What about when MOM is the abuser?

This is a redone post combining Part I and Part II:

I wanted to write about the "halo effect" and how this plays out when it comes to abuse issues. What is the "halo effect"? It is a finding from the social psychology field. It is the idea that generalized evaluations about a person (she is attractive) bleed over into judgements about their specific traits (she is smart). We do this all the time with actors/actresses, singers, all sorts of popular media figures. Because they are often attractive and likable we naturally assume they are also intelligent, friendly, display good judgement etc.

We see politicians use the 'halo effect' to their advantage by trying to appear warm and friendly, while saying little of anything important. People tend to believe their policies are good, because the person appears good. It's that simple. This is the "halo effect" in a nutshell. Because someone "appears" good we tend to believe they are "good". The halo effect is used not just by politicians but in the business and marketing world as well. They know that that although we can understand the halo effect intellectually, we often have no idea when it is actually happening and even when we do know it is happening we may still deny it. (And note this applies to not just individuals but organizations as well).

Think about how this "halo effect" comes into play with abuse situations. People often see what they want to see or expect to see. Any good stage magician or con man can attest to this as a fact of human nature. How many of us portray to others one picture of ourselves yet on the inside it is completely different? I have heard many people talk about how their friends would say to them something like "you turned out alright" or "look how you turned out". They say that because they only see the top layer or what we allow them to see. They do not see the nightmares, the drug abuse, the panic attacks, the phobias, the anxiety, the depression, the suicidal thoughts, and other things that have been caused by the abuse.

This also plays into the offenders hand. If that person is attractive or likable people will only see that. The do not want to see anything else and do not see the private life. Here is a quote from a predator (deacon in his church) out of the Predators book. What is interesting to note is the predator, Patrick, was being honest and candid about how he would operate within the church. He counted on people going to bat for him, based on his good solid reputation with the church. He didn’t look like a predator; so he must not be one, or so everyone in the church thought. He didn’t have to do too much to convince people he was innocent. Everyone jumped to his defense without him having to lift a finger.

Sometimes the words were not even necessary. Like I said before, they immediately rallied to my defense when I was accused of being a sexual offender. They said, “We know this young man. He has been in our community all of his life. We know his parents, his grandparents, his aunts, his uncles. This is not something that he would do. This is not something that goes along with behavior that we see him in day in and day out,” and that was true because I was very careful that they did not see that behavior day in and day out. Most of my deviant behavior happened at night time and behind the scenes and away and far from my important people who could make those kinds of judgments that yes, indeed, Patrick is the kind of person who would go around molesting children.

Patrick was relying on the halo effect in part. Look at how many people that are accused and found guilty of sexual abuse are people who appeared to be "good" or popular people. Often you hear people make comments about how much good they have done for others or variations on that theme.

So are you really evaluating the traits of the person you thought you were when you evaluate them to yourself? Is some global aspect bleeding over into your specific judgements about a person or organization? How well do you really know anyone? This also proves the old saying about don't judge a book by its cover to be quite true. Sadly even though we may know this we often still do.

Let me go a step further and talk about something known as False Consensus Bias*. What is False Consensus Bias? Basically it means that people are more likely to assume someone who doesn't hold the same views as them has a more extreme personality than their own. This is because people think to themselves, whether consciously or unconsciously, surely all right-thinking (read 'normal') people think the same way as me? This plays into abuse issues as well and in many different ways. Think about how widespread this really is in our daily lives. Think about when Bruce Ware, professor of Christian theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky made a sermon that basically blamed women for being abused by their husbands (article). He seems to clearly fall under the False Consensus Bias in thinking that every "normal" person would hold his same views and so he can make such statements publicly.

And this leads me into another area for people to think about. When we hear an opinion repeated over and over to us by the same person or organization we're likely to come to believe it represents the general opinion. That's despite the fact it is analogous to the same person repeating themselves over and over again. A study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology looked at this and that was their conclusion. The theme of this research is something that has been known and used by advertisers and manipulators for decades. Familiarity doesn't breed contempt at all, it breeds attraction. Think about all the ways this also plays out in abusive situations. Think about if we hear Mr. Ware's message repeatedly every week and no one speaks up with a differing opinion what that can mean or lead to. We may begin to believe that this really is the general opinion and reinforces our False Consensus Bias (or reinforces their bias and possibly begins one in us) and not want to speak out. Now toss in the "Halo Effect" to that and it can become a mess quickly.

That leads me to want to discuss Cognitive Dissonance.


I wanted to continue to talk about people seeing, and believing, what they want to see and believe. I also want to talk about how offenders often "think" differently and how that looks. And not just the accused or actual offender but also others we see every day. There is a lot of information here but hopefully you can piece it all together to help make sense of why some people act the way they do. You can see thinking errors and distortions in numerous people. I can't begin to tell you how many times I see these errors pop up when people begin to discuss an accused person and sides are taken. So when you see the term "offender" remember that it can apply to others as well.

I want to start this post with a term called cognitive dissonance. I wanted to get this out of the way first because I know someone will bring it up if I don't. So I am going to give an explanation of it. The example I am using is from Dr. Joe Carver:

“Cognitive Dissonance” explains how and why people change their ideas and opinions to support situations that do not appear to be healthy, positive, or normal. In the theory, an individual seeks to reduce information or opinions that make him or her uncomfortable. When we have two sets of cognitions (knowledge, opinion, feelings, input from others, etc.) that are the opposite, the situation becomes emotionally uncomfortable. Even though we might find ourselves in a foolish or difficult situation – few want to admit that fact. Instead, we attempt to reduce the dissonance - the fact that our cognition's don’t match, agree, or make sense when combined. “Cognitive Dissonance” can be reduced by adding new cognition's – adding new thoughts and attitudes. Some examples:

• Heavy smokers know smoking causes lung cancer and multiple health risks. To continue smoking, the smoker changes his cognition's (thoughts/feelings) such as 1) “I’m smoking less than ten years ago”, 2) “I’m smoking low-tar cigarettes”, 3) “Those statistics are made up by the cancer industry conspiracy”, or 4) “Something’s got to get you anyway!” These new cognition's/attitudes allow them to keep smoking and actually begin blaming restaurants for being unfair.

• You purchase a $40,000.00 Sport Utility Vehicle that gets 8 miles a gallon. You justify the expense and related issues with 1) “It’s great on trips (you take one trip per year)”, 2) “I can use it to haul stuff (one coffee table in 12 months), and 3) “You can carry a lot of people in it (95% of your trips are driver-only).”

• Your husband/boyfriend becomes abusive and assaultive. You can’t leave due to the finances, children, or other factors. Through cognitive dissonance, you begin telling yourself “He only hits me open-handed” and “He’s had a lot of stress at work.”
  
  

Leon Festinger first coined “Cognitive Dissonance”. He had observed a cult (1956) in which members gave up their homes, incomes, and jobs to work for the cult. This cult believed in messages from outer space that predicted the day the world would end by a flood. As cult members and firm believers, they believed they would be saved by flying saucers at the appointed time. As they gathered and waited to be taken by flying saucers at the specified time, the end-of-the-world came and went. No flood and no flying saucer! Rather than believing they were foolish after all that personal and emotional investment – they decided their beliefs had actually saved the world from the flood and they became firmer in their beliefs after the failure of the prophecy. The moral – the more you invest (income, job, home, time, effort, etc.) the stronger your need to justify your position. If we invest $5.00 in a raffle ticket, we justify losing with “I’ll get them next time”. If you invest everything you have, it requires an almost unreasoning belief and unusual attitude to support and justify that investment.

Studies tell us we are more loyal and committed to something that is difficult, uncomfortable, and even humiliating. The initiation rituals of college fraternities, Marine boot camp, and graduate school all produce loyal and committed individuals. Almost any ordeal creates a bonding experience. Every couple, no matter how mismatched, falls in love in the movies after going through a terrorist takeover, being stalked by a killer, being stranded on an island, or being involved in an alien abduction. Investment and an ordeal are ingredients for a strong bonding – even if the bonding is unhealthy. No one bonds or falls in love by being a member of the Automobile Club or a music CD club. Struggling to survive on a deserted island – you bet!

Think about how that plays out in our every days let alone when it comes to abusive situations and those involved in them! I wanted to look at something else about the abusers themselves. something often called Cognitive Distortions. You can find many different examples and explanations for this and it is something that we all do to some extent.

Here are some examples:

1. All-or-nothing thinking: You see things in black and white categories. If your performance falls short of perfect, you see yourself as a total failure.

2. Overgeneralization: You see a single negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat.

3. Mental filter: You pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively so that your vision of all reality becomes darkened, like the drop of ink that discolors the entire beaker of water.

4. Disqualifying the positive: You reject positive experiences by insisting they "don't count" for some reason or other. You maintain a negative belief that is contradicted by your everyday experiences.

5. Jumping to conclusions: You make a negative interpretation even though there are no definite facts that convincingly support your conclusion.

a. Mind reading. You arbitrarily conclude that someone is reacting negatively to you and don't bother to check it out.

b. The Fortune Teller Error. You anticipate that things will turn out badly and feel convinced that your prediction is an already-established fact.

6. Magnification (catastrophizing) or minimization: You exaggerate the importance of things (such as your goof-up or someone else's achievement), or you inappropriately shrink things until they appear tiny (your own desirable qualities or the other fellow's imperfections). This is also called the "binocular trick."

7. Emotional reasoning: You assume that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are: "I feel it, therefore it must be true."

8. Should statements: You try to motivate yourself with shoulds and shouldn'ts, as if you had to be whipped and punished before you could be expected to do anything. "Musts" and "oughts" are also offenders. The emotional consequence is guilt. When you direct should statements toward others, you feel anger, frustration, and resentment.

9. Labeling and mislabeling: This is an extreme form of overgeneralization. Instead of describing your error, you attach a negative label to yourself: "I'm a loser." When someone else's behavior rubs you the wrong way, you attach a negative label to him, "He's a damn louse." Mislabeling involves describing an event with language that is highly colored and emotionally loaded.

10. Personalization: You see yourself as the cause of some negative external event for which, in fact, you were not primarily responsible.

Cognitive Distortions Adapted from the excellent book by: Burns, David D., MD. 1989. The Feeling Good Handbook. New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc.

Now there are also what some people call "thinking errors" and these came from American psychologist Stanton Samenow and Samuel Yochelson who originated the thinking error theory in 1976. Their books The Criminal Personality "A Profile for Change" and The Criminal Personality "The Change Process" challenged the then conventional thinking that those who commit crimes do so because of ambient social environment. Samenow and Yochelson argued instead that a person has full control over the choices they make.

Many programs have taken their materials and customized these "thinking errors" for their own use. Because of this there are numerous lists out there. Here is one small example list:

17 Offender Thinking Errors:

Victim Stance:

"He started it"; "I couldn't help it"; "He didn't give me a chance."

