From October 2023 to February 2024, the Schwules Museum (SMU) presented the exhibition “Aufarbeiten: Sexualized Violence against Children and Adolescents in the Wake of Emancipation“, funded by the Capital Cultural Fund and the Independent Commission for the Investigation of Child Sexual Abuse. This exhibition shed light on the history of toleration of paedosexual actors in homosexual and youth emancipation movements and documented approaches to coming to terms with the past. The accompanying conference “In the Shadow of Emancipation” deepens the discussions and invites multipliers, researchers and those affected to explore the relevance of historical research and collective learning processes and to discuss the role of sexual and educational sciences. International perspectives will shed light on the global aspects of this topic.

In emancipatory movements, coming to terms with the darker sides of one’s own history is often seen as ‘soiling the nest‘ and is associated with fears of playing into the hands of conservative and reactionary opponents. However, actively engaging with the contradictions and ambivalences of one’s own past and present remains a basic prerequisite for redefining emancipatory demands, goals and strategies instead of allowing oneself to be determined by the repressed entanglements of the past and repeating its mistakes. Coming to terms with how emancipatory movements have enabled and legitimized sexualized violence against children and adolescents is an important building block in collective learning processes that go beyond prevention concepts in the narrower sense to address fundamental questions about shaping the present and future of emancipatory movements and coexistence in the communities associated with them.

Ingo Fock (Missbrauch e.V., Göttingen), Christopher Knoll (Munich), Markus Gutfleisch (Ökumenische Arbeitsgruppe Homosexuelle und Kirche), Annemarie Selzer (FAX Beratungsstelle Kassel), Dénes Vorberger (Tauwetter Berlin), Holger Wicht (DAH Berlin)

Moderation: Birgit Bosold & Brigitte Oytoy