OC made several claims about which respondent could be asking for a source. I'll assume it's the claim that the reactions of other people causes the "damage" since that claim's implications are most relevant. To which I wonder: Can respondent provide academic sources demonstrating that societal or cultural response doesn't exacerbate (or largely cause) victims' feelings of acute horror?
I have a couple of impressions about this. The average person isn't all that good at understanding where their feelings come from or separating whether they come from a specific event or the culture's evaluation of the rightness and wrongness of that event.
I also notice that academics often have a hard time getting funding for things that might have unpopular results. One only need to review the comments section of any article that mentions pedophilia to know that citizens are united on both sides of the aisle regarding how we should feel about it.
Unfortunately, most of our judgments in life still have to be made without the benefit of academic sources, simply because the number of such sources are rare and ambiguous signposts on the vast territory of decision-making we trek through. Instead we have to turn to other means of rationality.
I happened to come across an interview with one self-aware victim who was able to separate the event from society's reactions to it. This kid Jody Plauche was molested by his karate coach. Later, after the coach was in custody, his dad Gary Plauche shot him to death.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Plauche
ESPN had a good article about the case in which they interviewed Jody.
And how did the boy feel? He was angry -- at his dad.
"I didn't want him dead," says Jody Plauche, now 40.
"I just wanted him to stop."
Jody went on to be a four-sport letterman in high school,
but the most important thing he's done is teach parents
how to reduce the risk of pedophiles such as Doucet and
Sandusky molesting their kids, through his work at a
victims' services center in Norristown, Penn.
"I got a letter once from a woman, who wrote, 'I told my
daughter if somebody ever touches you inappropriately,
it's not murder. It's worse than murder. It kills a
child's soul.' So what's that little girl supposed to
say if she ever gets molested?" says Plauche. "She
doesn't want her soul to die. So she doesn't tell
anybody."
Jody's dad made the same mistake.
"My dad was absolutely too extreme," Jody said. "He used
to tell people, 'If anybody ever touches my kid, I'll kill
him.' I knew he wasn't kidding. That's why I couldn't tell
anybody. And that's exactly what he ended up doing."