Michael Salter
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 337327 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Michael Salter |
| NOMBRES | Michael |
| APELLIDO | Salter |
| FIRMA | SALTER M |
| AFILIACIONES | UNSW Sydney |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6446-9498 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 61 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 244 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 61 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1988 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 7 |
Child sexual exploitation and abuse
Introduction: Online services have expanded cross-cultural communication worldwide and have facilitated cross-border forms of child sexual exploitation and abuse (CSEA), highlighting cultural differences in conceptualisations of the crime. Methods: This article uses a case-study methodology to examine how cultural beliefs are integrated into CSEA risk assessments and policy responses in three differing cultural contexts: Malaysia, Indonesia, and …
The Terminology of “Minor Attracted People” and the Campaign to De-stigmatize Paedophilia Originated in Pro-pedophile Advocacy
This note presents our response to commentary critical of our paper “A Review of Academic Use of the Term ‘Minor Attracted Persons’.” We observe that this commentary does not engage with our primary argument, conclusions, or recommendations. Our core criticisms of scholarship on “minor attracted people” have been left unanswered by their commentary
The Prevalence of Self-Reported Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse by Adults in the General Population
This study synthesises the prevalence of self-reported child sexual exploitation and abuse (CSEA) perpetration by adults from the general population. We conducted a systematic review and proportional meta-analysis, searching eight electronic databases and grey literature sources up to August 1, 2025, supplemented by citation tracking. Inclusion criteria specified quantitative observational studies in English that sampled community-based adults (a…
Barriers and Facilitators for Sexual Trauma Disclosure in Boys and Men
Disclosing sexual trauma can support recovery and healing for victim-survivors. Despite evidence indicating low disclosure rates and long disclosure delays in sexual trauma-exposed boys and men, little is known about factors impacting disclosure in this group. A systematic review was conducted to consolidate evidence surrounding barriers, facilitators, and predictors of disclosure likelihood and timing in boys and men following sexual trauma (i.e…
Mapping Sector Capacity to Respond to Technology-Facilitated Child Sexual Abuse in Australia
Practitioners’ preparedness for working with technology-facilitated child sexual abuse (TF-CSEA) has attracted limited attention in Australia. This study maps the capacity of the Australian sexual assault sector to support victims of TF-CSEA, including victims of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and online child sexual extortion. A national survey of 124 practitioners was conducted to assess individual, organisational, and systemic dimensions o…
Co-Occurrence of Child Sexual Abuse and Domestic Violence
Research shows that different forms of child maltreatment often co-occur, including child sexual abuse (CSA) and children’s exposure to adult domestic violence (DV). However, the extent of this co-occurrence remains poorly understood. This article presents findings from a scoping review of articles reporting prevalence data for co-occurring CSA and DV. The review included systematic searches and reviews of both scholarly and gray literature. Stud…
The child sexual abuse material survivor as homo sacer
This article applies Agamben’s formulation of political abandonment to theorise the political status of survivors of child sexual abuse material under the internet’s cyber-libertarian regime. While the production, distribution and possession of child sexual abuse material is illegal in most jurisdictions, it is functionally permitted by the current legal and administrative structures that govern the internet, as evident in annual increases in chi…
Women’s experiences of shame while seeking care for complex trauma
Recent scholarship advocates for ‘shame-sensitive practice’ as an evolution of trauma-informed practice, recognizing shame as a key emotional component of trauma. This approach aims to prevent and address shame in clinical and service interactions with traumatized individuals. However, there is limited empirical research on how traumatized people experience shame in service interactions. This article explores the shame-related experiences of nine…
‘To say report it, well, it seems a little useless’
Online service providers (OSPs) provide a range of opportunities for individuals to engage in online child sexual exploitation, including the production and distribution of child sexual abuse material. As the failings of opaque content moderation systems have become apparent, a range of states have proposed or implemented new regulatory measures, amidst ongoing debates over the legitimacy of state intervention in online communication. This paper …
A Review of Academic Use of the Term “Minor Attracted Persons”
