Silenced at Home: Epistemic Injustice and the Symbolic Power of the Patriarchal Family in Child Sexual Abuse

The data used stem from a critical analysis of academic literature indexed in the Scopus database, focusing on studies addressing child sexual abuse in the context of patriarchal families.

Data collection involved searching for relevant studies and carefully analyzing the texts using ideas from Pierre Bourdieu about symbolic power, Miranda Fricker about epistemic injustice, and Boaventura de Sousa Santos about epistemicide. Key findings reveal that moral norms emphasizing obedience, sacrifice, and family honor are symbolically employed to justify and conceal sexual abuse, resulting in epistemic silencing that hampers victim recognition and recovery.