Professional authority and sexual coercion: A paradigmatic case study of doctor abuse

Natasha Mulvihill

Social Science & Medicine, 2022, vol. 305, issue C

Abstract: Professionals occupy a position of esteem in society. Doctors and health professionals tend to score especially highly on public opinion surveys of trust. Sexual violence and abuse (SVA) by medical professionals towards their patients is a grave breach of that confidence. This paper uses thematic analysis of a paradigmatic case study of doctor abuse, drawn from a larger sample of semi-structured interviews conducted for an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) funded United Kingdom (UK) study 2015–2018 into justice and gender based violence. It explores how professional authority can both facilitate and conceal sexual coercion through building dependency; use of language and authorship of the official record; and by functional complicity and ‘data doubling’ within intra and inter-professional cultures. While there is an established literature on child sexual abuse, including in institutional contexts, this paper focuses on the lived experience of grooming and sexual violence of an adult survivor of doctor abuse.

Keywords: Professional; Perpetrator; Sexual abuse; Doctor; Authority; Coercion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:305:y:2022:i:c:s0277953622003999

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DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2022.115093

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