Although it originated within online pro-pedophile groups, the term “minor attracted person” (MAPs) has been adopted by some academic researchers as a neutral and non-stigmatizing alternative to the term “pedophile.” The transferral of this term from pedophile advocates to academic scholarship has been highly controversial. Claims that the use of the term “minor attracted people” normalizes or endorses pedophilia deserve closer scrutiny. This pap…
Parental Production of Child Sexual Abuse Material
The aim of this review is to summarize the available empirical research on parental production and to explore the discursive positioning of parental perpetrators within scholarship on child sexual abuse material (CSAM). Academic databases were searched using a combination of relevant terms, and the review was expanded as new terms were identified. The review identified 66 scholarly articles, papers, or books that referred to parental production o…
Holding the badness”
The study describes therapeutic experience of a sample of practitioners and concludes that this work is distressing and demanding, requiring therapists to find their own coping methods, training, and supervision. The study points to needs for changes in practitioner training, service delivery, and policy to enable more holistic care of clients reporting complex ongoing abuse. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
You Feel Like You Did Something So Wrong”
This article examines the experiences of female partners and relatives of child sexual abuse material offenders and the (il)legibility of their experiences within prevailing theoretical frameworks and policy responses to violence against women. Drawing on survey and interview data with clients of a specialist support agency, we situate the lack of understanding and support available to these women within the systematic depoliticization of child s…
I’ll be Okay”
Purpose This article investigates survivors’ experiences participating in research interviews about technology-facilitated domestic violence. University research ethics committees often assume that participating in research on violence and abuse is distressing for survivors. Scholars have called for research testing this assumption. This article contributes to the evidence base on the benefits and risks of asking research participants about gende…
The Contributions of First Nations Voices to the Australian Public Debate over the Criminalisation of Coercive Control
In Australia, there has been significant public debate over the criminalisation of coercive control and the impact on First Nations women and communities. This debate has included allegations of ‘carceral feminists’ using coercive control to advance a punitive agenda that harms First Nations communities. This article drew on the contributions to the public debate on coercive control by First Nations voices to amplify the views of First Nations wo…
The antiepistemology of organized abuse
Organized abuse, in which multiple adults sexually abuse multiple children, has an important role to play in the production of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) but has been relegated to the margins of criminological concern. This paper presents the findings of an international survey of 74 adults who described childhood victimization in CSAM and organized abuse, emphasizing the relationship between organized abuse and entrenched ignorance of it…
The “Freedom Work” of Feminist Domestic Violence Advocates
Since the 1970s, there have been dramatic shifts in domestic violence advocacy in Australia. Domestic violence activism emerged from the women’s liberation movement with a clear feminist and emancipatory agenda, but this work has now shifted into the mainstream. This has seen the previous focus of domestic violence advocacy, which included women’s freedom and liberation, narrow to an emphasis more on women’s safety and risk management. While this…
Reducing Shame, Promoting Dignity
Complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD) refers to the complex psychological and psychosocial sequelae caused by prolonged interpersonal abuse. Contemporary approaches to CPTSD are dominated by individualized psychological interventions that are long term and costly. However, accumulating evidence indicates that CPTSD is a high prevalence mental illness implicated in significant social problems, with a pattern of lateral and intergeneration…
Betrayed by my body
It might be assumed that victim experiences of sexual violence are characterised by fear and pain, and while this is true for many, the phenomenology of sexual violence is more complex than this. Increasingly, sexuality research is recognising that people can desire and have a positive regard toward sexual encounters that they do not consent or agree to, however there is limited scholarship examining victim experiences of pleasure or arousal duri…
Living in the Darkness”
This article draws on interviews with 20 Australian women subjected to technology-facilitated coercive control (TFCC), foregrounding their accounts of grief and institutional betrayal. Findings show that while the harms of TFCC were significant, survivors' experiences were often minimized and dismissed by justice institutions. Women experienced grief due to abuse and separation from partners who had betrayed them. This loss was compounded when se…
