What about when MOM is the abuser?

With the new year fast approaching I thought that a post that contains some information that would help people select and evaluate a therapist and therapy would be in order.

I am going to refer to and use some information from the book Navigating The MindField that is edited by Scott Lilienfeld, John Ruscio, and Steven Jay Lynn. It is a book I would recommend to everyone and was just released on December 10, 2008.


Selecting a Therapist

The American Counseling Association has these following questions they suggest you should ask a potential therapist:


Are you a licensed or certified counselor?
What is your educational background?
How long have you been practicing counseling?
What are your areas of specialization (such as family therapy, women's issues, substance abuse counseling, etc.)?
What are your fees?
Do you accept my insurance?
How is billing handled?
Do you offer a sliding fee scale or a payment plan if I do not have insurance for mental health services?
How can you help me with my problems?
What type of treatment do you use?
How long do you think counseling will last?

After you have had these questions answered by the counselor to your satisfaction, consider how comfortable you feel with the individual, since you will be working closely together during your counseling sessions. It is difficult to open up and share your problems with a stranger and you may feel awkward or anxious during your initial sessions. But it is also important that you have a "chemistry" or rapport with the counselor. Counselors have different styles, personalities, and approaches. Take time to evaluate how you feel interacting with the counselor and whether you believe that the two of you can work effectively together. If you do not feel at ease with a certain counselor, do not get discouraged. Instead, look for a different individual with whom you would feel more comfortable working with.

In Navigating the Mindfield they offer a few suggestions and a list as well:

The authors state that if you are treated with disdain for asking the questions it is probably a wise thing to think about how and why the person is doing so and how that person could help feel better and do better? If they begin with putting you down for being a wise consumer this is not a good start nor a good sign. There are thousands of therapists out there so keep searching.

1. How long is the therapy session?
2. How often should I see you?
3. How much do you charge? Do you have a sliding scale?
4. Do you accept insurance?
5. If I miss an appointment, will I be billed?
6. If I am late, or if you are late, what happens?
7. Tell me something about your educational background, your degrees. Are you licensed?
8. Tell me about your experience and your theoretical orientation. What types of clients have you seen? Are there areas you specialize in?
9. Do you use hypnosis or other types of trance-inducing techniques?
10. Do you have a strong belief in the supernatural? Do you believe in UFO's, past lives, or paranormal events? Do you have any kind of personal philosophy that guides your work with all your clients?
11. Do you value scientific research? How do you keep up with research and development in your field?
12. Do you believe it is okay to touch your clients or be intimate with them?
13. Do you usually set treatment goals with a client? How are these determined? How long do you think I will need therapy?
14. Will you see my partner, spouse, or child with me if necessary in the future?
15. Are you reachable in a crisis? How are such consultations billed?

After the interview ask yourself:

1. Overall, does this person appear to be a competent, ethical professional?
2. Do I feel comfortable with this person?
3. Am I satisfied with the answers I got to my questions?
4. Are there areas I'm still uncertain about that make me wonder whether this is the right therapist for me?

Remember, you are about to allow this person to meddle with your mind, your emotional well-being, and your life. You will be telling her very personal things and entrusting her with intimate information about yourself and other people in your life. Take seriously the decision to select a therapist, and if you feel you made a mistake, stop working with that one and try someone else.

Good advice and advice that the therapists themselves should inform clients of.

Sadly there is no guarantee that a particular therapist is ethical, responsible, educated, or proficient. For this reason it is important to check whether or not a therapist has a relevant academic degree and a license, but keep in mind that degrees and licensing do not guarantee that a person is keeping up with clinical and academic research or that they are basing their therapy on proper scientific research findings. If you find that your therapist has no degree and is not licensed, you should be very worried. What your therapist doesn't know can hurt you, and if an unlicensed therapist hurts you, there is no licensing board you can turn to for help or to report the therapist to. Therapists who base their therapy techniques on superstition, myth, and ignorance are more common than they should be. There are also therapists that use therapy to meet their own needs rather than the needs of the client.


How to Evaluate Your Current Therapy

Just as important as selecting a therapist is how to evaluate the therapy once you have begun or if you are already in therapy.

In Navigating the Mindfield they have the following list of Common Traits of Bad Therapy:


1. Inadequate history taken at the outset
2. No diagnosis or ill-formed, incorrect diagnosis
3. Lack of formulation or conceptualization of the problem and how to proceed
4. No goals, no treatment plan, or inappropriate treatment plan
5. Unclear roles or boundaries, including self-revelations and seductive or sexual remarks
6. No appreciation of discrepancy in power
7. Dependency and regression fostered
8. Therapeutic techniques mismanaged or inappropriate techniques used, including placing clients in group too soon, misuse or overuse of hypnosis and/or medications
9. Overriding adherence to paranormal theories or New Age philosophies that cannot be rationally or scientifically proven and that are covertly or overtly foisted on clients, requiring them to make tremendous leaps of faith in order to go along with the therapists interpretations and treatment
10. No rational theoretical connection between the practices and the goal of rehabilitation
11. Transference mismanaged, including failure to recognise, interpret, and understand its impact on the therapeutic relationship
12. Confidentiality violated, including telling client about others and/or telling others about client
13. Objectivity and professionalism lost, including becoming sexually or otherwise involved
14. Failure to monitor progress
15. Failure to treat or deal with presenting problems
16. Precipitous abandonment of client


The book also has a list of issues that are discussed in depth that can be very helpful. Anyone who is in, has been in, or is considering therapy should read this book. There is no one size fits all treatment or therapy yet if one looks to the late night television, self help section in the bookstore, or Internet you can easily find numerous pseudo scientific remedies that make promises to cure anything and everything.

Therapies should be science based, evidence based. They should have been tested and shown to be safe and effective BEFORE they are used on clients. Using therapies that haven't been tested for safety and effectiveness is just as dangerous as prescribing medicines that haven't been tested for safety and effectiveness, and just as unethical.

First do no harm should be the holy grail for all therapists. If you are a client that has begun or is considering starting therapy, you should protect yourself by asking therapists what therapies and techniques they use and if they have been tested for safety and effectiveness. Ask the therapist to provide references to controlled clinical studies demonstrating safety and effectiveness for the proposed therapy.

If a therapist is so irresponsible and unethical as to use therapies that have not been tested for safety and effectiveness, then you are probably better off searching for a therapist who cares enough about clients to test therapies before exposing vulnerable clients to possibly harmful treatments.

For therapists, it is their moral, professional, and ethical duty to investigate the scientific proof for safety and effectiveness for each and every therapy technique they use. It is also their moral, professional, and ethical duty to inform clients about the known risks, benefits, and alternatives to a proposed therapy before treatment begins and to get the client's informed consent.

And with the passage of the Mental Health Parity Act it is hoped that the junk science will be cleaned out more and payment will be made only for those treatments that are proven safe and effective.

I wanted to post this case because so many people automatically think that men are the only people out on the Internet stalking and preying on children. Because of this thought they often let their guard down with women. If the allegations in this case prove to be true it will show that anyone can be a predator. What is even scarier about this case is the allegation that this person was enrolled in college to try to become a child "counselor". Catharine Miller, 33 story below:

I was reading an article by a feminist researcher and author, Tracey Peter, that really caught my attention and caused me to find and read more of her materials. I wish to applaud her for the work she has and continues to do in this area. While reading through the article I wanted to pull select pieces out and comment on them. The complete article is:

(Please note that this is the second article on this subject. The first article can be found by clicking here)

Violence Against Women, Vol. 14, No. 9, 1033-1053 (2008)
Speaking About the Unspeakable
Exploring the Impact of Mother-Daughter Sexual Abuse



Findings suggest that the impact of mother-daughter sexual abuse on survivors is particularly profound and experiences of maternal violence are often fraught with disbelief.

I have said this before on here and obviously agree with this statement. I think that mother-daughter sexual abuse are the most under-reported sexual abuse crimes followed closely by mother-son. I also think that maternal violence in general is very much under-reported.

Within this newly emerging field of feminist scholarship, feminists primarily concentrated on child abuse and spousal assault within the context of “male offenders” and “female victims.” As such, under the rubric of “violence against women,” not all gendered harms were criminalized. Eventually, however, male survivors of child sexual abuse began to come forward, as well as male victims of intimate spousal abuse from their female partners. Despite the shift from the rigid binary of male only offender and female-only victim, sexual abuse of a female child by an adult female was—and still remains—largely neglected in the literature.

Again I agree. This is a new area that is just now beginning to be explored and discussed among some people. It is still met with a huge amount of resistance, disbelief, and anger by some as well. These kind of acts are not "gender" issues. They are people issues.

Ignoring women’s capacity for sexual violence only succeeds in ostracizing survivors of female-perpetrated sexual abuse.

