Ik heb dit woord nog nooit gehoord.

Publication date
2011Author
Hengeveld, W.N.
Rombout, R.
Wassenberg, L.J.
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In the Netherlands, three institutions for the deaf were founded over the past two centuries. Hundreds, maybe
thousands, of deaf students lived and learned in these institutions. There is little said, or signed about sexuality
in the deaf community. When it is discussed it is primarily used to warn for situations that occurred in the past,
referring to sexual abuse. This current investigation focuses on the sexual identity development of deaf
students who lived in the institutions from the 1960s until now. The focus of this investigation is on the
religious input of these institutions, the way boys and girls interacted in these institutions in day-to-day life and
the way sexuality was (not) discussed. One of the findings was that little can be found about sexuality; the
word was seldom used in the documents analyzed by the researchers. However, students and their parents did
want to gather information about this subject, considering the sexual abuse scandals that occurred in the past
years. Despite this need for information, it seems difficult to continuously offer education about this topic.
Another finding is that religion influences the way in which information about sexuality is offered to the
students, as well as the ways boys and girls interacted with one another. This research was a qualitative
research. Documents conducted from several archives scattered around the Netherlands were used to
investigate this subject, through analyzing text and tagging these text segments to the several components of
the research questions. Hopefully, in the future more research will be done on the topic of the deaf, sexuality,
sexual identity development and sexual education. It will enrich the life of those who have not learned much
about sexuality so far.