If I’m not real, I’m Not Having an Impact’
There is growing commitment to trauma-informed practice and increased recognition of risks associated with this work. However, the benefits of working with trauma-affected clients are under-studied. Drawing on interviews with sixty-three welfare, health and legal professionals in Australia, we consider the salutogenic dynamics of work with women with experiences of complex trauma. Participants articulated an ethics of care in which professionals …
Therapeutic politics and the institutionalisation of dignity
This article draws on theories of therapeutic politics to explore the role of institutionalised dignity as a medium for the social and political participation of traumatised people. Using the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse as a case study, the article offers a psychosocial account of shame and humiliation as key characteristics of the phenomenology of trauma, and presents dignity as the organising p…
A Comparative Content Analysis of Pre-Internet and Contemporary Child Sexual Abuse Material
Child sexual abuse material is now recognized as a major social problem, however prior to the internet, disclosures of victimization in abuse material were the subject of skeptical scholarly commentary. The veracity of this skeptical position has been subject to limited empirical scrutiny. The aim of this study is to analyze the content of a sample of 1004 images of pre-internet abuse material. The pre-internet sample was analyzed according to th…
The Trichan takedown
Amidst renewed concern about the prevalence of online child sexual abuse material, the global technology sector is refocusing on models of multistakeholder governance and the development of new technological solutions. This paper argues that the language of multistakeholderism and technological solutionism obscures the administrative and commercial practices that facilitate the widespread distribution of abuse material. To illustrate this point, …
The Micro-Sovereignty of Discretion in Legal Decision-Making
Justice and revenge in online counter-publics
This paper is concerned with the impact of online technologies on public representations of sexual violence. Drawing on Habermas’s theories of the public sphere and Fraser’s associated critiques, it argues that the Internet has become host to ‘counter-publics’ in which allegations of sexual violence are being received, discussed and acted upon in ways contrary to established social and legal norms. The potentialities of online technology (and soc…
Privates in the online public
Drawing on focus group research, this article examines the impact of norms of publicity and privacy on young people as they negotiate technologically mediated intimate and peer relations. This article argues that digital images of bodies circulate online in manner that reinforces gender inequalities, as the public feminine body is conflated with pornography in contrast to the range of meanings that can append to the public masculine body. While t…
Technology facilitated coercive control
This article describes domestic violence as a key context of online misogyny, foregrounding the role of digital media in mediating, coordinating, and regulating it; and proposing an agenda for future research. Scholars and anti-violence advocates have documented the ways digital media exacerbate existing patterns of gendered violence and introduce new modes of abuse, a trend highlighted by this special issue. We propose the term “technology facil…
From geek masculinity to Gamergate
In 2014, an orchestrated campaign of online abuse known as Gamergate overtook the global video game industry, calling unprecedented attention to the scope of gendered harassment on social media. Using Gamergate as an example, this article argues that explanations of online abuse that focus on its cultural or technological dimensions fail to capture the mediating role of online platforms in facilitating and rationalizing harassment and reputationa…
What’s Mum’s Password?”
Toys for the Boys? Drones, Pleasure and Popular Culture in the Militarisation of Policing
Trauma then and now
Currently, Aboriginal children are significantly over‐represented in the out‐of‐home‐care system. Drawing on Aboriginal trauma scholarship and decolonizing methodologies, this paper situates the contemporary state removal of Aboriginal children against the backdrop of historical policies that actively sought to disrupt Aboriginal kinship and communities. The paper draws on submissions to the 2018 Australian Senate Parliamentary Inquiry into Adopt…
Men's Rights or Men's Needs? Anti-Feminism in Australian Men's Health Promotion
In a significant shift over the last ten years, Australian men's rights activists have partnered with academics and health groups to rearticulate notions of injured masculinity via the vocabulary and practice of health promotion. This shift has given rise to a hybrid form of men's rights/health activism (MRHA) in which health statistics and theories of social causation legitimate ongoing attacks on feminism and women's services. This successful s…
Living in the Darkness”