I Can't Attitude:

A statement of inability which really is a statement of refusal.

Lack of a Concept of Injury to Others:

Does not stop to think how his or her actions harm others (except physically); no concept of hurting others' feelings, emotional anguish.

Failure to Put Himself/Herself in the Place of Others:

Little or no empathy unless it is to con someone; does not consider the impact of his or her behavior on others.

Lack of Effort:

Unwilling to do anything which he or she finds boring, disagreeable; engages in self-pity and looks for excuses; psychosomatic aches and pains to avoid effort; complains of lack of energy.

Refusal to Accept Obligation:

Says he or she "forgot"; does not see something as an obligation to begin with; does that which he or she wants and ignores the obligatory.

Attitude of Ownership:

"if you don't give it to me, I'll take it"; expecting you to do what he or she wants; treats others as property, as though it were already his or hers (theft, "borrowing" without permission); makes demands of you as though he or she is asserting his or her rights.

Trust:

No concept of trust; he or she blames you for not trusting him or her; tries to make you feel as though it is your fault.

Unrealistic Expectations:

Because he or she thinks something will happen, it must (thinking makes it so); he or she expects others to fall into line and accommodate his or her wishes, whims.

Irresponsible Decision-Making:

Makes assumptions; does not find facts; does not suspend judgment; blames others when things go wrong.

Pride:

Refuses to back down even on little points; insists on his or her point of view to the exclusion of all others; even when proved wrong, clings to initial position.

Failure to Plan Ahead or Think Long-Range:

Future is not considered unless it is to accomplish something illicit or else a fantasy of tremendous success.

A Flawed Definition of Success and Failure:

Success is being number one overnight; failure is being anything less than number one and then considering himself or herself a "zero."

Fear of Being Put Down:

Even the smallest things don't go his or her way; does not take criticism without flaring up, blaming others; let down when unrealistic expectations are not met.

Refusal to Acknowledge Fear:

Denies being afraid; sees fear as weakness; fails to realize that fear can be constructive (only neurotic fear is undesirable).

Anger:

Anger is used to try to control people; it may take the form of direct threat, intimidation, assault, sarcasm, annoyance; anger may go underground ("I don't get mad, I get even"); anger is like a tumor: it grows and spreads, anyone or anything may be a target.

Power Tactics:

Attempt to overcome you in any struggle; enjoys fighting for power for its own sake (the issue may be secondary); a "high" for him or her is in overpowering and dominating people.

Do any of these sound familiar to you? Prevent Child Abuse Ohio has a list of 10 Negative Thought Patterns that are common to abusers listed in one of their newsletters. Here is their list for comparison:

Closed Thinking:

Batterers adopt an “Ain’t nobody gonna tell me what to do” attitude. They’re not recep­tive to opposing opinions. They lack the ability to be self-critical of their own opinions and actions.

Victimstance:

For batterers, it’s always someone else’s fault. If not for their family, their childhood, their lousy job, they’d be just fine.

Views Self As a Good Person:

Batterers fail to acknowledge their own destructive behavior, instead they choose to laser beam in on only their positive traits. By doing so, they fail to see any destructive behavior.

Lack of Effort:

“I can’t,” whines the batterer. Or, more accu­rately, they won’t. They refuse to do anything they find boring or disagreeable.

Lack of Interest in Responsible Performance:

Bill paying and cutting the grass don’t rock the Richter scale for fun. Batterers agree. They want excitement and immediate satisfaction. They lack any interest in being responsible and the mundane details of a living a responsible life.

Lack of Time Perspective:

“This time will be different,” promises the batterer, immediately forgetting past behavior.

Fear of Fear:

Irrational fears plague batterers. Instead of dealing they deny. They have a fundamental fear of injury or death and a profound fear of being put down.

Power Thrust:

Batterers are masters of deception who manipulate to take control of every situation.

Uniqueness:

Batterers quit at the first sign of failure. Believing they are different and better than others, they balk at any evidence to the contrary.

Ownership Attitude:

Batterers use sex for power and control, not as an opportunity for intimacy. They need to own everything.

There is also this following list from chapters three and four of Surviving the Secret, written by Kathy Rodriguez and Pam Vredevelt.:

Typical Offender Behaviors

Behavioral characteristics of the typical sex offender fall into eight areas:

He is self-centered: He views himself as most important and meets his own needs at the expense of others'. Not only does he consider himself number one in the world, he also believes he is the center of everybody else's experience and that others revolve around him.

The offender does not own responsibility for his actions: He constantly demeans others and does not admit mistakes or weaknesses. He blames others and lies, justifies, denies or minimizes his own behavior when caught in compromising situations.

He builds shallow and/or transitory relationships: He is not able to truly experience intimacy and is usually a taker in relationships. He invites others to care for him and generally remains in relationships only as long as his needs are met.

He uses power and control to manipulate others for his benefit: Offenders are manipulative and live to maneuver situations so they have the upper hand. To insure cooperation, they often speak of their trustworthiness as fathers. By using vague threats of what may happen if their victims bring the truth out in the open and by promising bodily harm or a family split, offenders can pressure victims to play along.

He capitalizes on the emotions of others: The offender learns to take advantage of the emotional sensitivities of others in order to control their behavior. He may play a victim role by telling his daughter her mother misunderstands him. While saying something like, "Your mother just doesn't understand what I need, the way you do...," the offender sets himself up as a victim in his daughter's eyes and capitalizes on her unmet emotional needs. He effectively secures her sympathy and cooperation. At other times he may pretend to be angry in order to use fear to enlist his daughter's cooperation.

The offender generally avoids constructive problem solving: Instead, he uses destructive forms of conflict resolution such as "getting away with," "getting back at others," or "putting it over on others." He rarely takes personal responsibility for anything. To him institutions and persons are things to outsmart and the offender takes pride in deception and his abilities to outwit others.

Incestuous fathers commonly repeat their own family background by marrying passive, powerless women: The offender has a low opinion of women, seeing them as weak and easily intimidated by his power. Often he does not know how to receive genuine caring; consequently he may keep his wife at a distance so that she remains powerless to meet his emotional needs.

Offending fathers tend to overinvest in the family by exerting rigid control over family members: They exploit their authoritative role by holding tight reins on their daughters and accusing them of seductive behavior. While holding up a peaceful facade to the rest of the world, they may become violent behind closed doors with family. In reality they are ineffective parents, self-absorbed highly dependent upon family members to fulfill their unrealistic expectations.

In an effort to avoid their own battles, offenders inflict pain on others, as we can see from these typical behavior patterns. Such behavior does not happen without reason; it comes as a result of past experience and present choices and reflects specific character traits.

Common Thinking Errors Offenders Use to Accomplish their Manipulations

Excuse making: When others hold offenders accountable for irresponsible actions, they make excuses to justify their behavior. Jack said he molested his daughter because he was out of work, depressed, and felt worthless. Others say: "I can't help myself." "I'm dumb." "I don't know why I did it." "I was never loved." "My family was poor." "My family was rich." The excuses go on and on.

Blaming: By using this technique the offender avoids solving problems. Instead of facing up to his actions, he blames and builds cases against others for "causing" whatever happened. For instance John blamed his problems on his daughter, Sally. He said, "She is always scatily dressed. It's her fault I lost control."

As he blamed Sally, John's resentment escalated. He felt justified offending while focusing on her wrongs. John tended to blame others, not only in heated fights, but also in everyday conversations. At times he even made crass comments about total strangers. This was exciting to him because he left a scene unscathed, feeling like a superman.

Minimizing: Offenders tend to minimize irresponsible behavior. When confronted, they make light of their wrongs and emphasize the insignificance of their offenses. Kevin said: "I only molested three children. I could have molested a lot more, but I didn't." This attitude also filtered into his college experiences. When talking about flunking a class, he said, "I didn't hand in the paper when it was due, but I handed in everything else. It's no big deal."

Justifying: Offenders often excuse their behavior with elaborate justifications. While conversing with them, you might hear: "If he can do it, then it must be okay for me to do it." "I was so lonely, I had to." "He yelled at me, so I hit him." "No one listens to me. That's why I can't do anything."

Redefining: When an offender redefines a situation, he shifts the focus of conversation to avoid talking about the problem.

Vagueness: Offenders communicate unclearly and nonspecifically to avoid being pinned down. They are noncommittal and use words that sound good to others and protect them from involvement. Phrases like these fill their vocabulary: "I more or less think so," "I guess," "probably," "maybe," "I might," "I'm not sure about this," "It's possible," and so on.

Lying: This is the most pronounce characteristic of criminal thinking. The offender uses lying in a variety of ways to confuse, distort, and make fools of other people. Three types of lies are told: lies of commission, lies of omission, and lies of assent.

A lie of commission involves inventing untrue ideas. Mark lied to his daughter by saying, "All fathers teach their daughters about sex this way."

When an offender tells a lie of omission, he communicates partial truth with the intent to deceive. Tom confessed to parts of his offense, but did not tell the entire story in detail. An offender may admit to fondling a victim but not to intercourse.

Offenders also tell lies of assent, which take the form of passive agreements between the offender and someone else. When George was discovered molesting his twelve-year-old daughter, he skillfully used this tactic with his pastor. After meeting together regularly for several months, Pastor Jim felt George had sincerely repented. On several occasions George agreed with Jim never to touch his daughter again.

Convinced of George's good intentions, Jim counseled his wife, encouraging her to allow George back into the home. Within a month George was caught molesting his daughter again. After months of therapy, George admitted, "Even though I agreed to leave my daughter alone, deep down I knew it would happen again. It was just a matter of time. I only agreed with Jim so that he would believe that I was okay and get off my back."

Sometimes offenders look as if they are lying when they're not. At other times, they appear to be genuinely honest, while actually deceiving others. The behavior is intentional, and their strategy aims at keeping others around them guessing so that they can remain in control. Skilled lying like this make it very difficult for helping professionals to work with offenders. Because abusers have played the lying game so long, they have a hard time sifting fact and fiction. Untrained professionals are easily conviced by these imposters.

Making fools of others: Offenders find great pleasure in setting people up for failure by making promises they never inted to keep. They delight in duping therapists, lawyers, judges, and pastors and brag about their craftiness in persuading professionals to believe them.

Assuming: Offenders spend a great deal of time assuming what others think. They use assumptions as a springboard for destructive activities. Ted assumed other didn't like him and were plotting against him, which gave him an excuse to blow up, rob, molest, or do anything else he had in mind.

I'm unique: The offender believes that he is unique and different from everyone else. What applies to others simply does not affect him. He's convinced he knows everything and can handle things alone. We frequently hear offenders say, "I don't need people! Besides, no one understands me anyway." Even when incarcerated, an offender may believe that everyone in prison except him is a criminal.