I can not agree more. In the film "When Girls Do It" there is a scene where they mention 1,000 men who disclosed being sexually abused by women. Only 4 of them ever reported it. Just tonight I was reading about a case where a teacher had sexually abused a student and one of the first comments made on the story was "there ain't no such thing as sexual abuse of a fully functioning hardy male". Both men and women have talked to me and described how incredibly painful it is to even admit to themselves they were abused by their mother and almost unthinkable that they would tell anyone else. They can often speak of being abused by a male, because its expected that a male would it, but not a woman.

Because the goal was to listen carefully to a small group of women, 29 interviews were conducted with 8 women from a Canadian city. These interviews not only enable survivors to have a voice, which until now has been mostly silenced, but their first-hand accounts also help foster our understanding of what happens when experiences of being mothered do not match societal expectations of motherhood (Elliott, 1993).

When experiences of being mothered do not match societal expectations of motherhood. Every single survivor I have spoken with touches on this point in some way during our discussions. Always in the context that it is worse because it was "mom" who did it and "mom's" are not supposed to be like that.

Of the eight women who participated, six were sexually abused by their biological mother, one woman was sexually abused by her maternal grandmother (her biological mother died shortly after birth), and one woman was sexually abused by her stepmother (whom she self-identified as her mother).

On average, the age of onset of the maternal sexual abuse was 6 years old and the abuse ended at 13, giving a mean duration of 7 years.

6 years old. A defenseless child. I fear that as time goes by and it becomes safer for survivors to step forward we will see that this happens much more frequently than was once thought and we will all find out that, as a society, we have added to these survivors pain by not looking at these issues sooner.

Contrary to some of the literature, which suggests that mother-daughter sexual abuse occurs in the presence of a male co-offender who is usually the mother’s partner (Davin, 1999; Faller, 1987), in the current study there were no father/stepfather co-offenders. The absence of a male partner is consistent with findings from Myriam Denov’s (2004) study, in which all 15 of her male and female participants reported being abused by a lone female.

I think this will be another example of where, as time goes on, we will find that is more common than many people think or wish to believe and these studies are beginning to show this. If you have been sexually abused by a woman how many resources are there for you? How many specialists are there for you? Very few to none depending on where you live. For most people it is none. The next part speaks to this in part:

Although most of the women were in, or had received, counseling of some kind, not all had positive experiences when they disclosed the maternal sexual abuse. This was the case for Robin and Chris:

I told her [the therapist] about my mom and she said nothing . . . so I said nothing . . . I only talked about men. (Robin)

It’s been a hell of a journey since the first day I opened my mouth about anything. Whoever said it was better or easier if you broke the silence! It’s a real mixed bag. Mostly opening my mouth over the last 20 years has not been a great experience. It’s actually, most of the way, been really horrific. (Chris)

These experiences seem to be similar to findings from analysts studying the effects of lesbian domestic violence (Girshick, 2002; Renzetti, 1998; Ristock, 2002; Taylor & Chandler, 1995), who report that many women do not seek community resources, such as individual counseling or group therapy. They believe these services are either not “for them” or the facilities do not have adequate training and written material to deal with same-sex abuse. Similar opinions were voiced by survivors of mother-daughter sexual abuse.

I do not know of anyone or any agency near where I live that has specialized training, experience and written materials that deal with mother-daughter sexual abuse/mother-son sexual abuse. I have only found one website so far that is dedicated to Mother-Daughter sexual abuse and that is Making Daughters Safe Again (MDSA). Dr. Christine Hatchard runs the site and states "However, recent research consistently reveals that females account for about one in four offenders".

Below are narratives from Chris and Nicky about how they felt excluded from mainstream counseling services and popular healing literature on sexual abuse.

I have tried incest groups, but they are all dealing with the guy. . . . Where was the place for me? And when I would try to talk about it, everyone would look down and fumble! And the books didn’t work. Courage to Heal and all of the others . . . Self-help books —I can’t use them. I found them totally useless. (Chris)

I have never, in all my reading have I ever come across stuff about mother-daughter sexual abuse. . . . So I hid that part. . . . It’s like it is a big dark secret and I held that secret for 30 something years! (Nicky)

There needs to be more of every resource available for people who have been abused by anyone. These comments demonstrate a tragic side effect of focusing only on males as offender's and females as victims of males. By ignoring or minimizing the experience we victimize these survivors by not being there for them, by not making sure we have at least some services available for them.

Another strategy for resistance is telling someone about the abuse. For many of the women interviewed, resistance in the form of disclosing that it was their mother who was the abuser was often met with disbelief. As a result, most women grew up thinking that no one would believe them, even if they found the courage to speak.

This goes back to my belief that mother-daughter/mother-son sexual abuse is the most under-reported sexual abuse crime there is. I have also been told this exact thing from survivors both male and female.

Most research on mother-daughter sexual abuse acknowledges the tremendous fear survivors have of not being believed (Longdon, 1993; Ogilvie & Daniluk, 1995; Rosencrans, 1997; Saradjian, 1996). Consistent with this literature, the majority of women interviewed for this study were adamant that no one would ever believe them. Even though most disclosed their male-perpetrated sexual victimization (all but one woman reported also being sexually abused by a male at some point in their lives), several women reported that they rarely, if ever, told family, friends, and even therapists about the maternal abuse.

I am happy that Ms. Peter put this part in here. This goes beyond official reporting and shows that it is not disclosed to anyone. Ever even though they do often disclose to someone about being sexually abused by a male (which we all know is under-reported itself).

Unfortunately for Pat, when she did tell, her fears were founded.

I tried [to talk to a teacher at 6 years old] but they went running to my mom and asked her about my accusations and of course she denied it. . . . I guess they thought I was lying. . . . They really didn’t believe what I was trying to tell them that my mother was doing. . . . I learned not to say anything to anybody, just to keep it inside me. . . . This is only the second time I’m talking about this in my lifetime. (Pat)

Much like Pat’s account, Lee was also someone who rarely spoke about her mother’s sexual abuse. She comments

I never told anyone. Even my current partner does not know. She knows about everything else, but that’s the one thing . . . I’ve always wondered why I never said anything. . . .

[S]ome of me thinks that maybe it’s because I am afraid to admit that a woman would do something like that . . . because society looks on it as men do it and women don’t.

Men do it and women don't. Or when women do it, it is often seen as something other than sexual abuse or there are excuses made for why the woman was doing it. Many people are willing to believe a woman was mentally ill if she does it but a male is seen in a different light even if he was mentally ill as well.

Even professionals are not safe from their own sexists views. Calling one category of female offenders Teacher/Lover is accepted by many but I doubt it would be acceptable if we called male offenders a Teacher/Lover category of sex offender. The label for the category is misguided not because of the offenders. It is misguided because of the researchers own bias views. Not to mention how it must feel to be a victim and hear that your offender was a "teacher/lover" offender. While the reasons for the category may be valid I would say that they equally apply to both genders but because of the "men do it and women don't" view ingrained in many people we overlook this fact.

Lee’s silence was due, at least in part, to compulsory heterosexuality (Rich, 1980), which discursively produces a social disbelief over the potential for woman on-woman sexual abuse (Elliott, 1993; Rosencrans, 1997).

Nicky also spoke about how assumptions of exclusive intersexual violence were a definite barrier to disclosing maternal sexual abuse. For Nicky, part of her reluctance was a fear that others would assume she was a lesbian, which would somehow imply that she was responsible for her mother’s sexual abuse.

I think I kept it in for so long and why I didn’t tell anyone about it is because I thought people were going to think I was gay. . . . I don’t think people think that it’s so bad if it is a man who sexually abuses you, but if it is a woman, then they say, “What is that all about? Did you have something to do with it?”

Nicky’s fear of being perceived as a lesbian, I believe, speaks to the dominance of heterosexism in our society. For instance, I am not aware of female survivors of male-perpetrated sexual abuse “worrying” about their perceived heterosexuality. If there is no connection between heterosexuality and childhood trauma among female survivors of male-perpetrated sexual abuse, why is it assumed that there may be a connection between mother-daughter sexual abuse and homosexuality?

And this is another area that I really have not spoke about on here at all I am happy that Ms. Peters looked at this issue. Add in a religious piece and it gets even worse.

Consistent with many of the women to whom I spoke, Robin refrained from telling others about her mother’s sexual abuse because, based on her past experience, she was convinced no one would believe her.

One woman laughed at me when I told her that my mom used to molest me when I was a kid. . . . She said, “As if your mom would do that.” . . . After that, I wouldn’t tell anybody anything . . . until recently I have started to tell people again.

[How has it been now?]

It’s still, a lot of people don’t believe it, because it is not something that is really openly talked about. Like other than the fathers and stuff that’s been going on for a long time.

[How does that make you feel?]

