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Abstract

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.