Ingratiating: The criminal often goes out of his way to be kind and to act interested in others. However, his phoniness has a hidden price tag. He is most interested in what he can get from others and how to manipulate, use, or control situations for his own purposes.

Fragmented thinking: Dan went to church on Sunday, abused on Monday and Tuesday, and attended church again on Wednesday. Seeing himself as a good person who deserved to do what he wanted. Dan never considered the inconsistency of his actions. His thoughts and behaviors were not tied together by integrity, and he had divided his life into little, unconnected campartments. Although he seemed a pillar of the community by day, he abused by night. As he saw it one role had little to do with the other.

Closed minded: Offenders are secretive about their personal lives and do not want evaluation and feedback from others. Their self-righteous narrow-mindedness forces outsiders to keep their distance.

Victim playing: Offenders tend to act as if they cannot take responsibility for their lives. They whine, shuffle, act helpless, and pretend that they are too stupid to do anything for themselves. When they don't get what they want, they play a victim role and act as if they are good and others are bad. Such manipulative tactics usually invite either criticism or rescue from those around them.

Power plays: Tim used power plays whenever he didn't get his own way. He walked out of rooms during disagreements and didn't complete jobs he agreed to do. At other times he grounded his daughter when she rebuffed his sexual overtures. Sometimes he pitted his children against his wife. On one occasion he enlisted his daughters' support by promising them an outing. When his wife told him it was inconvenient for her, Tim sulked and encouraged his children's temper tantrums until she finally consented to go.

Anger: John used anger inappropriately to get his way. His temper tantrums and explosive reactions created emotional scenes and instilled fear in others. While pretending to be outraged, he manipulated and controlled his children and their friends.

Ownership: During a counseling session, Steve said, "She's my wife, and I can treat her however I want!" He believed that anything he desired was his, simply because he owned it. He treated people as pawns and also used this thinking error to justify theft.

As you can see there are many similarities throughout the different lists and types people use. I wanted to make a comment about the piece from above where they said:

Sometimes offenders look as if they are lying when they're not. At other times, they appear to be genuinely honest, while actually deceiving others. The behavior is intentional, and their strategy aims at keeping others around them guessing so that they can remain in control. Skilled lying like this make it very difficult for helping professionals to work with offenders. Because abusers have played the lying game so long, they have a hard time sifting fact and fiction. Untrained professionals are easily conviced by these imposters.

I can say I have seen this all to many times. I have seen numerous professionals taken in and conned as they mentioned above. I think it is very important for only specially trained professionals to work with these type of people for that very reason.

Well as usual I find myself having gone off on a long tangent and now need to try to tie it all back together. Why all this information? Hopefully it will be helpful to people when they read it. hopefully it will get people to look past the "cover" of a person. I have seen way to many people get hurt because these type of people convince people to not look past the surface.

For example when a pastor, teacher, or other often popular person is accused of sexually abusing someone people often attack the victim and talk about how "good" the accused seems and how "bad" the accuser's background seems. Here are some quotes from actual, confessed and convicted child molesters describing who they often like to target. These are from the Predators book once again:

I would probably pick the one who appeared more needy, the child hanging back from others or feeling picked on by others or feeling picked on by brothers and sisters.

I would find a child who doesn’t have a happy home life, because it would be easier for me to gain their friendship.

And from that same book another offender had this to say about church people:

I considered church people easy to fool…they have a trust that comes from being Christians…They tend to be better folks all around. And they seem to want to believe in people…I think they want to believe in people. And because of that, you can easily convince, with or without convincing words.

I have had others tell me that they pick the "misfit" child or adult. The person with a dysfunctional family life and numerous problems. When I asked them why I was told that one reason is because people will be less likely to believe them because of their background. I also had them tell me the same thing about "church people".

So hopefully this information can help someone. People see what they want to see. That often goes for professionals as well.

Nisbett, R. E., & Wilson, T. D. (1977). The halo effect: Evidence for unconscious alteration of judgments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 35(4), 250-6.

*Ross, L., Greene, D., & House, P. (1977). The false consensus phenomenon: An attributional bias in self-perception and social perception processes. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 13(3), 279-301.

*Weaver, K., Garcia, S.M., Schwarz, N., & Miller, D.T. (2007) Inferring the popularity of an opinion from its familiarity: A repetitive voice can sound like a chorus. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92(5), 821-833.

Before I write this next post I want to say this. Yes there are men (and women) who claim to be victims of domestic violence in order to better control their partner. I know for a fact this happens. I know for a fact that females do it as well as men because I watched my own mother use this tactic (threaten to use it actually) against my father as I was growing up. Yes I also know that men are considered in the majority when it comes to domestic violence. All victims of domestic violence are important though. I believe that we should never underestimate the importance of violence against women, but we should look at the big picture of violence in relationships.

And for the record my father was never an abusive person to my mother. The worst thing I ever saw him do was to raise his voice and yell. He was not insulting, he was not emotionally abusive, in fact the worst thing I could say was that he was mainly absent from the house as time went on so he could avoid the issue. So she was never abusive to him for "self-defense" reasons and certainly never abusive to me for "self-defense" reasons.

I was reading an article by Sheridan Hill, a self-proclaimed feminist author who investigated the issue of domestic violence and went from scoffing at the idea that men can be abused to acknowledging that women, too, can be violent. In this somewhat old article were some things that caught my attention:

“Men afraid of women? No, it’s just the opposite,” I say, and run to the Web to collect gender statistics on crime and domestic abuse. In a matter of minutes, I will prove him wrong. But the facts that surface are hard to swallow.

Matt Vegh, a Canadian charter rights advocate, has spent two years assisting male victims of domestic violence in the provincial courtrooms of Ontario, Canada.

"Make absolutely no mistake," Vegh said. "Women can smoke dope, booze it up, throw a fist, wield a knife, use a gun, beat their spouse, and beat their kids. It is a type of violence that is ignored, condoned, and treated as frivolous by a justice system that survives by feeding on the one individual who is easily stereo-typed, lacks public sympathy, does not raise fear of reprisal in politicians, and often does not fight back."

Vegh recently took a month-long sabbatical to the Arizona mountains, where he mused that the most important service he offers his clients is not legal advice, but simply to believe in them. To listen. “These men are victimized by their spouses and then ridiculed by a justice system that denies what has happened to them,” he said. “They are stereotyped, labeled, and unheard by any authority. The human toll is staggering.”

As the weeks go by, I talk it over with three men friends, and am shocked to find that all of them were abused by either their mother or their wife.

“My life would have to be in danger before I would hit a woman,” says my friend Al. "I took a lot of scratches and bruises from my wife over the years because she knew I wouldn’t hit her back. But it will affect me for the rest of my life. It demoralizes you. It makes you almost dysfunctional with the opposite sex. People don’t understand; it’s not a matter of being more powerful.” Al never sought counseling to heal from spousal abuse because, “It’s shameful to talk about being beat up by a woman.”

I know I was raised with the same belief that "Al" expressed and that is that I was to never, ever for any reason hit a girl/woman. I still believe that. I then read a research paper that had some interesting comments in it as well:

Why is it so hard to believe that in domestic violence cases men are victims - and women are perpetrators - at nearly equal rates? While the answers are complex and many-faceted, two aspects that my research kept turning up are social stereotypes and personal embarrassment.

In our culture men are expected to be independent and stoic. From Gary Cooper to John Wayne to Clint Eastwood, the strong, silent type is the American idol and ideal. Conversely, women are seen as nurturers, the domestic glue that binds the strong man to the home fires that she keeps burning. While we may acknowledge the occasional, isolated instance of a woman physically hurting a man, in general this is seen as a comical event. Who hasn't seen the "amusing" caricature of the scowling woman with the frying pan, standing with arms crossed and foot tapping, ready to wallop the miscreant man; we can only guess his transgression - out late with the boys? less than appreciative of the home-cooked meal? spending part of his paycheck instead of bringing it all home to "the little woman"? Sitcoms and commercials abound with examples, presented as comedy, of women hitting, threatening or belittling men; after all, as Cathy Young (1999) points out, "comedians are in the business of exaggerating [social] stereotypes for effect" (p. 29). If the genders were reversed, and the image of a man hitting, threatening or belittling a woman was presented to sell products or entertain viewers, the public outcry would be audible.

An attack on a man by a woman is a humiliating, isolating event. Eric Schmidt (Fox TV) reported about the "wimp factor," noting that "most men would rather not admit they've been beaten up by a woman." He interviewed Jade Rubick, who spoke of being hit, scratched and bitten by his now-former wife during their two-year marriage. "It's embarrassing," he said, "and you're considered a wimp if your partner is abusing you in a relationship." Mr. Rubick went on to found Stop Abuse for Everyone (S.A.F.E.), a nonprofit organization aimed at increasing public awareness about all victims of domestic violence. Certainly no one would call a professional football player like running back Fred Lane (Indianapolis Colts) a wimp, but when he was killed by his wife last year relatively little news coverage was given to the domestic violence aspect of his death. An opportunity to educate the public about male victims - particularly to invalidate the "wimp factor" - was lost.

Acknowledging the extent to which men suffer from domestic abuse does not in any way negate or diminish the fact that women suffer from domestic abuse. Violence hurts people, individual beings, not genders or ideological groups. People need to be educated about this topic in order to overcome society's collective denial about the topic of male victims and female perpetrators so that both groups can receive the support and services they need. As David Thomas (1993) points out, "neither sex has the monopoly on virtue or vice. Men do not wear the black hats, nor women the white. We are all of us fallible souls decked out in shades of gray" (p. 251).

The bolded section is the part I find most important. Abuse is wrong period. I still find a lot of bitterness and anger among some people in the DV field when the issue of "male victims" is brought up. I find it to be not only illogical but totally unprofessional and hurtful.

What is the point to this rambling post I am making. I am not really sure after all that reading. I guess I just wanted to make the point that yes indeed men are often victims and that predatory women do exist. My mother was one of them. So when I see people discount "male" victims I have to wonder why.

This is the follow up to the Mother-Daughter sexual abuse post. I started off doing these because of a communication I had with a reader. In talking he gave me permission to print (he read it before it appeared here) some of his story in hopes that other men will benefit from his speaking out. So I am summarizing and paraphrasing some of what he has told me. I am calling him Joe though that is not his name:

Joe was raised by a single mother and never knew who his biological father was or is. For most of his childhood things seemed to be "normal" to him. His mother appeared to have a lot of short term boyfriends but other than that things seemed fine. The sexual abuse by his mother did not begin until he was about 12 years old and started to enter puberty. That is when his life changed and his life became a nightmare of abuse and secrecy.

Joe told me that he felt trapped with no one to turn to for help. Joe did not think anyone would believe him even if he did tell someone and he was full of shame and guilt and secretly thought that this was all his fault and he had somehow caused his mother to be this way towards him.