It makes me mad because they don’t understand. Like when I saw the paper talking about the study that you are doing, I was like, “Oh yes, finally people are going to know how bad it really is and how it impacts people.” I thought, “Right on, it’s actually going to be out there now.”

She was laughed at when she told another woman. It should never be acceptable for a child to say they are being hurt and have someone laugh at them. "As if your mom would do that". That sums up the belief for many people. People often have a hard time believing it when a father or a man does it but for a mother to do this? No way she could. Is it any wonder that they keep their silence and take it to the grave with them?

Like Robin, Nicky elected to remain silent because she was convinced that no one would believe her.

I think in society who would think your own mother would do that to you? Who would believe you? And when I first disclosed my abuse, I told everybody. . . . I wanted everyone to know that I was an abuse survivor. . . . But I never told them about my mom, just all the others.

[Why didn’t you say anything about your mother earlier?]

[I] was ashamed. It was like it was my sin. . . . Like I touched my mother and I let her touch me. . . . It was the most shameful thing because it was my own mother. Yeah, and everywhere you get these things that tell you that it can’t be true. So every time I get a memory, my mind would say that cannot be true.

A theme that repeatedly pops up throughout Ms. Peter's paper and in every survivor I have spoken with. They never tell anyone about their mother sexually abusing them and intense feelings of shame about it.

Ironically, Child and Family Services (CFS) had a regular presence in Nicky’s home, and yet she never disclosed the abuse because they were convinced that her father was the one perpetrating the sexual abuse. No one thought to ask Nicky about her mother.

Because men do it and women don't mindsets. This is just another example of someone having to suffer because the thought never even crossed any one's mind that a mother might be sexually abusing her children. This kind of subtle sexism is rampant. For example if you go to your doctor for an ob/gyn exam and he is male and you are female there will usually be a female present. But if the doctor is female there is often no one but the doctor and you. Think about it.

Physically, Nicky’s father did sometimes strike her, but she refused to disclose his violence to CFS workers because she did not want her father removed from the home. For Nicky, then, resisting meant remaining silent because she was too afraid to be left alone with her mother, who violated her much more than her father did. Thus, in the mind’s eye of a small child, it came down to choosing the lesser of two evils.

What a terrible position for a young child to be forced into. I highly doubt that anyone would have believed Nicky if she had told them the truth anyway. No way a mother can be violating her children more than a father would. And if they did the mother would have been labeled "male co-offender" category. If you can speak to survivors you will find that "female co-offender" category would apply equally to some though it is not used.

Sadly, Nicky’s experience with CFS was not unique. In speaking with survivors, it was deeply concerning how many women came into contact with doctors, nurses, teachers, CFS, the police, and the courts for matters related to probable sexual abuse.

I agree. How many doctors, nurses, counselors, social workers, etc will go in to talk to a girl (or boy) about being sexually abused and they have the mother sitting right there in the room? The next part shows an example of this:

For example, when Chris was prepubescent, she went to the doctor with her mother. On examining her vaginal area (for reasons unknown), he simply informed Chris’s mother that her hymen had been broken. Implicit in his actions were the assumptions that first, no sexual abuse had even taken place, and second, that Chris’s mother could not possibly be involved in breaking her daughter’s hymen, perhaps because of the absence of a penis (Girshick, 2002). Unfortunately, the doctor was wrong on both counts.

The story of inaction by Chris’s physician offers a vivid illustration of the outcome of mainstream assumptions, produced through discursive constructions of both mothers and violence—in a sense how one is an oxymoron for the other. This enforces a tautological form of logic. Social constructions of mothers and violence act as barriers to recognizing a mother’s potential to sexually abuse her child, which silences survivors and leaves them with little social voice from which to speak. However, some children find a way to resist and either speak out or position themselves among presumably safe authorities. Yet, they are not heard precisely because social constructions of mothers and violence operate to silence their experiences. If such circular reasoning is confusing to follow, try imagining how difficult it would be within the mind of a 7-year-old, which is the age at which many of the women interviewed would have had to grapple with this tautological confusion.

Thank you Ms. Peters for that last part. I agree and think you expressed it perfectly.

Consistent with other research, all the women interviewed expressed a deep distrust of others. With specific reference to maternal sexual abuse, most women reported having a poignant distrust of other women. For Jackie, this meant having few female friends, but it also led her to distrust female physicians.

It has kept me from having female friends. I still don’t have that many female friends. It is hard for me to trust people, especially females. Even doctors, I would prefer a male doctor.

Like Jackie, Robin and Nicky expressed an intense distrust of female doctors and dentists; as a result, each specifically requests to see a male health practitioner.

When I was younger, I couldn’t go to the dentist because we had a female dentist and I used to think that she’d put me to sleep and be touching me. (Robin)

I went to a female physician once for a pap test and I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t stop crying and I was shaking. (Nicky)

Yet this is often not even considered by some. A Director of a Domestic Violence shelter made this comment:

If you look at the survivors themselves, whether they are male or female, they would rather talk to a woman than a man. People always say that men would rather talk to a man, which is a common misconception. They would rather talk to a woman because they are more understanding.

It is pretty obvious that she had not even considered female offenders and their survivors. So when these survivors call a shelter for help they are often, if they want help anyway, forced to deal with other women because of thinking along these lines. This kind of thinking just makes things worse for the survivors AND for the offenders when they/if they finally seek help.

Given the horrific violence suffered from multiple men in her life, Nicky realizes that her greater distrust in women is not “rational.” This “irrationality,” I believe, speaks to the power of dominant social constructions of motherhood (FitzRoy, 1997; Rosencrans, 1997), whereby a mother’s abusive behavior toward a child shatters a trust that is not easily restored and which, therefore, get transferred to all women. It is this shattered trust that caused most women to define the maternal sexual abuse as more damaging. Such a distinction was made by Pat.

It was worse from my mom because my mom was the one I trusted. She was my mother
and I was supposed to trust her. . . . But she didn’t give me the kind of love that she
should have. She gave me something else.

Chris also spoke about how surviving maternal sexual abuse has been more pronounced
compared to men.

Having experienced both male- and female-perpetrated sexual abuse, I would say it is different. The male is very out-front. Ostentatiously the power trip is really obvious. . . . It is there in the smell, like men who are aggressive smell like burning metal. . . . They know they are violating power. They know they are using their power, whether it is muscle strength, age, dominance, societal, whatever. For women, like my mother, it is more passive aggressive. It is more manipulative because it is put under the banner of love and nurture, which it isn’t.

Every single survivor I have spoke with has stated (those that have been abused by men and women) basically the same things. They have all talked about how much worse it was, many times worse for some.

Many women described feeling betrayed by their mother’s abuse. This was the case for Robin.
The betrayal is more. I think it would have been easier to be abused by my father than my mother because it is more seen in everyone’s eyes that a father would do something like that and not the mother.

And we see again the societal view that a father would do something like that but not a mother and because of this belief how much more damage it causes when a mother does do it.

It seems that the greater sense of betrayal stems, at least in part, from a belief that a shared gender ought to result in more empathic care (Ogilvie & Daniluk, 1995). In this regard, there does seem to be an assumption of an implicit unity of women, especially within the family (Riley, 1988). Given this assumption, and the powerful effects of motherhood and femininity discourses, it makes sense that survivors would perceive a greater betrayal from sexually abusive mothers (Diduck, 1998; Douglas & Michaels, 2004; Eyer, 1996; Thurer, 1994).

To many, the rhetoric of violence is nothing new. We know it exists. We know the damage. And we know that the impact is often a wound that even time cannot heal. Such is the case for mother-daughter sexual abuse. Yet, by making such a claim, I am not suggesting that mother-daughter sexual abuse is somehow worse than male-perpetrated sexual violence. Rather, my aim is to highlight the ways in which popular stereotypes of motherhood and violence work to further exacerbate survivors’ struggles to make sense of the abuse.

Where do we go from here? As a beginning, mother-daughter sexual abuse needs to be recognized. Maternal sexual abuse needs to be framed within a larger discursive context to challenge some of the mainstream assumptions about mothers and sexual violence. As a society, we need to stop denying the possibility of mother-daughter sexual abuse. Until then, survivors will continue to have few linguistic resources to make sense of the violence.

Ms. Peter's said "my aim is to highlight the ways in which popular stereotypes of motherhood and violence work to further exacerbate survivors’ struggles to make sense of the abuse." and that is my aim for doing this entire blog.

All to often I have seen cases in which the offender (male and female) attempts to blame the victim. In the case below we see another example of this being done:


Phylecia Humphries was found guilty Friday of sexually assaulting her former foster son and was sentenced to 10 years probation and 90 days in the Brown County Jail. She was also assessed a $10,000 fine.

Humphries, 26, faced a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison for the second degree felony.

