Conference Agenda

This paper explores the complexities of involving adult survivors of child maltreatment in research, with a focus on the value of lived experience, the empowering potential of participation, and the need for sensitivity when addressing emotionally charged topics.As part of COST Action CA19106, we surveyed self-selected survivors and volunteer students from Hungary, Israel, Macedonia, Romania, and Turkey on their interpretations and research expectations.

In line with the conference’s themes of storytelling and qualitative inquiry, it examines how survivors share their personal narratives, shedding light on their trauma and healing. These narratives offer invaluable insights that inform mental health care and contribute to a deeper understanding of survivors’ experiences, which might otherwise be overlooked.

The therapeutic value of storytelling in research provides participants with an opportunity for healing while offering critical insights into mental health challenges. This process fosters new pathways to healing for both individuals and the community, contributing to improvements in support systems. The paper also addresses ethical challenges, emphasizing the importance of anonymity, confidentiality, ongoing informed consent, and the right to withdraw without consequences.

Ultimately, it underscores the importance of respecting survivors' privacy and emotional boundaries while ensuring their meaningful contribution to research and efforts for social change.

This contribution presents the qualitative part of a multidisciplinary study (psychology, sociology, law), the first of its kind in France, on online child pornography offenders. Our aim is to better understand the personal experiences, the personality and psychic functioning of those involved in online pedopornography.

The research protocol requires 30 voluntary adults convicted of offences related to online child pornography (viewing, downloading, filming). Participants were interviewed in care centers at the beginning of their treatment. The protocol includes two clinical interviews (the first focusing on the “life story” model; the second on their practices) and the projective tests (Rorschach and Thematic Apperception Test, interpreted according to the French School method). The results are analyzed from a psychodynamic approach.

Using this qualitative methodology, the project aims to explore how these people represent and explain their relationship with online child pornography; to understand the meaning and subjective (and intersubjective) underlying logic of these practices - beyond “profiles” or general classifications.

Short clinical cases illustrate our initial hypotheses.

Identifying psychic fragilities and resources will enable us to investigate the potential for changing, and to consider therapeutic strategies that refers to individuals themselves, rather than to their types of behavior or preferred victims.

Research with adult survivors of child maltreatment (CM) is considered sensitive and uneasy for researchers but is essential for the understanding of survivors’ needs and their healing process. In the COST19106 consortium, we interviewed CM survivors from Turkey, Israel, Romania, and Hungary to follow how they interpret their experiences and identify themselves within the duality victim-survivor.

Based on the theoretical grounding of Georg Simmel’s social types, Mazur (2024) discusses victimhood between dichotomies like weakness/strength, sameness/difference, institutionalization/individualization experiences, and apology/versus unforgivable. Analysing the interviews and focus groups, we captured the survivors’ identification between victimhood and survivorhood, and how this is linked with research participants' needs and healing process. Several accounts mentioned the non-conflictual and dynamic aspects of the seemingly dichotomous concepts of victim and survivor, which might become dominant by turns, depending on the developmental life stage and the treatment process they went through. The presentation will discuss the themes connected to self-identification as a victim or survivor, like feeling included or excluded, taking responsibility for their healing, and preventing CM in society, as well as the potential of participatory research, that can empower survivors of CM to engage in forms of social activism.