Joe talked about hating himself and feeling horrible guilt around the fact that he felt hurt and betrayed by his mother but at the same time felt a close bond and love for his mother. Joe said that he felt like he must be crazy, that he must not really be a "man" because of the way he felt. Joe then added something that he said he has only told his wife. Joe stated what made it even more difficult was that when his mother would do sexual things with him his body responded and some of the things they did physically felt very good. He said that this was one of the most painful aspects still to try to come to terms with. How could I enjoy being sexual with my own mother he says he often asked himself and berated himself mentally about. Joe said that this part was "proof" to him that it was his doing and his fault. At least that is how he thought for many years and he admits to still thinking that sometimes.

Another issue that Joe described as being a very painful part of his abuse was his friends. Mainly his male friends. As a teen boy with teen friends he said he felt tormented anytime his mother was mentioned or appeared and so he tried to make sure no one ever saw her or knew she was his mother. Why? Because Joe said his mother was very attractive. Model attractive is how he described her. Joe said when his teen friends would see her they would make comments about how attractive she was and how "lucky" Joe was to have so a good looking mother and then the sexual comments would sometimes start along with teasing Joe. Little did they know that Joe was being sexually abused by his mother.

Joe also described the effect that his mothers looks had on people. He said that because she was so attractive she was able to use this to her advantage. She had numerous "boyfriends" as she would use them up and toss them away. She also did the same with her female friends and Joe related that she had as many "girlfriends" as she did boyfriends. Other people were just objects to be used by her to obtain what she wanted. This included Joe. Joe was able to escape from her when he moved out at 20 and he felt guilty for leaving and guilty for staying so long. Nothing he did seemed to be the right thing to do in his mind. That was over 3 decades ago. Joe was able to come to terms and seek help later in his life. Joe says he still is haunted by the memory and has to fight the guilt he feels over cutting off all contact with his mother, to the point where he does not know where she is or if she is even alive or dead.

There was a lot more I could have posted but what is there serves as a good example for this topic. Joe waited over 30 years before finally being able to seek help. Joe is not an isolated case as the rest of this post will show.

I found a recent article from the Vancouver Sun, Gerry Bellett , Canwest News Service, Tuesday, May 27, 2008 that I think very much needs reposting here:

3 in 4 B.C. boys on street sexually exploited by women

Vancouver Sun, Gerry Bellett , Canwest News Service, Tuesday, May 27, 2008

VANCOUVER - Canada's largest study into the sexual exploitation of street kids and runaways has shattered some myths about who the abusers might be - with the most surprising finding being that many are women seeking sex with young males.

"Some youth in each gender were exploited by women with more than three out of four (79 per cent) sexually exploited males reporting exchanging sex for money or goods with a female," said Elizabeth Saewyc, associate professor of nursing at the University of British Columbia and principal investigator for the study conducted by Vancouver's McCreary Centre Society.

"I must admit it wasn't something we were expecting."

The results were drawn from interviews with 1,845 youth - some as young as 12 - in surveys taken across the province between 2000 and 2006.

The stereotypical model of the child being abused - a teenage female being sexually abused by a male - was wrong, said Saewyc.

Sexual exploitation is defined as youth under 19 trading sexual activities for money, drugs, gifts, food, services, shelter, transportation or anything similar.

This can include work in brothels, escort services, pornography and Internet sex but it also includes what's described as "survival sex," where a child provides sex in exchange for a place to sleep, a meal or a ride.

It found one in every three of children living on the street have been sexually abused although many didn't seem aware that they had been exploited, said Saewyc.

"It's a shocking number. The law is clear: any adult who has sex with children for any form of consideration is exploiting them and it's illegal," she said.

The study found 94 per cent of females reported they had been sexually exploited by men.

But the study found that young males were being preyed upon by sexual predators of both sexes, yet the social systems in place to deter and prevent sexual predation were only designed to help females and the criminal justice system wasn't concerned with what was happening to young males.

"Women seeking young men and boys offer transportation or other things and some go to nightclubs and bars where they can pick up under-age youth. And a certain percentage have been picked up by couples," she said.

Saewyc said it was indicative of the prevailing myths about sexual abuse that the rehabilitation program for persons arrested by police for attempting to buy sexual favours on the street was called "John School".

"I think it's time we had a Jane School. There should be an equal opportunity school for women predators," she said.

"Part of the challenge is that young males are not seen as being exploited because they are not coming to the attention of the police and the police aren't out there picking up the perpetrators. The system is set up to handle the sexual exploitation of young women, not young men," she said.

Community research associate Jayson Anderson said most of the programs to deal with sexual exploitation were designed by women for women. "There's really nothing out there for males. So we need programs for young boys," he said.

I wanted to post that article because it is recent. A lot of the materials I have found on this subject are often older, from the 80's and 90's. It also was a study that was not looking at or for female abusers specifically.

Kali Munro in her article Male Sexual Abuse Victims of Female Perpetrators: Society's Betrayal of Boys states this:

The reality that boys are sexually abused by women is not widely accepted. Some people view it as an impossible act - that a male can’t be sexually assaulted by a female - and others view it as sexually titillating. The existence of female perpetrators and male victims confronts many of our most firmly held beliefs about women, men, sexuality, power, and sexual assault. It challenges our very notions about what sex is.

It is common to see/hear people make comments like "he was lucky" or "I wish I had that happen to me when I was his age" and various other ones that run along the same sexist line. A 30 year old woman who is with a 14 year old boy is called "having sex" or an "affair" by many, even the media. Yet if it is a 30 year old man with a 14 year old girl he is called a child molester, pervert, pedophile etc. This double standard makes it all that much harder for male victims to speak up.

As Kali further states in her article:

If a female initiates sexual contact with a male, this is viewed as a rare and exciting opportunity that no man should let pass by; he should be grateful.

Given these commonly held beliefs, many people see nothing wrong with a woman pursuing a boy sexually. In fact, in some circles it is considered a good way to introduce boys to heterosexuality. Some fathers take their young sons to prostitutes with the mistaken belief that it is “good” for them. A number of movies, stories, jokes, and fantasies portray older women sexually “seducing” young boys in positive terms.

That is how it is viewed by many people. Want to get a lively discussion going ask someone what they think about a 14 year old girl being with a 30 year old male and then switch it. I am always amazed at how many people have no issue with the double standard. Things are slowly starting to change, very slowly, on this issue. We see more and more female teachers who have been caught abusing their students.

Most of what was said in the Mother-Daughter Sexual Abuse posting can be applied here as well and because of that I am not going to re-post all the material from that post but rather urge people to read it as well.

I must say that I find the article that Kali Munro did to be well done. In the article Male Sexual Abuse Victims of Female Perpetrators: Society's Betrayal of Boys she goes on to relate this:

Sadly, many men who were sexually abused by women are locked in silence, shame, and self-loathing. Society tells them that not only was their experience not abuse, but that they should have enjoyed it, and if they didn’t there must be something terribly wrong with them.

Even when their experiences are recognized as abuse, they may be viewed as having been “weak” or “not man enough” because they were unable to stop it, defend themselves, or put it behind them.

The myth that men can’t be victimized particularly by women is firmly entrenched in many cultures. Many men who dare acknowledge that they were sexually abused by women are cruelly laughed at and humiliated. Most do not dare say a word about it for fear of feeling any more ashamed than they already feel.

Many men who were sexually abused by women feel deeply ashamed of themselves, their sexuality, and their gender. Sadly and mistakenly, they believe that there must be something profoundly wrong with them that they were abused in this way. Some men defend against feeling this way by being in a constant state of anger or rage - one of the few emotions that are socially acceptable for men. Many male survivors cope with the abuse by drinking, using drugs, living recklessly, avoiding intimate relationships, numbing their feelings, dissociating, and becoming depressed, anxious or angry.

And consider this from the Canadian Children's Rights Council:

Finally, there is an alarmingly high rate of sexual abuse by females in the backgrounds of rapists, sex offenders and sexually aggressive men - 59% (Petrovich and Templer, 1984), 66% (Groth, 1979) and 80% (Briere and Smiljanich, 1993).

There is another older article that people can download and distribute. It is called "The Invisible Boy:Revisioning the Victimization of Male Children and Teens" From Health Canada, National Clearinghouse on Family Violence and if you click the link you can get the .PDF file. Here are some portions of that article:

Despite the fact that over 300 books and articles on male victims have been published in the last 25 to 30 years, boys and teen males remain on the periphery of the discourse on child abuse. Few workshops about males can be found at most child abuse conferences and there are no specialized training programs for clinicians. Male-centred assessment is all but non-existent and treatment programs are rare. If we are talking about adult males, the problem is even greater. A sad example of this was witnessed recently in Toronto. After a broadcast of The Boys of St. Vincent, a film about the abuse of boys in a church-run orphanage, the Kids' Help Phone received over 1 000 calls from distraught adult male survivors of childhood sexual abuse. It is tragic in a way no words can capture that these men had no place to turn to other than a children's crisis line.

This is still true more than a decade later. If you are a man call a domestic violence shelter and ask them for help see what kind of resources are available for you and what kind of response you get from them. Call an abuse hot line and ask for specialized help for a man who has been abused by a woman. In many places in this country there is no help and no resources to deal with this.

The language we use in the current discourse on violence and abuse masks, minimizes or renders invisible certain realities for male victims. Terms such as "family violence" have become co-terminus with "violence toward women," particularly on the part of husbands, fathers or other adult male figures. Male teens, boys, male seniors, male victims of sibling-on-sibling violence and female abusers disappear in this term.

This still occurs a decade later and reflects what I was discussing earlier. A 14 year old boy is having "sex" with a 30 year old woman and it was "consensual". For example this sentence from a newspaper report about a 40 year old woman convicted of sexually abusing a 15 year old boy she was hired to babysit "The almost year-long relationship continued even after Ms. Collins and her family moved to Moncton in September 2004." Relationship? The woman was given a 2 year sentence and served it in the community. Do you think a male offender who was babysitting a 15 year old girl and had sexually abused her in excess of 100 times would have gotten such a sentence? The stereotypes about women and mothers creeps into almost every aspect of how we perceive this issue.

Now this next part is a piece that I have talked about and is something I have not only witnessed but experienced:

Male victims report great pain, frustration and some anger at not seeing their stories reflected in the public discourse on violence and abuse. Several large-scale Canadian studies about interpersonal violence conducted in the past several years have reported the findings pertaining to only female victims. Many academic papers written about victims of violence purport to be "balanced," yet typically bring only a faint male "voice" to the analysis. From a conceptual standpoint, many also make the mistake of accepting and using, uncritically, a woman-centred-only model of victimization. Male victims also find much of this work dehumanizing and dismissive of their experiences. They feel many writers and thinkers in the field have delineated the boundaries of the discourse on violence and abuse - boundaries that leave males out.

