lenses are also the part of the impediments for an effective intervention in the phenomenon of child abuse.