District Attorney Micheal Murray asked the same jurors who convicted Humphries Friday morning - after less than an hour’s deliberation - to consider a range of 15 to 20 years in prison. After deliberating for about five hours, jurors sentenced her to probation. District Judge Steve Ellis assessed the 90-day jail sentence after Murray requested that Humphries spend 180 days in jail.

“We’re proud of the jury,” defense attorney Kirby Roberts, who had asked jurors in his closing statement to sentence his client to probation, said after the trial ended. “They did what we asked of them. They made the appropriate decision.”


I always wonder what goes through people's minds when they come up with a sentence like this. From a possible 20 years down to probation. For sexually abusing a 13 year old.


Murray said he thanks jurors for their hard work, but said he is concerned that “we’re sending a mixed message that when it’s a female-on-male crime, it’s not as serious as a male-on-female crime.”

Murray made a similar point in his closing argument in the trial’s sentencing phase. If a foster father impregnated his 13-year-old foster daughter, Murray told jurors, there would be no discussion about the possibility of probation.


Mr. Murray is right in regards to this case and other similar cases. But such light sentences are not exclusive to only female offenders.


Humphries’ foster son was 13 when he and Humphries began a sexual relationship in 2005, and Humphries became pregnant by the boy, testimony showed. She gave birth to the boy’s child, a girl, in June 2006.

A second former foster teen testified that he had also had sex with Humphries. Humphries said in earlier testimony that never happened.

After jurors returned the guilty verdict, Humphries took the witness stand as the punishment phase began. She asked jurors to place her on probation, and said, crying, “I am sorry about everything that’s ever happened. Everything I do, I try to be a good person. I know we all make mistakes.

Murray asked Humphries if she takes responsibility for having sex with her 13-year-old foster son. “I was partially to blame,” Humphries said.

This is/was not a mistake. Sexually abusing a child (or children) in your care is not a mistake. You did not accidentally sexually abuse them numerous times. And how can an adult and parent figure not be fully to blame for sexually abusing a 13 year old?


The defense argued that Humphries had given in to the 13-year-old boy while she was depressed and emotionally fragile. After the first encounter, the defense argued, the boy blackmailed her into four more encounters.


This case, like many others, is about the offender looking out for their own needs and not the needs of their children. The offender is interested in is getting what they want, ignoring the victims well being entirely. The common thread is the focus on their own needs, wants and desires. - Read the entire article here

This story demonstrates domestic violence being committed by women against women:


BOYNTON BEACH — Carol Anne Burger killed her former lover by stabbing her 222 times with a Phillips-head screwdriver and then took pains to hide her crime, police said Wednesday.

Jessica Kalish, who shared a house with Burger despite breaking up with her more than a year ago, was found last Thursday stuffed in the backseat of her gun-metal BMW sedan, abandoned behind a medical office at 2300 S. Congress Avenue. Her blood was splashed around the rear end and undercarriage of the car, as if her killer had tried to load her into the trunk. The driver-side window was shattered.


You can read the entire article HERE and there are numerous other articles on this crime as well.

Sadly many women who are committing domestic violence crimes against other women are often overlooked or ignored by some DV programs. With the focus of many of these programs being on men they miss the opportunity to assist these women and their victims.

Here is yet another awful case in which a judge needs someone to educate them about sexual abuse:


TAMPA -- A judge sentenced a former Middleton High School special-education teacher to five years of sex offender probation today for having sex with a student.

Christina Butler, 34, pleaded guilty in October to her charges, which include contributing to the delinquency of a minor and two counts of unlawful sexual activity with a minor.

She faced more than 30 years in prison. State sentencing guidelines called for at least 11 years behind bars.

During police questioning last year, she admitted to having sex with the student up to a dozen times. The boy, then 16, had borderline mental retardation.

After hearing three hours of testimony about Butler's psychiatric history, the judge called this a "unique case" and said the boy was probably the more mature and less vulnerable of the two. He said it was his opinion that the boy possibly initiated the sexual encounters. - Read the entire article here



She was a 33 year old high school special education teacher and the 16 year old boy with borderline mental retardation was the more mature and less vulnerable of the two? This is insulting to say the least.

Do you think had the victim been a 16-year-old girl with borderline mental retardation and the predator had been a 34-year-old male teacher the sentence would have been the same?

I wanted to look at an article about a recent case in NH where a 15 year old boy was sexually abused by a 38 year old woman. The judges comments and the poll the paper ran are disturbing as well:


The 38-year-old New Hampshire woman convicted of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old boy should not have been treated any differently than male defendants in similar statutory-rape cases, rape experts said yesterday.

“Having worked with male survivors, it is a cultural myth that there is no negative impact for teen-age boys being in sexual relationships with older women,” said Gina Scaramella, executive director of the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center, of the sentencing in Nashua on Monday that some perceived as light.

Scaramella said society has conditioned adolescent males to believe that having sexual relations with older women is harmless and that they are victors rather than victims.

“It is something we don’t take seriously. It’s joked about nightly on TV and made into a glamorous situation,” she said. “But the basics are the same: it’s a complete misuse of power, and it has a significant negative impact on the development of the adolescent involved.”

I want to applaud Ms. Scaramella for her words in this case. I find it encouraging that she and her center not only understand but they are willing to publicly speak out on this issue.


In handing down his sentence of Robin Mowery on Monday, Hillsboro County Superior Court Judge Robert Lynn questioned the extent of the teen’s victimization by noting how he “aggressively pursued” sex with Mowery, now 38.

“Young men have raging hormones. It doesn’t make him a bad person,” the judge said before sentencing Mowery to a two- to four-year prison term.

Prosecutor Patricia LaFrance had asked the judge to hit Mowery, who was convicted by a jury in June of four felony sexual assault charges, with the maximum five- to 14-year sentence.

Mowery was accused of having sex with the boy on four occasions in her home, car and the boy’s home. On the witness stand, she told jurors that the teen raped her at knifepoint and tied her daughter to a tree and threatened to slit her throat if she told anyone.

Lynn, who called her testimony “complete baloney,” acknowledged that society views sex crimes against young male victims differently than it does with female victims. “Like it or not, an underage boy having sex with an older-aged girl is viewed differently than the other way around,” he said.

LaFrance said that kind of logic doesn’t belong in a courtroom.

“My position is that the gender doesn’t matter. It’s an adult sexually assaulting a child,” said LaFrance, adding that she was “disappointed” by the sentence and plans to appeal it to the New Hampshire Sentence Review Board.


The prosecutor is right. Bottom line is that gender doesn't matter. It was an adult sexually assaulting a child. Period. To make matters worse she tried to accuse the victim of crimes which could have resulted in him being sent to prison(she later recanted those claims). In another article on this case it was stated "Mowery's sister, Jaime Manning, said the divorce of their parents and abusive relationships caused Mowery to concoct elaborate stories." From that same article "The teen's father also addressed the judge, saying the assaults changed his son and that he worries that further emotional problems will surface when he's older."

The paper also ran a poll which asked the following question and got these results:

If an older woman has sex with a teen boy, what should her punishment be?

58% - Same sentence as a man
8% - Lighter sentence than a man
34% - No time, that boy is lucky


To me the bottom line is that an adult sexually abused a teen and that is how it should be viewed by everyone. It only takes speaking with a few male survivors to understand why this is so. You can read the complete article here.

Here is a video from a report done by ABC:








Here is some of the text from that article/report from ABC (emphasis is mine):

Fortunately, the troubling scene isn't real. The abusive woman and her boyfriend are actors, hired by "Primetime" for a hidden camera experiment.

On previous shows, "Primetime" has staged scenes of abuse in which the man is the aggressor, and the woman is the victim. And in these situations, passersby -- men and women -- often stepped up and intervened. So producers were curious. What would happen if the tables were turned, and the man was suddenly the victim? Would people be just as willing to come to his defense?

This staged scenario happens more often in real life than you may think. According to Colgate University psychology professor Carrie Keating, women abusing, even assaulting their male partners "is a big problem in this country."

"There are some data that suggest that women actually hit more than men do," says Keating. "Men create more damage, but women hit more than men do."

A report prepared for the Centers for Disease Control estimates that each year there are over 800,000 serious cases of men being physically abused by women. But the actual figures are believed to be much higher, since many men are often too embarrassed to admit being the victim of abuse by a woman.

Verbal and physical abuse of men by women might be an acknowledged problem, but will people try to stop it when "Primetime"'s hidden cameras are rolling?

One after another, passersby witnessed the abusive scene… and kept right on going.

Mathilda was one of those bystanders. She says she didn't think the man was in any physical danger, and could probably take care of himself. "I didn't immediately think to protect the man at all," she said. "It didn't look like any harm was being done."

The reaction of another woman, Lynda, was stunning. As our actress continued to heap abuse on her make-believe boyfriend, she walked by the scene and pumped her fist in a show of sisterly solidarity.

"Good for you. You Go, Girl!" is how Lynda recalls her reaction.