Male victims frequently find that therapists, counsellors or other types of caregivers trained with female-centred models of victimization are unable to help them. Consequently, they are likely to simply abandon therapy, leaving unexplored many of the issues relating to their victimization experience and to their deeper healing.

Male victims, like female victims before them, have encountered their share of critics and detractors, people who refuse to believe them, ignore prevalence statistics, minimize the impact of abuse, appropriate and deny males a voice, or dismiss male victimization as a "red herring." When prevalence statistics are given for male victimization, it is common to hear the response that the vast majority of abusers of males are other males, a belief which is simply not true. This comment is usually intended to frame male victimization as a "male problem." It is also insensitive and perceived by male survivors as being victim-blaming. While challenges and criticisms to concepts and theories are valid, and an important part of the evolution and development of any field, denial, minimization and silencing is harmful, abusive and damaging to any victim.

I can say that this is the part that upsets me as much as anything else that happened and it still upsets me to this day.

Male victims walk a fine line between wanting to be heard and validated, to be supportive of female victims and to be pro-woman, while challenging assumptions they feel are biased stereotypes. Their challenges to some of these stereotypes are often met with accusations that they are misogynists, part of a "backlash" against feminism, or have a hidden agenda to undermine women's gains. If any of these accusations are true, they must be confronted by all of us. But if they are based only on the fear that recognition of males as victims will threaten women's gains, then that is the issue we should be discussing right up front, not minimizing male victims' experiences in a competition to prove who has been harmed the most. Nonetheless, it is important for all of us to recognize that it may be difficult for many women to listen to male victims' stories until they feel safe in this regard.

Sadly, male victims and their advocates risk a lot to challenge the status quo and experience much pressure to remain silent. It is ironic that the pressure males feel to remain silent replicates, at a social level, the same patterns of silencing, denial and minimization they experienced at the hands of their offenders. If we do not face the fact that we need to heal the "gendered wounds" of both women and men, then we will compromise the search for gender peace.

Finally, and perhaps the most important reason to re-vision our understanding, is because men and teen males are not, in any substantial way, joining women in the struggle to end all forms of interpersonal-violence. Part of the reason for this may be because males do not see their own stories reflected in public discussions about violence and abuse. If one were to rely solely on the media to convey the male experience, few stories would be known beyond the more sensational cases involving several church-run orphanages or provincial training schools. It is not uncommon to hear male students express resentment toward high school anti-violence curricula that presumes them to be abusers, harassers, rapists and sexual assaulters in waiting. Indeed, it is difficult to feel part of a collective social movement against violence when one's own experiences are dismissed, excluded or minimized. It is evident from even a casual review of this material that much of it contains biased stereotypes and unchallenged assumptions about "male anger," "male aggression" and "male sexuality." All too often, these writers take as a starting point a caricature of the worst imaginable elements of "masculinity" and assume it applies to all male persons.

I concur fully with the above statement. I remember feeling this way myself when I was younger. I vividly remember being quite upset about the whole domestic violence/sexual abuse trainings and seminars I attended when I was younger. I could not understand why the double standard existed. Why minimize or discount one group's pain and suffering while teaching about another groups pain and suffering? I also have seen something that is not mentioned much but I will mention it here. I have experienced men and women who are bitter against the opposite sex because of their experiences and this colors their every interaction.

This is even more of an issue for male victims. When boys are victimized, they tend to be seen as less in need of care and support (Watkins and Bentovim, 1992). They are also blamed more for their abuse (Burgess, 1985; Broussard and Wagner, 1988; Whatley and Riggio, 1993) and their offenders are held less accountable (Burgess, 1985). In one of the most troubling studies, Pierce and Pierce (1985) found that male victims, despite being subjected to more invasive types of abuse and more types of sexual acts than female victims, were 5 times less likely to be removed from their homes.

This piece from that article will hopefully shock some people. We in no way should deny or minimize what has happened to millions of women and girls. But we do need to also focus on male victims and give them the same respect and treatment options.

Males, generally, have more permission to be sexual persons in our society. A double standard of morality has been applied to males and female for centuries. The fact that there are no "positive" or flattering terms such as "sowing his wild oats," "boys will be boys" or "ladies man" for females gives vivid illustration to this point. It is generally assumed that having "licence" to be a sexual person is an advantage. Males are seen to get power from obtaining or taking sex, women from withholding sex.

However, sexual licence has serious consequences for male victims. It increases a boy's susceptibility to sexual abuse by promoting or encouraging participation in sexual activities. It promotes secrecy because boys are afraid to report sexual experiences that go wrong for fear they are responsible and blameworthy. It affects our perceptions as professional caregivers, encourages victim blaming and supports minimization of the impact on victims of male-on-male sexual assault or female-perpetrated sexual assault. It causes males to expect female sexual contact. It promotes risk-taking sexual behaviour and creates expectations for males that they must be the initiators of sex and have sexual knowledge and experience.

When I write these posts I generally have one idea in mind and almost always end up rambling on and hopefully not losing people to much. I want to look at a few more pieces from that publication. It is an older publiciation but much of what is in it is still very much true today. If noting else in this post made sense I hope that the folllowing will. I wholeheartedly agree with what they have to say:

Our minimization and denial of male victimization so permeates our culture that it is in evidence everywhere from nursery rhymes, comic strips, comedy films, television programs and newspaper stories to academic research. We give male victims a message every day of their lives that they risk much by complaining.

Stated succinctly, if a male is victimized he deserved it, asked for it, or is lying. If he is injured, it is his own fault. If he cries or complains, we will not take him seriously or condone his "whining" because he is supposed to "take it like a man." We will laugh at him. We will support him in the minimization of its impact. We will encourage him to accept responsibility for being victimized and teach him to ignore any feelings associated with his abuse. We will guilt and shame him to keep a stiff upper lip so he can "get on with it."

When we give a message to boys and young men in any shape or form that their experience of violence and victimization is less important than that of girls and young women, we are teaching them a lesson about their value as persons. We also teach them that the use of violence toward males is legitimate. When we dismiss their pain, we do little to encourage boys and young men to listen to, and take seriously, women's concerns about violence and victimization. When we diminish their experience or fail to hold their male and female abusers fully accountable, we support their continued victimization.

How Would Things Be Different if We Acknowledged Male Victims?

How would our society be different if we recognized and supported male victims? We would have to acknowledge how gender role conditioning denies boys a rich emotional life and cuts them off from whole parts of their essential selves. We would begin to understand how child-rearing practices in the form of emotional and physical withdrawal from sons "to toughen them up" early in their lives compromises their ability to form secure and nurturing attachments. We would begin to see how male gender itself is a risk factor that can magnify the effects of all forms of abuse and channel it in violent, aggressive and reckless acts directed toward the self or others. We would finally acknowledge the overwhelming research evidence concerning the amount of physical abuse, sexual abuse, psychological maltreatment, neglect and corporal punishment of male children and teens by females, without minimization.

We would have to recognize that if there is a male gender dimension to many forms of overtly expressed violence, its causes need to be linked to the routine and normalized violence toward males prevalent in our society, violence in the form of child abuse and neglect, psychological maltreatment, corporal punishment and male-gender role socialization. We would finally realize that all the forms of violence toward boys and teen males discussed in this document are the common everyday lived experience of most males rather than the exception. We would no longer tolerate humorous or entertaining media images of males or females as victims of violence or biased journalism that fails to report the whole picture of child abuse and neglect and interpersonal, family and community violence.

We would recognize that regardless of our own theoretical starting points, male victims have their own voice, their own meanings for their experiences. If we remain ignorant of, overlook or fail to explore their stories, we will miss much of what we need to engage them in therapy and healing. We will construct for them the origins and courses of their difficulties. We will shape and mold them to the limitations of our own personal and professional world views. We will, through the use of our professional practices, reproduce the same dysfunctional and disempowering patterns of communication and relationship many of these males found in their families of origin or the environments in which they grew up.

We would recognize that solving the complex problem of violence in our society will never be achieved until all the stories and voices of victims of violence are heard, until men and women of good will begin to work side by side, and until the means of our collective struggle toward peace reflect respect, compassion and inclusion as our minimum standard. We will recognize, finally, that means are ends. It is in the selection of our means where we are most conscious and able to make inclusive decisions about our future direction. From a postmodernist perspective, in any inclusive process of consensus building toward some goal, one cannot see the end from the starting point. Thus, if the means we choose toward the creation of a more just society are anything but, we can only arrive back where we started.

Beginning with Ourselves as Adults

Perhaps, the greatest responsibility for the plight of boys and young men lies with adults. We are the ones who conduct single-gender and biased research. We are the ones who present to the media more political opinions about male victimization than provide objective, empirically-based information. We are the ones who help maintain biased stereotypes about boys and young men that keep them trapped in their silence. We are the ones who help reinforce in the public mind an image of strong and resilient male victims who are, in truth, human beings suffering in much pain, isolation and loneliness.

Adults, especially those who work in the child abuse field, are the eyes of Canadian society in this area of human suffering. It is up to us to speak against abuse and injustice, and for compassion and inclusion. If we do not open ourselves to self-criticism, conscientiously and continually reflect on our assumptions, methods and standards of practice, or allow ourselves to become trapped in rhetoric, then it is we who will become the ones who will pose the greatest threat to the credibility of the field.

So back to Joe. Another thing he mentioned was that he was reluctant to talk to anyone about this because one of the reactions he has gotten was to be blamed and called a pervert. Because he described his abuser as "attractive" it had to be his sick fantasy or his fault. Would he have gotten the same response had he been a girl?

Lets look at this article from ABC News 20/20 called Double Standard When It Comes to Underage Sex?

Movies and television often portray having sex with an older woman as an exciting conquest. The Comedy Central show "South Park" shows police officers impressed that an elementary school student slept with an attractive teacher. One cop jokes to the another, "The crime is she isn't doing it with me!"

When one of ABC's "Desperate Housewives" slept with a high school student, all season the student was shown as a lucky guy, never as someone who Eva Longoria's character Gabrielle was sexually exploiting.

"There's definitely a double standard," said child psychologist Lisa Boesky. "Parents tend to see their girls as fragile, vulnerable, more in need of protection … When it comes to their boys, there's kind of this message of, 'Be careful out there.' They may even purchase some condoms for them, or basically tell them to be safe and don't get anybody pregnant."

But this double standard is a mistake, say many researchers, because boys are vulnerable too.

Although most boys who had sex with older women said the experience was positive, those same boys are also more likely to have emotional and sexual problems later.

"They may drink a lot, they may get into drugs, they may start seeing prostitutes, they may gamble … they may be sexually dysfunctional," said New York psychologist Dr. Richard Garner, who treats victims of sex abuse. "A whole string of things like that, none of which seem in their own mind to be related to the idea that they were sexual victims, which is very hard for a boy to say he was."