This article draws on interviews with 20 Australian women subjected to technology-facilitated coercive control (TFCC), foregrounding their accounts of grief and institutional betrayal. Findings show that while the harms of TFCC were significant, survivors' experiences were often minimized and dismissed by justice institutions. Women experienced grief due to abuse and separation from partners who had betrayed them. This loss was compounded when se…
Law, Power and International Politics with Special Reference to East Asia
Working as both lecturers and researchers within the theory and practice of international law, we are regularly confronted with materials and issues that raise the question of the relationship between this form of legal regulation and the political exercise of sovereign power. In turn, this persistent confrontation raises the question of which type (or types) of analytical perspective is most likely to illuminate how this relationship appears wit…
Violence and Carceral Masculinities in Felony Fights
Contemporary culture is replete with carnivalesque representations of violence and this has accelerated with the development of online technology. Felony Fights is a website and set of DVDs depicting real combat between male former convicts and other men. Viewer responses to these clips reflect a complexity of meaning and symbolic associations between violence, power and masculine identities. Nevertheless, profoundly unequal relations of power sh…
You Feel Like You Did Something So Wrong”
This article examines the experiences of female partners and relatives of child sexual abuse material offenders and the (il)legibility of their experiences within prevailing theoretical frameworks and policy responses to violence against women. Drawing on survey and interview data with clients of a specialist support agency, we situate the lack of understanding and support available to these women within the systematic depoliticization of child s…
I’ll be Okay”
Purpose This article investigates survivors’ experiences participating in research interviews about technology-facilitated domestic violence. University research ethics committees often assume that participating in research on violence and abuse is distressing for survivors. Scholars have called for research testing this assumption. This article contributes to the evidence base on the benefits and risks of asking research participants about gende…
The “Freedom Work” of Feminist Domestic Violence Advocates
Since the 1970s, there have been dramatic shifts in domestic violence advocacy in Australia. Domestic violence activism emerged from the women’s liberation movement with a clear feminist and emancipatory agenda, but this work has now shifted into the mainstream. This has seen the previous focus of domestic violence advocacy, which included women’s freedom and liberation, narrow to an emphasis more on women’s safety and risk management. While this…
Abuse and Cruelty in Religious Bureaucracy
This paper draws on critical theories of organisations to question why child sexual abuse is a frequent correlate of male authority in institutional settings. While acknowledging the role of other risk factors, the paper suggests that the contemporary bureaucratic form is itself conducive to child sexual abuse. This argument is developed through an analysis of Case Study 42 of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abus…
Women, trauma and substance abuse
Despite the available evidence suggesting gender should be considered in the provision of alcohol and/or drug ( AOD ) treatment, programmes are frequently offered in an apparent ‘gender vacuum’. This article argues that the generalist ‘one size fits all’ approach of many AOD services is not gender neutral but should be understood as implicitly gendered in that it neglects the specificity of women's needs in relation to abuse, mental illness and p…
A Dialectic Despite Itself ? Overcoming the Phenomenology of Legal Culture
If I’m not real, I’m Not Having an Impact’
There is growing commitment to trauma-informed practice and increased recognition of risks associated with this work. However, the benefits of working with trauma-affected clients are under-studied. Drawing on interviews with sixty-three welfare, health and legal professionals in Australia, we consider the salutogenic dynamics of work with women with experiences of complex trauma. Participants articulated an ethics of care in which professionals …
A Comparative Content Analysis of Pre-Internet and Contemporary Child Sexual Abuse Material
Child sexual abuse material is now recognized as a major social problem, however prior to the internet, disclosures of victimization in abuse material were the subject of skeptical scholarly commentary. The veracity of this skeptical position has been subject to limited empirical scrutiny. The aim of this study is to analyze the content of a sample of 1004 images of pre-internet abuse material. The pre-internet sample was analyzed according to th…
What does regional studies study? From sub-national to supra-national regional spaces or Grossraum of sovereign governance
What does regional studies study? From sub-national to supra-national regional spaces or Grossraum of sovereign governance. Territory, Politics, Governance. This article makes a case for expanding the scope of current versions of “regional studies” to include greater emphasis upon transnational regions as of equal if not greater importance compared with an exclusive focus upon sub-national regions. The latter more restrictive approach is typicall…