"I was thinking he probably did something really bad," she said. "Maybe she caught him cheating or something like that…and [it] made her lose it and slap him in the face. I reacted like, 'Yes. Woman power.'"

This type of reaction didn't come as a surprise to Keating. Observers often excuse their "own lack of response by denigrating the victim and making up stories that he really deserved the punishment he was receiving," Keating says.

She says that perhaps these people have some past frustration in their lives which makes them "actually enjoy vicariously the experience this woman was having by being aggressive" toward her boyfriend.

Later, a husband and wife out for some exercise observed the abusive situation and continued on their way. So "Primetime's" producers stepped in and asked, "Why not stop or at least call 911?"

"What they were havin' there…[they were] just havin' a little tiff. They'll be all right," said the man, a police officer in a nearby community. His wife told "Primetime" that she would have found it "more upsetting if [the young man] had put his hands on" the young woman."

"Oh, without a doubt," her husband readily agreed, acknowledging the double standard. "Call it old-fashioned views. If you're raised the way I was raised, you don't put your hands on a woman, right?"

Keating says that holding those kinds of values and beliefs "is going to give them a very different lens through which they see the behavior of the actress, the aggressiveness of the woman against the man. They under-value the potency of her responses."

Over two days of taping, "Primetime" watched 163 people just walk right by the actors, the abusive woman and her boyfriend. Of all those who had the chance to step up and get involved, only one group of women stopped.



The logic that is suggested by someone saying or thinking it is acceptable for her to be abusing him because he may have cheated on her is wrong. The reverse would then apply and it would be acceptable for him to be abusive to her if she may have cheated on him. This kind of behavior is just plain wrong regardless of who is doing it. And until society acknowledges that it is wrong for anyone to behave this way we will continue to see progress come very slowly in regards to reducing violence in our society. Men and women just walked by and did nothing. My hat is off to the 4 ladies who had the courage to stop and do the right thing. To bad more men and women are not like them.

I ran across an interesting article in the paper The Oregonian about Diane Downs today. You can read the complete article here. I like highlighting these type of articles because it helps to show the mind and thoughts of these offenders.



It's been nearly 25 years since the murder trial of Elizabeth Diane Downs captivated the nation -- marking Oregon as the home of one of history's most notorious child killers.

Experts have for decades labeled Downs a narcissistic psychopath. She was convicted of killing her 7-year-old daughter and trying to kill her two other young children outside Springfield in a shooting that inspired a true-crime book by Ann Rule and a made-for-TV movie starring Farrah Fawcett.

Today, Downs is 53. Her most recent prison mug shot shows a woman older than her actual years, white hair and sunken features, nearly unrecognizable from the bombshell blonde who once flounced unashamed past television news cameras in handcuffs and shackles.

Yet a thick packet of documents collected for her first parole hearing Tuesday shows that Downs' looks are about all that's changed in the past quarter-century.

Records show that Downs has remained as troubled behind bars as she was outside them. She has never participated in any rehabilitation programs, she has never admitted to her crimes. She believes her surviving son is out of a wheelchair though he is a paraplegic and his sister remains partly paralyzed.

Instead, she has spent much of her time plotting how to get out of prison, including one plan to commandeer a helicopter. She escaped from the Oregon Women's Correctional Center in Salem for 10 days in 1987 and was later transferred out of state. She tried to escape from a New Jersey prison in 1989 and 1991, and from a California prison in 1994.

In Downs' view those escape attempts are evidence of her "healthy attitude about society" and that she is ready for parole.


This person who experts call a psychopath feels that her escapes and escape attempts are healthy and reasons for parole. Anyone who has experienced a psychopath will probably recognize this type of thinking instantly. But there is more.


A recent psychological evaluation of Downs reiterated her narcissistic personality disorder diagnosis: "By year 20 one hopes that the life prisoner has come to a place of deeper self-reflection and introspection regarding their life and incarceration. By this time there should be some struggle in contemplation with existential life issues. Regardless of guilt or innocence, one normally would be asking the how and why questions of life. The thing that is most troubling regarding Ms. Downs is that she appears to have done very little of this."

Downs has penned at least two lengthy handwritten letters to parole officials defending herself.

"Had I stacked my prison file with 'atta-girl chronos,'" (a term the staff use for inmates who do good deeds for parole board recognition alone), she wrote on Nov. 19, "would you have thought my motivation was manipulative?"


One of the little cliche sayings I try to remember is that actions speak louder than words. You can say "I love you" but it means nothing if you say it while you are trying to kill your children. And refusing to accept responsibility and take part in any treatment offered does not look good.


After her successful escape from the Oregon Women's Correctional Center in 1987, Downs was transferred to a prison in New Jersey.

Records show that in May 1989, Downs' 26-year-old boyfriend, Robert Seaver, submitted voluntarily to a polygraph examination, the results of which revealed that Downs was planning -- again -- to escape. (a quick blog authors note here. Polygraphs are use interrogation tools but NOT lie detector tests which science has shown time and time again. You can go here to find out more Antipolygraph.org)

Seaver outlined numerous escape plans he and Downs discussed, including a plot in which he would pass himself off as a land speculator and hire a helicopter. Once in the air he would force the pilot at gunpoint to land in the South Hall yard while Downs was on recreation.

Downs, then 33, denied the escape plot, prison records show, but she "admitted that she and Mr. Seaver had talked about her trying to become pregnant during visits through a primitive artificial insemination method."

After that, Downs was transferred to the Washington Department of Corrections, which requested the following year that Oregon take her back "due to her attitude" and because "her behavior constituted a security risk."

In 1993, she was transferred to California's Chowchilla women's facility. Less than a year after her arrival, a corrections officer discovered 8 inches of the concrete holding the window frame in Downs' prison cell chipped out in "what appeared to be an attempt to dislodge the window and frame from the building," according to prison records.

In a 12-page, handwritten plea to the Oregon Board of Parole last week, Downs asserted that her escape attempts should be viewed as a good thing.

"Of all the felonies on the law books, 'escape from prison' is the only one that indicates a healthy attitude about society," Downs wrote to the parole board in a letter obtained by The Oregonian. "If you truly want to know what sort of prisoner won't come back to prison, your first clue is the prisoner who thinks more about being on the outside of this place than being 'well programmed' or 'adjusted' HERE."

"I am NOT ashamed of my escape," she wrote. "At least I don't want to be here and will do everything I need to do so I don't come back."


Again anyone who has been around a psychopathic person will probably recognize this type of thinking instantly. She should be released because she really doesn't want to be there and so she has a healthy attitude. It shows that she has not taken part in any programs to try to help her.


In her Nov. 17 letter, she bristled at the psychological evaluator's suggestion that she hasn't become introspective about herself or her crime.

"With all due respect," she wrote, "while it may appear I no longer struggle with the cosmic 'why' or 'how,' the truth is that I have been asking how and why since 10:35 p.m., May 19, 1983. The spiritual struggle (the evaluator) wrote of was engaged decades ago. The cosmic sweat has long dried."

Despite her long history of troubles behind bars, Downs said she still deserves parole.

"I don't run drugs or brew hooch," she stated. "I don't smuggle tobacco or get officers walked off. In 25 years behind these steel bars, I have NOT cracked one of these 'ladies' in the head. If you had lived inside this place, you might understand what an accomplishment that is."

Downs also defended herself against the report's assertion that she keeps her "emotions under tight control, presenting only socially acceptable feeling."

"Everyday billions of people wake up to stress and chaos," Downs wrote in response. "Cranky bosses, mad commuters, gas prices that make no sense, dog do on the new carpet. And they 'keep their emotions under tight control, presenting only socially acceptable feelings.' That's what separates civilized humans from gangs and barbarians."


Again she clearly shows the flawed thinking/thought process with her statements. I am not surprised that experts call her a narcissistic psychopath. The article goes on to look at the two children that survived the attack.


The two surviving children, Daniel and Christie, eventually went to live with Lane County Assistant District Attorney Fred Hugi, one of the prosecutors of the case, and were adopted by Hugi and his wife. Daniel, the younger child, is a paraplegic as a result of the shooting. Christie has permanent partial paralysis on one side of her body.

According to parole officials, Downs' surviving children are not scheduled to testify at Tuesday's hearing. Lane County District Attorney F. Douglass Harcleroad spoke vehemently against Downs' parole.

"Downs shot each of her three children execution-style while they sat in her car," he wrote. "Cheryl was shot twice in the back and died immediately. Christie was shot in the chest and then again through the hand as she was grabbing her chest. Danny was shot in the back as he lay sleeping. Downs then waited for all the children to die as she slowly drove her car back to town."

Harcleroad railed against Downs' assertion in one of her letters to the parole board that her son was once again walking.

"Contrary to Downs' bold assertions in her dangerous-offender report, Danny remains paralyzed from the chest down. He will be confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life."