And that, he says, is why many boys say the experience was positive.

"To say I was sexually victimized is to say, 'I'm not male' and boys aren't likely to do that."

Or this article from the Seattle Times: Female sex offenders reveal cultural double standard

The decadelong wave of sexual offenses committed by women — teachers in particular have exposed a cultural double standard: The public is more willing to accept the female abuser's claim that she had a "relationship" with the victim. And in cases in which the male is a teenager, the sexual abuse is more likely to be dismissed as a rite of passage. The questionable, yet overriding assumption, is that women predators are somehow different from men.

"Men are demonized, women are diagnosed. Men are beasts, but women are troubled or mentally ill," said media scholar Matthew Felling in an interview with Fox News. In fact, accounts of women sexual offenders are often more titillating than harsh. Felling calls the news coverage of young, attractive teachers involved with their students "part crime drama, part Penthouse letter."

And if you truly want to see where our society is consider this next piece from that article (and note how the paper even says she began a "sexual relationship"):

The current awareness of women predators began with Mary K. Letourneau, a 34-year-old elementary-school teacher and a married mother of four, who in 1996 began a sexual relationship with a 12-year-old former student, Vili Fualaau. Letourneau eventually had two children with him and served more than seven years in prison. She resumed contact with Fualaau, by then an adult, after she was released. While a male offender might have been publicly shunned, Letourneau's 2005 wedding to Fualaau was covered by "Entertainment Tonight."

Think about what the reaction would be if a television show would air this if the roles were switched and it was a 34 year old male and 12 year old girl.

Female predators' crimes are often attributed to marital problems, depression, loneliness, immaturity or self-esteem issues. Letourneau was reported to have "a loveless marriage" and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

Not only do we look at female offenders differently, so do the offenders themselves. Women predators are more likely to see the abuse as a romantic relationship. Letourneau told CNN's Larry King that she and Fualaau had a "deep spiritual oneness" before they were ever sexual, and that she did not consider herself a sexual predator.

Go speak with a few pedophiles and they will say the same thing. They do not see themselves as a sexual predator and they "love" the children and feel they have a deep bond with them. they have a "deep bond" with them only in their own minds because they refuse to see past themselves.

Dr. Leigh Baker, a clinical psychologist in Colorado, interviewed hundreds of male and female predators for her book "Protecting Your Children From Sexual Predators." All were incarcerated at the time, and their stories help form her theory that there are four types of predators: inadequate, narcissistic, anti-social and pedophile.

An inadequate adult (and predator) has trouble forming attachments with other adults and is most comfortable with children, she says. A narcissist loves him- or herself to the detriment of others; someone who's anti-social doesn't abide by society's rules; and a pedophile is sexually aroused by children.

While some women are pedophiles and some men do profess their love for the children they sexually abuse, women are more likely to "couch it as a relationship," according to Baker. Men are more likely to be serial pedophiles; women seek that "deep spiritual oneness" that Letourneau says she found.

The traits women predators exhibit — seeing themselves as a victim, low self-esteem, a sense of inadequacy, needing to be the center of attention, putting their own need for a connection before common sense — probably place most women predators into two of Baker's four categories.

"My suspicion is if you took a large enough number of female predators, they would fall into all four types. But, we know women are less anti-social than men, and there are fewer female pedophiles, so I think most women are narcissistic or inadequate types of predators."

There are signs of the inadequate, the narcissist and the anti-social predator in Letourneau. She formed an inappropriate bond with a 12-year old, ignoring society's mores and the well-being of her own four children.

While I may not fully agree with Dr. Baker on everything, she does raise some good points. The article goes on to make some other good points:

To watch NBC's "To Catch A Predator" you'd think all predators are men. The series uses decoys on the Internet to lure men hoping to hook up with underage teens. Robert Weiss, executive director and founder of the Sexual Recovery Institute in Los Angeles, who provided his expertise in one of the episodes, says sexual compulsions on the Internet are male-dominated.

I wanted to make a comment on this. By not discussing or showing female offenders these type of shows only further reinforce the myths and stereotypes. Not to mention that the "predators" that are being caught are the stupid ones or the compulsive ones. The article then goes on to say this:

Then there is the ultimate double standard: The wink wink, nudge nudge, of boys getting their sexual initiation from grown women.

"Society sees it as they got 'lucky' " to receive a sexual initiation from a woman, according to Dr. Keith Kaufman, chairman of the department of psychology at Portland State University. "But their brain maturation isn't complete. Boys aren't in a position to give consent to a sexual relationship. Girls see it as abusive much more quickly. Boys won't want to see themselves as a victim."

There is a prevailing sense that boys are not harmed by sexual liaisons with older women. It's called the "Mrs. Robinson Syndrome," after the character in the 1967 film "The Graduate." But Benjamin, Mrs. Robinson's target, wasn't a child; he was in his 20s, had just graduated from college and was contemplating that career in plastics.

"We tend to see the female teacher-male student relationship as less abusive and less harmful psychologically," according to Dr. Susan G. Kornstein, a psychiatrist and director of the Institute for Women's Health and the Mood Disorders Institute at Virginia Commonwealth University. "But in fact, a sexual relationship between a female teacher and a male student can be just as harmful and can have both short- and long-term consequences on the child's emotional stability and psychological and sexual development."

Boys who have sex with grown women are anything but "lucky." "It is always abuse," says Dr. Kaufman.

My final point is that we in no way should deny or minimize what has happened to millions of women and girls. But we also need to focus on male victims and give them the same respect and treatment options.

Sexual abuse perpetrated by mothers on their children, and Mother-Daughter sexual abuse, is a subject that many people have not even thought of or want to think of. It flies in the face of everything we believe, or have been taught to believe, about women and mothers. Some people don't want to believe that female perpetrators of sexual abuse exist, and they certainly do not want to believe that a mother could sexually abuse her own children. One site, the Canadian Children's Rights Council, said this about female offenders "The most common offenders are relatives, with mothers topping the list. But it could be anyone baby-sitters, neighbours or teachers." (Note: My next post will discuss Mother-Son Sexual Abuse)

Back in 1997 there was a UK TV Program - Panorama that ran Monday 6th October 1997 called The Sexual Abuse by Women of Children and Teenagers. I will being using some transcripts from that show on here.

One of the victims on that show said something that is often said by many who are abused by their mother. She said:

I couldn't understand how your own mother... You've got no one else to turn to. If it's your dad doing it at least you've got some chance - your mother to try and talk to if she's a good mum. But when you've got your mother doing it as well what chance have you got? No one's going to believe you. There was no escape.

A commentator on the show made this remark:

Those survivors who tell me they have been sexually abused by both a woman and a man always tell me that it was more traumatic to be sexually abused by a woman - they feel more betrayed, they feel very angry, they feel the woman should have cared for them, should have loved them instead of abusing them. For some reason they expected it almost of the man, but never of the woman.

The website Making Daughters Safe Again said this:

Survivors of mother-daughter sexual abuse have an added evil to contend with – the extreme isolation in feeling that they are the only survivors of this form of abuse, and that no one will believe them. These fears are not unfounded. Mother-daughter sexual abuse is a topic that receives little attention from researchers, support services, or the media. Survivors of mother-daughter sexual often report being met with disbelief or shock by friends, family, and even mental health care professionals, and survivors of other forms of sexual abuse. The fact that some mothers sexually abuse their daughters is an ugly, shattering thought. When it is your reality, it is infinitely worse.

I would note the same applies to Mother-Son sexual abuse as well. The sad thing is that when your mother sexually abuses you it is often the last, if ever, abuse that is ever treated among its victims. Out of all forms of sexual abuse I would say this is the most under-reported form there is. As a society we almost expect men/fathers to be able and capable of sexually abusing children. The opposite is true when it comes to women and especially mothers sexually abusing their own children.

Faith Allen on her blog Blooming Lotus writes:

Mother-daughter sexual abuse is a particularly vile form of sexual abuse that many people are unaware even exists. In the United States, mothers are often viewed as the self-sacrificing member of the family who repeatedly suffers on behalf of her children. While this description is certainly true of many mothers, it is not true of all.

Women who have suffered from mother-daughter sexual abuse often fear that nobody will believe that this form of abuse happened to them. Instead, they fear that others will believe they are “crazy.” Many people are judgmental of any opinion toward a mother that is not “warm and fuzzy.” In most cases, when a daughter speaks ill of her mother, people assume that the daughter is being ungrateful and does not appreciate all of the sacrifices that her mother made for her. In the case of mother-daughter sexual abuse, the sexual abuse survivor has every right to express anger toward her abuser. The abuser does not get a free pass just because she is her victim’s mother.

I find that the "mother" is often viewed and treated in one of two extremes when cases of abuse to their own children arise. They are either treated very lightly or very harshly or in some instances both. There seems to be little middle ground most of the time. We have a stereotype of what being a "mother" means. Making Daughters Safe Again website says "In our society, mothers are automatically given special status, and certain characteristics, such as “nurturing, caring, protective” are attributed to them." I agree. "You have not spoken to your mom in years? Oh how awful. She is your mother and you at least ought to talk to her." or "She is your mother and deserves your respect no matter what she has done." Statements like that really irked me and still do.

How do you tell anyone that the one person in the whole world who is supposed to be there for you; who is supposed to be the caring one; who is supposed to be the nurturing one; who is supposed to be the one who is protective of you, is the one who is actually doing the abuse? Making Daughters Safe Again says it perfectly when they say "The truth is, at her core, a mother is a woman and a human being, and like any other human being, is capable of the same range of violence, hate and autonomous behavior. To view women or mothers any differently, is to not realize their full potential as human beings, for better or for worse."


Mother-Daughter Sexual Abuse

I want to start this section with some material from an article titled Mother-Daughter Sexual Abuse: A Painful Topic:

This view of mothers, and even of all women, runs very deep in most cultures, and is linked with another assumption - that all women (and particularly mothers) are heterosexual.

Sexual abuse has nothing to do with the perpetrator's sexuality or sexual identity; most abusers identify as heterosexual. Sexual abuse is not sex. Yet because of homophobia, same-sex sexual abuse is linked in most people's minds with lesbian or gay sex. How often do we see in the newspapers exclaiming "lesbian sex abuser" but not "heterosexual sex abuser?" It is an ingrained presumption.

This presumption is important to examine for many reasons. That the perpetrator is perceived to be lesbian fuels many people's denial. Mothers can't be lesbian, the thinking goes, therefore the abuse couldn't have happened. On the other hand, some people may be more likely to believe that the abuse happened, precisely because they perceive the perpetrator to be lesbian. It confirms their belief that lesbians are child molestors. When this occurs people are far more outraged than they are with father-daughter sexual abuse because a female perpetrator of incest has violated the social expectations of women and mothers. Sadly, this reaction also points to how little we expect of fathers.