It’s an Ethical, Moral and Professional Dilemma I Think”
This article investigates the experience and construction of women’s use of violence in relationships by domestic violence workers in Sydney, Australia. Most workers contextualized women’s violence within a critique of the structural powerlessness faced by women in violent relationships. However, the issue of violent women’s agency remains an unresolved dilemma for workers. This article recommends the use of a psychosocial approach to understand …
Getting Hagued
A Reply to Koskenniemi's Letter
1. I welcome critical responses to my publications that are self-consistent and based on a close and careful reading of what one has stated and its textual context. In this response, I reply to Professor Koskenniemi's criticism of my recent article in this journal but in a way that also deals with broader issues that go beyond the confines of relatively narrow debates over how best to address the legacy for current international law of Carl Schmi…
Grace’s Story
Some sexually abused women in mental health settings are reporting prolonged incest and yet little is known about the circumstances that enable fathers to sexually abuse their daughters over a period of decades. This article draws from the life history of Grace, a woman who survived prolonged incest, in order to document and analyze the interplay of familial, social, and political factors that entrap girls and women within prolonged incestuous ab…
Towards a Phenomenology of Legal Thinking
Towards a Foundational Programme for Legal Studies
Towards a Phenomenology of Legal Thinking
Towards a Critical Theory of Constitutional Law
In this article we will present an account of Hegel's critical theory of citizenship within the modem state. This account constitutes a potential resource for those who seek to engage in a critical analysis of the foundation, legitimacy, and manner of application of some key doctrines and assumptions of orthodox constitutional law. A Hegelian approach is shown to provide a distinctive, and arguably superior, conception of the nature of constituti…
A Dialectic Despite Itself ? Overcoming the Phenomenology of Legal Culture
Law's Community
Neo-Fascist Legal Theory on Trial
Getting Public Law Back into a Critical Condition
This article explores a series of issues that arise in relation to the methodology of conducting a critique of legal ideologies. It addresses the attempt by the Sheffield School of public law to formulate and apply an 'immanent' model of critique that builds upon the position developed by the Frankfurt School of critical social theory. We address difficulties that arise with the Sheffield School's interpretation of this model of critique, not lea…
Negotiating Nolle Prosequi at Nuremberg
It is well known that plea bargaining as such was not provided for by the Nuremberg Charter, nor is there any instance of plea bargaining in the trials conducted by the occupation tribunals under Control Council Law no. 10. However, as shown in this paper, in connection with war crimes committed in the Second World War, there were negotiations between the Allies and persons who could have potentially been charged with war crimes. The case of Capt…
Ribbentrop and the Ciano Diaries at the Nuremberg Trial
This article reviews the interrogation reports, trial transcript and the prosecutors' original administrative files to ascertain how extracts from the diaries of Mussolini's Foreign Minister, Count Galeazzo Ciano, were deployed within the Nuremberg trials to undermine key aspects of Hitler's wartime Foreign Minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop's, defence. These diaries demonstrated the extent to which Ribbentrop was personally implicated in a purposi…
Writing Law Dissertations
Carl Schmitt
There continues to be a remarkable revival in academic interest in Carl Schmitt's thought within politics and social theory but this is the first book to address his thought from an explicitly legal theoretical perspective. Transcending the prevailing one-sided and purely historical focus on Schmitt’s significance for debates that took place in the Weimar Republic 1919-1933, this book addresses the actual and potential significance of Schmitt's t…
Law, Power and International Politics with Special Reference to East Asia
Working as both lecturers and researchers within the theory and practice of international law, we are regularly confronted with materials and issues that raise the question of the relationship between this form of legal regulation and the political exercise of sovereign power. In turn, this persistent confrontation raises the question of which type (or types) of analytical perspective is most likely to illuminate how this relationship appears wit…
Violence and Carceral Masculinities in Felony Fights
Contemporary culture is replete with carnivalesque representations of violence and this has accelerated with the development of online technology. Felony Fights is a website and set of DVDs depicting real combat between male former convicts and other men. Viewer responses to these clips reflect a complexity of meaning and symbolic associations between violence, power and masculine identities. Nevertheless, profoundly unequal relations of power sh…