Harcleroad asked the board to turn her down flat, citing Downs' "utter lack of any re-evaluation or remorse for her horrific crimes."

"Downs has certainly not been rehabilitated and most likely never will," he wrote. "She constitutes a danger to others of the highest extreme which cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be controlled by supervision and treatment. The application for parole should be denied."


I agree with them that she should never be let out. The Diane Downs case clearly shows that the myth that there are no "female psychopaths" is just that, a myth. I expect the parole board will keep her locked up for the rest of her life.

This is a look at a case that got some media attention recently. 26 year old Kelsey Peterson has already been convicted on Federal charges and is awaiting trial on State charges. The following excerpts are from this ARTICLE. You can also read excerpts from her interview at this LINK.


She is accused of having a sexual relationship with Fernando Rodriguez beginning in June 2006, when he was 12 years old and a student at Lexington Middle School, where Peterson was his sixth-grade math teacher.

When school officials discovered the relationship in October 2007, the pair fled to Mexico, leading authorities on a weeklong search.


So a 25 year old and a 12 year old flee to Mexico. And this is apparently what she was convicted for in Federal Court.


Amy Peck, the Omaha attorney representing Rodriguez, said, "Kelsey says that she accepts responsibility for her actions, yet she continues to blame Fernando for what happened."

And I agree. If you read the entire article and interview excerpts it very much appears she blames him. What is worse is that it appears as time goes on she is seeing herself as the victim in all this and blaming him for it.


Peterson claims Rodriguez pursued her.

"He (Rodriguez) came to my class in probably October of my second year of teaching," Peterson said. "He became one of those students that hated to go home, didn't get along with his family and just wanted to hang out with whoever, so he would almost purposely get detention or find a reason to be after school in my classroom."

Peterson said Rodriguez sent her text messages the summer of 2006, after he was in her class. She said Rodriguez pursued her "like a man pursues a woman, and it was constant, constant."

"Eventually, I think I was emotionally worn down by him, and I gave in to thinking I had those same feelings for him," she said.


Blaming the 12 year old victim and basically saying it was his fault for allegedly pursuing her and "wearing" her down. The victim and his attorney have a different take on what she said:


In interviews, Rodriguez told a different story. He said the relationship was "weird" because she was much older. He said Peterson wrote and called to express her love for him.

Peck said the evidence indicates that Fernando's discipline problems began only after the sexual relationship began. "What child isn't going to act out when there is something this improper happening to him?" Peck said.

Sexual abuse is harmful to everyone. Those folks that think it is different for a male or that he should be thankful or happy are quite wrong. I would guess his attorney is quite right in saying his client started having problems after the abuse happened. Though I also notice that they keep calling it a "sexual relationship". It is sexual abuse plain and simple.


Peterson said Rodriguez "practically lived with me" from June to October 2007.

"It was almost like a marriage," she said. "I know that sounds weird, but we were together all the time."

She said they did household chores and watched movies together, but she felt controlled by him — " I sometimes feel like I've been the victim in a lot of ways myself."

"Not that he hasn't been in some ways a victim," Peterson said. "When I say I crossed the line, I was a teacher, he was a student."

Peck, Rodriguez's attorney, said Peterson's claim of being a victim contradicts her statements in federal court "where she admitted that Fernando was not to blame."


Ok this is the part that bothers me the most. Blaming the victim. He was 12 and still a child. And to say that he was "in some ways a victim" is even worse. In fact I want to show more from the excerpts of the interview talking about this very thing:


Victims

"I guess sometimes now I feel that way. Mainly it's after talking to other people who have had the experience of domestic violence that I see all the issues that were underlying our relationship."


It is not a relationship it was a 12 year old being sexually abused by his 25 year old teacher. The distortions and thinking errors are pretty clear in this interview.


"I guess I didn't realize how controlling he was of me from the beginning. I even had one of the ladies who did my pre-sentencing investigation at the federal level said, 'All I did was read letters that he sent you, and I could tell there were control issues. He talks about your weight, he talks about who you can talk to.'

"She said, 'Those were huge red flags to me just reading the letters.'

"I didn't really recognize them until I was removed from the relationship, because it just got worse after that when he came back.

"I was threatened by him. He would be angry with me if I would leave or threaten to go out and do something stupid if I would leave, so I was his 100 percent by the end of it. I didn't do anything without his permission. I couldn't even get a text message on my phone without him checking it.


If someone really did say that to her that person needs to be educated on the whole issue of sexual abuse as well. Again the child was 12. Twelve year olds are not even close to having the maturity, experience, and knowledge to even begin to try to act like an adult in a "relationship". Now she is applying adult standards of behavior to a child and complaining that he acted like a child.


"Not that he hasn't been in some ways a victim. When I say I crossed the line, I was a teacher, he was a student. There were some ways he was put in a victim situation in this, but not near to the extent that people would like to say he is. I sometimes feel like I've been the victim in a lot of ways myself."


This victimstance and minimizing are things that many people see in sexual offenders. This article and interviews are nice as they allow people to read and see these distortions in a real case. Sadly if what she said was true and some professional did make the statements to her that she claims than it has just made things worse and not helped her at all.

OHIO - A 26-year-old married teacher and housemother will go to prison for three years for having sex with a 16-year-old boy who impregnated her while she was supposed to be supervising him at a Warren County group home.

Flannery gave Hatcher credit for pleading guilty, but said he didn't buy her attorney's arguments that Mid-Western officials or the foster boy were responsible, too. "This has been taboo in virtually every society since the history of man. Older people are not allowed to have sexual relationships with children, particularly those under their care or supervision. There’s no wiggle. There's no debate," Flannery said. - Read the entire article here


WACO - A Federal Grand Jury decided there was enough evidence to send a former WISD teacher to trial. Tara Hodges,26, has been indicted on 10 counts of sexual assault of a child.

According to the arrest affidavit, Hodges had driven the 14-year old to her apartment on Lake Shore Drive, smoked marijuana and had sex with the minor on at least 10 different occasions. And Hodges had even bought the boy several pair of shoes while giving him money. - Read the entire article here


ORANGE – A female music teacher at El Modena High School is due to be arraigned Monday on charges of having an unlawful sexual relationship with a male student, prosecutors said today. Carlie Rose Attebury, 29, who is the school's band director, is charged with eight felony counts: two counts of unlawful sexual intercourse and six other counts, including dissuading a witness from reporting a crime. - Read the entire article here


SOUTH BEND — Two Elkhart teachers were arraigned today in St. Joseph Superior Court on charges of dealing in methamphetamine within 1,000 feet of a school in South Bend. Maria M. Stancati and Michelle M. Stancati, both 35, who are twin sisters, each face one count of the class A felony, which is punishable by up to 50 years in prison.

Michelle Stancati was a special education teacher at North Side Middle School in Elkhart, while her sister was a teacher at Elkhart Memorial High School. - Read the entire article here



MACHIAS, Maine — A former teacher at a Lubec school was sentenced Friday in Washington County Superior Court to 30 days in jail for having a sexual relationship with a 13-year-old boy.

Tina Mason, 31, of East Machias, also received two consecutive suspended sentences of 11 months in jail, each with one year of probation. The charges against her were assault, sexual abuse of a minor, and unlawful sexual touching. If Mason violates the terms of her probation after her release, she could end up serving 22 months of additional jail time. She also was ordered to pay a $400 fine. - Read the entire article here


TEXAS - A former Seagraves teacher has pleaded guilty to an improper relationship with a student. NewsChannel 11 first told you about Candra Dee Payton, 32, in March of 2007, after allegations that she was having a sexual relationship with a 9th grade student. - Read the entire article here


MISS - Loni Marie Folks, a former Petal school charged with sexual battery of a foreign exchange student, pleaded guilty today in Forrest County Circuit Court. Folks, 25, wept as she read a prepared statement.


“I would like to apologize for my poor judgment,” she said. “I’d like to apologize to my family and to my former students. There is no acceptable excuse for this behavior.” - Read the entire article here


KISSIMMEE, Fla. - A 32-year-old Central Florida teacher who admitted to having sex in her home with a 16-year-old boy who was her former student was sentenced on Monday to two years of house arrest and eight years of probation.

The state was requesting more than five years in prison for Sarah Joel, a married mother of three who taught at Narcoosee Community School.


"Somehow it's become OK for a female teacher to have sex with a child with no punishment, while a man would go to prison," Assistant State Attorney Amy Chandler said. - Read the entire article here



Seagraves, Texas - Candra Dee Payton, 32 has pleaded guilty to an improper relationship with a student. A grand jury indicted Payton on a felony charge of sexual assault, indecency with a child, and a charge of tampering with or fabricating physical evidence. The Seminole Sentinel reports that Payton accepted a plea deal Wednesday afternoon.