The author later points out something I said earlier in the post when she says:

People tend to feel far more conflicted and confused about mother-daughter sexual abuse - or female perpetrators generally - than they are about father-daughter sexual abuse (or male perpetrators). People respond with outright denial: "A mother wouldn't do that sort of thing." Others minimize the abuse: "How bad could it be? The abuser was a woman; she was probably gentle." And still others vilify female perpetrators, viewing them as worse than male perpetrators because they are women or mothers.

She also talks about the Survivors and how the "mother" stereotype causes issues:

When survivors of mother-daughter incest are able to acknowledge the abuse they experienced, they often believe that there must be something terribly wrong or bad about them. "How could my own mother sexually abuse me?" This belief that they are bad comes from the myth that mothers are intrinsically caring and loving. If all mothers are loving to their children, the thinking goes, then there must be something really bad about the child whose mother abused them. It makes sense that a child would think this way, especially in a context loaded with societal myths about mothers. It's easier for a child to believe that the abuse is her fault than to admit that the person who was supposed to love and protect her actually harmed her. Sadly, this way of thinking is carried into adulthood by many survivors, and it hurts them a great deal.

The Making Daughters Safe Again site has a lot of good information on this as well:

Mothers often sexually abuse in more than one way, and act independently. The sexual abuse can be violent and physically painful, and take place in the context of emotional and physical abuse as well.

Abusive acts experienced by daughters may include:

Digital penetration or insertion of objects into the vagina or anus being touched or fondled, or being made to touch or fondle another oral sex, giving or receiving unnecessary enemas, catheterizations, application of “medicine” to genitals being watched, or being forced to watch her mother bathe, dress, and/or masturbate verbal harassment concerning her sexual development or sexuality

They also said a few more things that really jumped out at me:

This form of abuse is about a mother’s distorted views about herself and her daughter.

The mother may find it unbearable to see any part of herself in her daughter, and displace her own anger and shame over her sexuality onto her daughter.

The mother often wishes to dominate and control her daughter, while also seeking emotional support from her, sometimes resulting in a reversal of roles.

The site goes on to talk about it being an under-reported crime and how less than 1% of its members reported ever getting any intervention as a child. I can understand that. Even if you do tell and are believed the system will often toss you right back into the same home with your abuser. Not to mention all the other feelings that go along with this. They go on to talk about a few reasons why this is and I want to comment on each of them:

- the extreme rarity of the offender seeking treatment, the victim reporting the abuse, or the authorities discovering the crime

Many of the offenders do not think there is anything wrong with them. I know one woman who had lost her children due to her sexually abusing them for over a decade made a comment outside a court room in which she, loudly, said "I am tired of people treating me as if I did something wrong. I did the best I could." She views herself as the victim and believes she has done nothing wrong. And she never sought treatment because why seek treatment when nothing is wrong?

- therapists, social workers, doctors, teachers, etc. know very little about this form of abuse and/or do not consider it a possibility

I know I once spoke with a social worker who worked with sexual offenders and talked to her about female offenders. Her view was that they exist mainly because the men in their lives are the ones making them do it or because of sexual abuse they suffered themselves. How about when you go to an Emergency Room and they ask the "abuse" question? For those few that do take the time to do so privately how many do it with the mother present? Daughter shows signs of sexual abuse and who is the first person to pop into your mind as you read this? Father, Stepfather, Boyfriend, a male.

- perpetrators overwhelmingly appear like "normal" caring mothers

I already talked about how my own mother could persuade anyone that she was the best mother in the whole world and only cared for her little darling. And people just bought it. They wanted to believe it and did not even think to look beyond it. I had a reader tell me in his story (will be in the mother-son abuse post) that his mother was attractive and this played even more havoc. His friends would often comment to him how "lucky" he was to have a "hot mom" like that. He also talked about how because she was attractive she was able to manipulate people even more.

- lack of protection by physically or emotionally absent fathers OR abusive fathers

I find this one interesting. My own father could fit into the above statement. Sorta. He was like everyone else around us when it came to the "mother" stereotype. 90% of the abuse my mother did to me occurred when he was not around to see it. From his point of view he was her main target and only used me to get at him. So he would be gone from the home working or would "tune out" into his own little world when he was home. He did not do this to be emotionally absent to me, though that is the result, he did so to protect himself from her. I still have not told my father hardly anything that happened and may never do it. I do not blame him for not protecting me as he did not know I needed protecting from, of all people, my own mother.

- low physical evidence that can not be seen on routine physical examination

This one is often not even thought of by people. Sexual Abuse does not always leave evidence that a "rape kit" might pick up. It does not always leave signs that any form of sexual abuse happened at all.

- Abuse sometimes conducted under the guise of normal medical care or hygiene

Who is going to accuse a mother of sexually abusing her child when she claims she was giving him a bath and his/her little body just reacted?


What about the whole same sex issue that goes along with this? In the article Mother-Daughter Sexual Abuse: A Painful Topic they have this to say:

Many people confuse same-sex sexual abuse with lesbian sex, thinking that the perpetrator and even the victim is lesbian, or was made lesbian by the abuse. None of this is true. Yet these myths continue to exist, and they confuse and haunt many survivors who live in fear and shame that they really are lesbian when they aren't, or that their lesbian sexuality was caused by the abuse.

Being abused by her mother does not make a survivor a lesbian. Even if the survivor's body physiologically responded to the sexual stimulation, this has nothing to do with sexuality. It is the body's natural physiological response to stimulation, and has nothing to do with the survivor's own sexual desires, or even consent. Sexual abuse effects a survivor's comfort level with and responses to being a sexual person, but it does not cause her sexuality.

I know some sexual abuse survivors struggle with the struggle with the fact that their bodies reacted to a rape or other form of sexual abuse by responding in various ways and how hard this can be for a person to understand about themselves. Faith Allen talks about this some on her blog Blooming Lotus where she said:

People wrestle with whether the sexual abuse could have been “that bad” if they had an orgasm during it. Also, some people who first began having orgasms during sexual abuse as young children question whether this means that they were some sort of “bad seed” who brought the sexual abuse on themselves.

It is actually quite common for a person’s body to react to sexual abuse or rape with an orgasm. This does not mean that you wanted the sexual contact or that you enjoyed it. This is simply an indicator that your body was working the way it was designed to work.

Multiply this issue with the fact that it is happening with your own mother. Some specific concerns for survivors can be:

From Mother-Daughter Sexual Abuse: A Painful Topic:

While survivors of mother-daughter sexual abuse experience many of the same effects as other incest and sexual abuse survivors, they tend to have heightened difficulties with:

• Naming their experience as abuse. This is particularly true in light of the myth that women do not sexually abuse children.
• Identity. Many survivors have difficulty knowing that they are separate from and different than their perpetrators.
• Boundaries. Many survivors have difficulty maintaining their boundaries, especially with other women. They may be overly flexible or overly rigid.
• Self-blame. This is particularly true in light of the fact that they were abused by their mothers who are mythologized as all loving and caring.
• Gender identity. Many survivors do not want to be a woman, have trouble identifying as women, or do not like what they perceive women to be, because the abuser was a woman.
• Gender shame. Many survivors feel great shame about being a woman because of their identification with the perpetrator.
• Body shame. Survivors often feel great shame about their bodies, particularly their bodies' womanliness, because the perpetrator had a woman's body.
• Homophobic fears about one's actual or perceived sexuality. Survivors are often very confused about the differences between sexual abuse and lesbian sexuality, and may believe the myth that abuse causes a survivor's sexuality.
• Longing to be loved. Survivors frequently have a profound need to be loved in the way that they were not as a child, and they may fear or be unable to accept it, particularly from other women.

From Making Daughters Safe Again:

• confusion concerning sexual orientation (the majority of survivors are heterosexual)
• may believe that she was targeted because she is lesbian (regardless of if she is or not)
• may base her homosexual orientation on sexually abusive experiences, especially if she experienced a sexual response, or her mother had a sexual response
• may falsely embrace heterosexuality as a rejection of female-female sexual experiences
• a deep need for a mother; shame, guilt and very low trust and self-esteem
• difficulty individuating from mother, feeling self is independent, whole
• given a cruel, negative role model and distorted representations of being a woman and mother
• confusion, rejection, and shame concerning her own sexual development as a female
• uncertainty over being a mother, and how to appropriately raise and respond to a female child
• the stigma from society; the lack of information, validation, understanding for this form of abuse

I wanted to finish out this post by discussing and posting pieces about females and physical/sadist acts. Some people can not stretch their minds to believe it happens so I want to post examples here to show that yes it does. Some readers may find these distressing so you may wish to skip them.

The following are examples taken from the UK TV Program - Panorama that ran Monday 6th October 1997 called The Sexual Abuse by Women of Children and Teenagers:

Narrator: Cheryl's friend was just a 12 year old schoolboy. She was 19. Walking with him one evening she committed such a serious act of sexual indecency she went to prison for it.

Cheryl: So I says to him, I says, we'll walk the field way. So we started walking the field way and I sat down; he sat down. I pushed him back, pulled his trousers down, pulled mine down, then I had sexual intercourse with him ... until someone was walking past with a dog.
Interviewer: And how long did this assault go on for?
Cheryl: About 15 minutes
Interviewer: Why did you do it in the first place?
Cheryl: 'Cause I were feeling aroused. He was crying, shouting for his mum, he wanted to go home.
Interviewer: And what did you think when you saw him crying?
Cheryl: At that time I couldn't think straight, so I just carried on.
Narrator: After she had raped the child, Cheryl realised that as a woman who had abused, she had broken one of society's most serious taboos. She marched him to a railway bridge, believing there was only one option left to her.
Cheryl: Then I looked round to see if anything were coming.. such as transport, and there was nothing and I just pushed him over. I were thinking what have I done wrong?
Interviewer: Why did you push him?
Cheryl: Trying to frighten him - scare him so he wouldn't tell what happened.
Interviewer: You could have killed him. Did you know that when you pushed him?
Cheryl: Yes
Narrator: The boy survived his fall from the bridge. Cheryl was sentenced to 18 months for indecent assault and grievous bodily harm.

Narrator: Chris Roberts, seen here in the 1980's in a foster home, was removed from his own home because of physical abuse by his father. What the authorities didn't even consider at the time was that his mother might be sexually abusing him.

Chris: There's no way you can describe how unpleasant it was. You couldn't put it into words. Imagine your worst nightmare come true; it probably doesn't even come close to it. The earliest memory would be when I was probably about two and a half or three years old. Beatings, physical and sexual abuse, mental abuse, from both my mother and father. My mother would keep us away from playschool and my other two brothers from school and use us for her sexual perversions whilst our father was at work. When I was three I remember I was put into a children's home.