Beyond Criminalisation and Responsibilisation
In recent years, the prosecution of teenagers who use digital and online technology to produce and circulate erotic imagery (‘sexts’) under child pornography statutes has been the subject of sustained controversy. Debates over sexting have foregrounded the harms of criminalisation as well as the role of sexts in cyber-bullying and online child solicitation. While acknowledging the problematic dimensions of legal interventions in sexting, this art…
Through a Glass, Darkly
This paper draws on the author’s experience undertaking life history research with adults with histories of organized child sexual abuse. Organized abuse has been a particular flashpoint for controversy in debates over child abuse and memory, but it is also a very harmful and traumatic form of sexual violence. Research participants described how, in childhood, threats and trauma kept them silent about their abuse, but in adulthood this silence wa…
A Reply to Koskenniemi's Letter
1. I welcome critical responses to my publications that are self-consistent and based on a close and careful reading of what one has stated and its textual context. In this response, I reply to Professor Koskenniemi's criticism of my recent article in this journal but in a way that also deals with broader issues that go beyond the confines of relatively narrow debates over how best to address the legacy for current international law of Carl Schmi…
Women, trauma and substance abuse
Despite the available evidence suggesting gender should be considered in the provision of alcohol and/or drug ( AOD ) treatment, programmes are frequently offered in an apparent ‘gender vacuum’. This article argues that the generalist ‘one size fits all’ approach of many AOD services is not gender neutral but should be understood as implicitly gendered in that it neglects the specificity of women's needs in relation to abuse, mental illness and p…
Grace’s Story
Some sexually abused women in mental health settings are reporting prolonged incest and yet little is known about the circumstances that enable fathers to sexually abuse their daughters over a period of decades. This article draws from the life history of Grace, a woman who survived prolonged incest, in order to document and analyze the interplay of familial, social, and political factors that entrap girls and women within prolonged incestuous ab…
Justice and revenge in online counter-publics
This paper is concerned with the impact of online technologies on public representations of sexual violence. Drawing on Habermas’s theories of the public sphere and Fraser’s associated critiques, it argues that the Internet has become host to ‘counter-publics’ in which allegations of sexual violence are being received, discussed and acted upon in ways contrary to established social and legal norms. The potentialities of online technology (and soc…
Multi-Perpetrator Domestic Violence
A significant proportion of reports of domestic violence against women involve multiple perpetrators. Although the number of perpetrators has been consistently identified as a measure of abuse severity, only a minority of studies of domestic violence examine the role of multiple offenders. Data on multi-perpetrator domestic violence (MDV) is frequently removed from analysis in domestic violence studies, or multi-perpetrator incidents are treated …
Getting Hagued
Toys for the Boys? Drones, Pleasure and Popular Culture in the Militarisation of Policing
A Critical Assessment of US Intelligence's Investigation of Nazi Art Looting
This law-in-action study builds upon and extends a series of earlier case studies published in academic journals devoted to the disciplines of both international criminal law (ICL) and intelligence studies, whose main source material is recently declassified security documentation. Taken as a whole, and often for the first time, such in-depth case studies have uncovered the important role intelligence agencies have played (and presumably still pl…
Privates in the online public
Drawing on focus group research, this article examines the impact of norms of publicity and privacy on young people as they negotiate technologically mediated intimate and peer relations. This article argues that digital images of bodies circulate online in manner that reinforces gender inequalities, as the public feminine body is conflated with pornography in contrast to the range of meanings that can append to the public masculine body. While t…
It’s an Ethical, Moral and Professional Dilemma I Think”
This article investigates the experience and construction of women’s use of violence in relationships by domestic violence workers in Sydney, Australia. Most workers contextualized women’s violence within a critique of the structural powerlessness faced by women in violent relationships. However, the issue of violent women’s agency remains an unresolved dilemma for workers. This article recommends the use of a psychosocial approach to understand …
Political science (43 obras) · Sociology (34 obras) · Law (33 obras) · Psychology (29 obras) · Law (27 obras) · Criminology (25 obras) · Medicine (25 obras) · Poison control (24 obras) · Child Abuse and Trauma (18 obras) · Social Psychology (18 obras)