According to the newspaper, Payton will serve ten years of community supervision. She must also perform 400 hours of community service, pay court costs and a $10,000 fine. Payton will also not be allowed to teach again, but the paper reports as part of the plea, she will not have to register as a sex offender. - Read the entire article here


AUS - The lawyer for a teacher convicted of having sex with a 14-year-old boy, has been granted leave to appeal against his client's 27 month jail sentence.

Cassandra Anne James, 35, was convicted last month in the Bunbury District Court, in south-west Western Australia, after pleading guilty to four counts of having sex with the boy last year.

Lawyer Derek Hunter has made four submissions appealing against her sentence. In one of the submissions, he argues the judge did not give enough weight to the fact that the incident was not premeditated but instigated by the boy. - Read the entire article here


SHREVEPORT, LA - 32 year old Anna Davis, a special needs teacher at Benton High School faces a charge of felony carnal knowledge of a juvenile. She reportedly admitted to Bossier Parish Sheriff's Deputies that she had sex with a fifteen year old boy. Ed Baswell with the Bossier Parish Sheriff's Office says that while being questioned Davis said "I'm in love with him, and I want to marry him". "I don't know if she understood exactly what she was doing," says Baswell. - Read the entire article here



PA - Warminster elementary school teacher, Susan Romanyszyn, 46, was sentenced to one to two years (minus one day) in prison and 20 years of probation for making terroristic threats against Longstreth Elementary SchoolThere were a total of 17 threats found around the school between Oct. 11 and Oct. 19, 2007. Romanyszyn was convicted on June 26, 2008 of making 11 of those threats.

Gary Gambardella, chief of the career criminal division in the Bucks County District Attorney's office, wouldn't comment on the judges sentencing but said, "She [Romanyszyn] is nuts. She continues to deny it. She needs to go to jail." Gambardella called the case the worse terroristic threats case he has seen in his 21-year career.

Authorities believe that Romanyszyn was disgruntled because she did not receive the fifth grade teaching assignment that she had requested and was instead assigned to teach fourth grade. - Read the entire article here

On Monday October 6, 1997 the BBC aired a show called The Sexual Abuse by Women of Children and Teenagers. I wanted to post complete transcripts of the show and this is the last section. Be warned that some of the content can be disturbing and graphic.






Warning: This programme contains explicit descriptions of attacks and the emotional and physical damage they have caused, which some viewers may find distressing.




Therapy for abused children

Narrator:
The Sexual Abuse Child Consultancy Service is one of the few organisations attempting to break this cycle. In specially designed rooms long term play therapy helps children explore feelings and relationships. Half the children who pass through here have been abused by a woman - like this 10 year old boy.

Therapist:
His abusers were involved in a lesbian relationship and he was also abused by men too, so actually he's quite a confused little boy, which is shown very often in his play where he doesn't really know whether he's a woman or whether he's a man.

[shots of boy who has made a montage of a pretty girl with lots of diamonds and an engagement ring]

Therapist:
He was out of control. Sometimes he'd be physically violent and sometimes that would develop then into spitting, sometimes weeing in a playroom, sometimes weeing over the therapist. He was also highly eroticised, both with adults and with the other children, which meant that there would be a lot of sexual wriggling - he would get his penis out and wave it around - that kind of sexualised stuff, and trying to do very sexy kisses with the other children and with staff.

[shots of boy hugging with baby doll, saying he had a baby in the night, and then kissing it on the mouth]

Therapist:
He understands about nice kissing and safe kissing, but when he was holding the baby clearly the kissing started to get very unsafe. He had looked to me to make sure that I had understood that the kissing was unsafe. So an issue for him is unsafe kissing with babies - which of course was his experience.

Therapist:
Some of them become eternal victims and never recover from that. Other children like this little boy will mask their confusions and go into adulthood and never really be able to sustain relationships or have very distorted relationships because of their enormous confusions. And there are other children who will go on to hurt not only other children in their own childhood but in adulthood.

250,000 children abused by women

Narrator:
It's thought more than 250,000 people in this country have been abused as children by women. While not everyone who has been harmed goes on to abuse, it is thought about 5% do. So what is it that makes them do it and others not?

Jacqui Saradjiam:
Women in our society have been portrayed as victims. And yes I'm not disputing that nearly all women who sexually abuse children were in my research were themselves very victimised, but somewhere within their victimisation they learned that to abuse children gave them a sense of power, control, agency, that they'd not had any other in their life. And therefore they used the abuse of children to gain those things.


Zoe:

Narrator:
The natural compulsion of a mother to love and protect her child can be destroyed by years of abuse. One such woman who went on to abuse claims she saw her baby as a mere object.

Zoe:
I was about 22, I'd just divorced my husband. My sons - one was two and the other was a babe in arms - and the eldest son, I changed his nappy and masturbated him - once. I felt sick at what I was doing. I felt angry at what I was doing. I didn't do it for pleasure, it was more for anger for what their dad had done to me. It was a day when I had just finished decorating the bedroom with my eldest brother. He had sexually abused me and I was so angry at what he had done that the anger came out by masturbating my son.

Interviewer:
What effect has what you did consequently had on your sons?

Zoe:
Both my sons are sexual abusers. My eldest son is in prison now for what he's done.

Interviewer:
What has he done?

Zoe:
Sexually abused a nine year old boy.

Interviewer:
Do you feel responsible for the way he's turned out?

Zoe:
Badly

Interviewer:
Why's that?

Zoe:
Because if I hadn't done what I'd done to him he wouldn't be like he is now.

Narrator:
Zoe was jailed for four years on three counts of indecent assault. While she was in prison she was ostracised but not treated. Now she's back in the community and still considered a risk to children.

Concluding comments

Jacqui Saradjiam:
There's very very little being done to look at the issue of female sexual abuse. We have no programmes in this country that are aimed at working with female sexual offenders specifically. Quite a lot of professionals are picking up women offenders now. What they're not doing is having the resources to help them deal with these women offenders. It's because so many professionals are now getting to pick up women offenders that we are now getting to realise some of the extent of the problem throughout the country.

Narrator:
Few abusers ever volunteer their guilt, and behind closed doors it is difficult to prove. A woman's traditional role in the home as a mother often puts her above suspicion, and medical evidence is hard to obtain. But as more and more of women's victims come forward and speak out they may just force us to face up to the ultimate taboo.

On Monday October 6, 1997 the BBC aired a show called The Sexual Abuse by Women of Children and Teenagers. I wanted to post complete transcripts of the show and this is part 6 of that. Be warned that some of the content can be disturbing and graphic.





Warning: This programme contains explicit descriptions of attacks and the emotional and physical damage they have caused, which some viewers may find distressing.




Children's home

Narrator:
More than 40 people are now alleging abuse including sexual abuse at this former children's home in Aberdeen. The orphanage was run by the Poor Sisters of Nazareth. The complaints the police are now investigating were until recently dismissed as impossible. They range over a period of 30 years in which individual nuns are alleged to have abused.

Boy:
I was about 7 or 8 at the time and she was in charge of our group, and just one day out of the blue she came along and asked me would I like to learn the time. And I just said yes, I'd like to learn the time. She told me that her watch was inside her breasts underneath her cassock which they used to wear. So I put my hand in - obviously I was fondling her breasts to look for the watch and I found it and while I was doing that- pulling the watch out - she would put her hand next to my penis and she would just gently squeeze it and that would get me excited. I could tell she was getting excited cause her face was pure red an d her speech was pretty excited speech.

Narrator:
This sort of incident happened on several occasions but the boy felt powerless.

Boy:
I knew it was wrong to do it, but I just did it because I had to do it or I got punished.

Female abusers acquire positions of trust

Narrator:
Some children aren't just at risk from the people they live with; they are vulnerable targets when they leave their homes. Out in the community female sexual abusers can manoeuvre with even more ease than men into positions of trust with authority over lost of children.



Dawn Read and Christopher Lilley:

Narrator:
Dawn Read and Christopher Lilley worked together as qualified teachers at a nursery in Newcastle. About 120 two to four year olds passed through their classes. Their mothers suspected nothing.

Mother:
I really liked her. She just came across really as a nice person, always laughing, smiling and wanting to talk to you, and just made us feel at ease.

Narrator:
It took two years for trusting parents to find out that their children were being repeatedly sexually abused at the nursery. Lilley and Read were never tried in court, making the parents determined to stand up in public and draw attention to the abuse.

Mother:
My daughter was sitting at the lunch table and said she didn't want her lunch, so Dawn got a knife and fork and took my daughter to the toilet which was in the classroom and sat her on the floor and inserted the knife and fork into her vagina. Chris was there and they were both laughing.

Narrator:
What did your daughter tell you about that, about how she felt?

Mother:
Well she said it hurt and there was blood and that they had to get a towel when she got washed, and the towel had blood on. But they seem to have done it a few times.

