Multiple Reflections of Child Sex Abuse

Using systematic sociological introspection, this study is simultaneously a retrospective participant observation of the experience of being sexually abused as a child, and an argument for a new writing format, the “layered account.” Acknowledging that sociology is a personal reflection of the sociologist creating it, the author has structured the layered account to emulate the freedom of the duree. It enables ethnographers to break out of conventional writing formats by integrating abstract theoretical thinking, introspection, emotional experience, fantasies, dreams, and statistics. The author concludes by examining the intertextual quality of the two texts—child sex abuse and social science reporting—presented here.