Narrator:
This child was one of more than 20 others who went on to tell their mothers what Dawn Read had done to them. At first they couldn't grasp what they were hearing.

Mother:
I'm angry with her. I can't understand where she was coming from when she was doing this to the children. I can't believe, as a mother I trusted her and I can't believe that a woman would let people trust her and then go out and misuse that trust.

Narrator:
Dawn Read and Christopher Lilley persistently misused parents trust at the nursery and at other addresses in Newcastle.

Interviewer:
What were they asking you to do?

Girl:
Pull my pants down. If I had a dress, lift my dress up.

Interviewer:
Did anyone take any photographs of you?

Girl:
Yeah, there was a camera man there.

Interviewer:
Tell me about that.

Girl:
He was just like taking pictures when they were being nasty to her and everything. I was like crying and just a lot of upset like. Screaming and saying I wanted to go back to the nursery and me mam and everything. And they wouldn't take any notice and they'd be laughing at me.

Interviewer:
When you had to join in with them, what did you have to do?

Girl:
I can remember when Chris put his privates into mine.

Interviewer:
And what was Dawn doing while Chris was doing this?

Girl:
Looking at the other children, being rude to the other children.

Interviewer:
She was being rude to the other children? What was she doing to the other children?

Girl:
Making them lift their dresses and take their clothes off.

Mother:
Medically there was tearing of the tissues, bleeding trauma, extensive damage to the hymen. She has since underwent STD tests for sexually transmitted diseases. She has also had an HIV test.

Narrator:
Dawn Reed and Christopher Lilley were never brought to justice because the judge thought the child witnesses too young to be heard in court. There was an outcry on behalf of the children. The parents formed a protest group to support each other and publicise fully Reed and Lilley's abuse. Some children are still showing signs of trauma.

Mother:
She was always trying to make play with herself and I used to think that's just what children do. I did ask the health visitor a couple of times and she said "She's just exploring her own body and a lot of children do this". But as she started to get older it didn't just settle with her. I've had a lot of counselling about it because I've got a fear of her growing up to being an abuser herself. What the therapist said was that a child who comes from a loving home who is being abused doesn't necessarily go on to be an abuser. But that's not to say it can't happen.

I wanted to look at two recent cases that share one thing in common. Mother's selling their children to other people knowing those people are going to be sexually abusing them. One case has a male abusing the child, the other case has a female abusing the child:


LANCASTER, Pa - A 25-year-old woman was sentenced Friday to at least two years in prison for having sex with a preteen Columbia boy, who was being pimped by his mother.

Ashley L. Banks of York was charged last year with having a four-month sexual relationship with the 12-year-old boy. In August, she pleaded guilty to statutory sexual assault, a felony, and misdemeanor corruption of minors.

Banks had sex with the boy on a "nightly basis" from August 2005 to December 2005, according to a police affidavit filed by Columbia Detective Daniel Bell. She paid the boy's mother in exchange for the sexual encounters, the affidavit says.

The mother was charged in July 2007 with pimping the boy. A Lancaster County jury found that woman guilty in September of three offenses, including criminal conspiracy to rape of a child. She is to be sentenced Dec. 2. - Read the entire article here


BINGHAMTON, N.Y. - A 46-year-old upstate New York woman will be sentenced for selling a 12-year-old girl to a man for sex as payment for the woman's back rent.

Linda O'Connor of Norwich and her landlord, Dean Sacco of Jersey City, N.J., were both convicted in August by a federal court jury of sex trafficking and producing child pornography. - Read the entire article here


What parent, male or female, would ever agree to do this to their own children? These cases are just more examples that giving birth or being a biologcal donor does not make a person a parent. Cases like this happen to often.

I am reprinting this story here with the kind permission of the Victim. Thank you David for your courage and strength in telling your story so others can benefit from it:

By
David
A Survivor

When my folks divorced I blamed myself. Eleven year old boys don't reason like an adult. I thought there must be something wrong with me because Dad took my older sister with him but never invited me to go. I was left to be raised by my mother but her work kept her away from the house too many hours so a neighbor girl was hired to baby-sit all my waking hours. In the 50's child abuse was a hush-hush subject with nowhere to turn for help. How a 14 year old girl could conceive the cruel and perverted acts done to me is hard to understand.

My mind was totally controlled by her after being forced to repeat this poem to her several times a day:

"Every day, I will obey, whatever you say, sweetly, completely, immediately, without questioning, crying or complaining, or I will be severely punished."

Resistance became impossible and I endured horrible physical and sexual abuse. Do you know what a little boy does after he is tied spread-eagle and naked to a table and whipped with a fishing pole? Anything he is told!

I learned helplessness mastering fear humiliation, shame, pain and terror. I cried myself to sleep nights, unable to change my situation. I withdrew to my inner feelings and did what ever was necessary to just exist. My memories are difficult to dwell upon even after having told and written my entire story in a book. It is still hard sharing the embarrassing things which I long to forget.

One public and very humiliating experience happened in a store as no one who witnessed it attempted to stop my babysitter from baring my backside and spanking me with other shoppers watching. I totally lost control of bodily functions and messed myself in public. That was the day that I first began considering suicide.

Wounds and scars over time lessen but the inner hurt stayed with me for years and years. My mind, emotions, and sexual orientation of life were confused and misguided. The abuse continued for 5 years and ended only when we moved away. Then I was able to persuade my mother that I was old enough to be a latchkey kid.

Years went by with graduation, college, marriage, children and a busy life. I tried to bury my past but many things triggered horrible memories which would not go away. I found the courage twice to discuss what had happened. Once with a doctor who told me that I should have been man enough not to let someone do those things to me. I wasn't a man, I was a little boy. The other time was to a minister who told me to just forget it all and get on with my life.

Amazingly, I never turned to drugs, alcohol, or crime and did not become an abuser myself. I turned to God and stayed busy helping others in order to avoid dwelling on things I never wanted to face again. I hid my childhood horrors from my children and my wife even though she knew something was terribly wrong.

After 40 years of hiding the hurt, I realized that I would have to deal with this because too many things triggered memories that gave me insomnia, and flashbacks. Suicide seemed my best option so I made plans, and wrote out my last will while trying to determine the best time when my family would be able to cope with my final decision.

On an internet chat room, for Adult Survivors of Child Abuse, a stranger gave me some life-changing advice encouraging me to write out my story, call a hotline and to read it anonymously. Blocking my phone number, so it could not be traced, I read it as my final act so someone would know why I was ending my life. I was amazed at the compassion and confidentiality I found with the counselor on the phone. An invitation was given to me to come and speak with the therapist. I was so afraid that I would be "Baker Acted" that I hid my car and would not tell my name.

First, I met weekly with a counselor named Kelly Ballentine until she moved to a different job and then I began therapy with Meredith Murphy. It took me a long time to face and find victory in each of the traumatic and horrible experiences as I relived them It was a very emotional and difficult season in my life but the wisdom, and compassion of a trained counselor guided my thinking and helped me to find peace, joy and victory. I was never told what to do but was coached and guided into making the decisions I chose that led me to total healing.

With Meredith's guidance I made the decision to write my story in a book entitled "It Had To Be Told, So He Told It To Me!" That entire story is available at either of the email addresses below. My desire is to help others who have been abused to begin their own journey and find healing and fulfillment in life.

I have written many poems and articles which have been posted on internet sites to help others. Meredith even gave me an opportunity to speak at a Sexual Assault Awareness Day event in our community. My speech ended with the nine recommendations that follow entitled: "If You Have Been Abused"If You Have Been Abused:

1) FACE IT
Stop denying, hiding and ignoring it.

2) FOCUS ON IT
Deal thoroughly with it.

3) FOLLOW A QUALIFIED COUNSELOR'S ADVICE
Don't try to be your own emotional physician.
Let wise, trained counselors help you.

4) FEEL IT
Stop suppressing the memories.
Let it out of your heart.
Hurts can become scars you can live with.

5) FIGHT BACK
If the statute of limitations is over
and you cannot do something to prosecute,
do something to prevent it from being repeated!

6) FIX IT
Healing often is hastened by expressing it.
Some people paint, some write poetry, some get on
"Safe Chat Lines." See a Therapist; Do something!

7) FORGIVE IT
(This is hard!)
Forgive those whose choices permitted
or caused it to happen.
Forgive the person who did the abuse.
This does not clear them, it heals your heart.
Forgive yourself for not telling sooner!
You are NOT to blame!

8) FIND A WAY TO HELP OTHERS
This is a world-wide problem and you can help others who
have suffered similar things. Look for hurting people!
Reach out to someone else!

9) FREQUENTLY CELEBRATE
Celebrate each accomplishment on your journey to healing!

Wishing you - "Joy On Your Journey!"
~ David



For additional information,
help or available resources


Email:

ItHadToBeTold@gmail.com (David)
HeToldItToMe@gmail.com (Meredith)