Narrator: But Chris's abuse was not to end there. On the weekly visits they were allowed to the home, his parents continued the abuse.

Chris: The supervision order wasn't enforced. We'd be taken into a play room and our father would ram a chair up against the door and the abuse would carry on - on the property of the children's home.
Interviewer: What sort of abuses happened in the home?
Chris: At this point in time my mother had lost a set of twins ... can I stop for a minute please? [breaks down].
Narrator: Chris was told he was to blame for the twins death. His feelings of guilt helped ensure he would submit to yet more abuse.
Chris: There were many forms of abuse - physically, mentally and sexually. I had a mixture of mentally and sexually would be putting pornographic magazines into the children's home where we'd be made to sit and look at the magazines whilst performing sexual acts with our mother, and our father joining in as well.
Narrator: Approximately one in every hundred girls in the population and one in every hundred boys in the population are sexually abused in their childhood by a woman. And that's a vast number of victims that we are avoiding if we are not looking at the issue of women as sexual abusers.Victims trapped in the custody of their mothers as children, often only speak out after they've escaped. When they do, much of their testimony shatters the myth that women only sexually abuse if coerced by men.

Narrator: Lucy Jenner had a single mother. Lucy took the place of a husband in the bed she had to share every night.

Lucy: She would lock the door and after a certain time she would snap on the lights. Sometimes I tried to pretend to be asleep and it wouldn't happen, but it didn't make any difference. My mother would be behind me and I would be facing the wall. My mother would be around me and she pulled up a chair and she would say that she loved me and various other things and she would penetrate me vaginally and rectally with whatever she had.
Narrator: There was lasting damage, causing pain and bleeding even today a legacy of the abuse she'd endured.
Lucy: I think mainly it was the abuse that affected my bowel. I have a rectal prolapse which was a direct result of being penetrated with objects whatever when I was a child and was sexually abused by my mother.

Narrator: For 20 years no one saw what Sandra and Lesley Wilson endured. Their mother started to abuse them aged 5 and six, and continued even after they were married. When they threatened to go to the police she threatened to abuse their children. Sandra and Lesley's mother was accompanied by their father in the abuse, but it was she who took the lead.

Sister: Mother always used to come in the bedroom and drag us out of bed. She never had any clothes on. You knew what was going to happen. I was made to do things. I was frightened. I was crying. I was told to shut up and I just had to get used to it.
Sister: You'd know when my mum was being really nice - you knew something was going to happen - you were going to get raped. It felt like it was every night - 2 or three times a week they both raped me.
Interviewer: Who started these sessions? Who was the dominant partner?
Sister: My mother. My mother always came to get me.
Sister: My dad was at work. I was cleaning the bath out and everything. All of a sudden my mum come in the bathroom and she pushed me flying, she grabbed my hair and dragged me into the bedroom and she made me do things you know to her satisfaction.
Sister: I couldn't understand how your own mother... You've got no one else to turn to. If it's your dad doing it at least you've got some chance - your mother to try and talk to if she's a good mum. But when you've got your mother doing it as well what chance have you got? No one's going to believe you. There was no escape.
Narrator: Sandra and Lesley's father John Wildman was eventually sent to prison for 22 years. Maureen Wildman died shortly after being charged. It's her abuse the girls say hurt them most.
Michelle Elliott: Those survivors who tell me they have been sexually abused by both a woman and a man always tell me that it was more traumatic to be sexually abused by a woman - they feel more betrayed, they feel very angry, they feel the woman should have cared for them, should have loved them instead of abusing them. For some reason they expected it almost of the man, but never of the woman.

Narrator: The violence that often accompanies the abuse is also unexpected of a woman. Victims often report excessive force equivalent to if not greater than that of a man. This was the experience in a Newcastle taxi a year ago of a 15 year old girl. Her 33 year old aunt held her down and forced her to submit to oral sex by the driver as payment in kind. Angered by that and other sexual attacks by her aunt Paula Belisle, the victim has decided to speak out publicly about the abuse.
Louise: I was sitting watching the telly and I thought she was going into the toilet because she went out in the passage, She came back in and she had this chair leg cause it was on top of the electrical rad and then she just come over on the settee and put her hand over me mouth and pulling me pants down had her legs over my legs and she's got like big fat legs, you know what I mean, well really really tight on my legs and I couldn't move. She had a hand on me shoulder and a hand on me mouth and everything - just one hand though, and she was shoving the chair leg up us really really hard and I couldn't hardly scream because she had her hand over me mouth. It was very painful, it was like I was having a bairn [baby]. And I was just crying - I was really upset I didn't want me own aunty to do it to us. I thought men were animals, but women are just as bad - especially my own aunty doing that. I hate her. If I had the chance I'd kill her. I can't stand her.
Narrator: Paula Belisle is now on probation. Louise says she has since threatened to kill her for going to the police.
Michelle Elliott: Women are supposed to be the gentler sex, women are supposed to be incapable of cruelty in a sense, and I would like as a woman to believe that. Unfortunately my experience with the survivors tells me that many of their abusers have been very sadistic to them. Cruelty that is almost unimaginable.

Narrator: In the early hours of one morning in South Wales last year the authorities drew up in a quiet street to a neat looking terrace house, looking to arrest a male abuser. Nothing prepared them for what they found. Child Protection Officers were to stumble on a den of professional pedophiles, but a den in which the mother was the prime abuser.

Margaret Harris:(South Wales Probation) It had all the appearances of a normal sort of terrace house from the outside, in a very ordinary community - a very proud community. And as you went in the front door it changed dramatically. The house was full of rubble and rubbish from floor to ceiling. The walls had been taken away right through to the point that you could see bare wires hanging down as though the house was still under construction. It gave the appearance of a house that was just designed really to completely disorientate the children. In the room where the family actually lived - that was where they videoing the children - they used two different cameras. The room where the computer was kept was full of rubbish and yet in this corner in a particular corner which had been sectioned off from the rest of the room was the most sophisticated equipment that you could imagine. There was a kitchen area where in the larder there were videos - pornographic videos. Hardly any food, just videos upon videos upon videos. We also then found under the floorboards home-made videos of the abuse of the children. They did what would almost be construed as a professional video, which we assumed would be for selling.
Narrator: The husband had filmed the videos, but his wife did the abusing. She took a lead role, sometimes reading from scripts, acting out scenes. Most of them involved her daughter videoed between the ages of eight and thirteen.
Margaret Harris: The older child was naked. Mother was naked. They strung up the older child and tied her, gagged her and string her up from a hook in the ceiling and beat her something like 100 times in about four minutes. They then laid her on the bed and further abused her. All the time mother was doing this, father was videoing the actual abuse. At the end of it all, at one point when the child was lying on the bed almost unconscious, mother and father sat on the edge of the bed and had a cup of tea together. I think that portrays very graphically the awful nature of this. To give it the name sexual abuse belies what actually happened in that house. It was torture. It was the most abhorrent torture I have ever seen.
Narrator: The mother used the Internet to feed her fantasies. Links to the North of England and the United States were stark evidence of leading female involvement in the sort of network of abusers normally associated with men. The father was taken away and jailed for life. The mother got a lesser 15 year sentence. Without the exceptional video evidence the authorities say because she was a woman she may not have been implicated at all.
Margaret Harris: Often when children are trying to tell us what's happening to them, we are dependent on their stories and I do wonder with this child, if we hadn't found the videos, and this child had simply told us what had happened it would have been beyond belief, and I do worry that no on would in fact have believed her. And I wonder therefore how many other children has this happened to, where they've either been too afraid to tell or if they have tried to tell they felt they weren't being believed and have held back. Because what we know we know from the videos. The children still haven't talked in full about the horrors that they encountered.
Narrator: Half the women in a recent survey of 50 convicted female sexual abusers said they derived sadistic pleasure from inflicting pain on victims. The research showed neither class nor age were barriers to their behaviour.

Those are just a few examples. Look at some of the statements that were made (some I bolded):

Those survivors who tell me they have been sexually abused by both a woman and a man always tell me that it was more traumatic to be sexually abused by a woman - they feel more betrayed, they feel very angry, they feel the woman should have cared for them, should have loved them instead of abusing them. For some reason they expected it almost of the man, but never of the woman.

That theme appears to be quite common. The Making Daughters Safe Again site has a similar statment:

Many survivors of mother-daughter sexual abuse have multiple abusers, both male and female. Regardless, the sexual abuse by their mothers often stands out as the hardest to accept and heal from, and the last abuse experiences to be remembered. The impact of that statement cannot be ignored.

They also point out something that I think is very sad and very important for people to remember:

As an adult, mother-daughter sexual abuse remains a taboo topic, even in sexual abuse survivor circles. Sometimes the experiences of mother-daughter sexual abuse survivors are not believed by survivors of male-female abuse, or are seen as "less than" because a mother was the perpetrator, and some believe that the abuse must have been gentle or just a misunderstanding. Realistically, there is a wide range of violence associated with mother-daughter sexual abuse, as with any other form of abuse.

In general, there is very little validation and support for this form of abuse, and the difficult process of healing is compounded by friends, family members, other sexual abuse survivors, and even therapists, being unaware of the problem and/or unwilling to listen to or believe the survivor.

That is also mentioned in the article Mother-Daughter Sexual Abuse: A Painful Topic:

Abuse is never pleasant. However, mother-daughter sexual abuse seems to provoke particularly strong reactions in people, even those working in the area of trauma. Sometimes, when mother-daughter sexual abuse is acknowledged, people feel the need to say that it doesn't happen as frequently as father-daughter sexual abuse, or that women aren't as violent as men. Even if those things are true, it is not helpful information when listening to and understanding women who have been sexually abused by their mothers (or other women). If we want to create a safe environment for women to speak about their experiences, we need to talk and write about the fact that women and mothers do sexually abuse children. Only in that environment will survivors be truly free to tell their stories and heal themselves.

Ok so what about when you compound the abuse by doing so while using Religion? Recent cases in the news have brought this topic to light. How much more trauma does it add when your faith is used in conjunction with your abuse?

Finally there is this piece to consider. The Canadian Children's Rights Council has this statement that people should consider:

Finally, there is an alarmingly high rate of sexual abuse by females in the backgrounds of rapists, sex offenders and sexually aggressive men - 59% (Petrovich and Templer, 1984), 66% (Groth, 1979) and 80% (Briere and Smiljanich, 1993).

There is a documentary called When Girls Do It: The Story of Female Sexual Predators that the Canadian Children's Rights Council says they "recommend this video documentary to all law makers, police, child protection workers, educators, school teachers and organizations concerned about recognizing female sexual predators."

I wanted to put one last thing on here and am doing it for me. Earlier I talked about that "but she is your mother" bit that irked and irks me. The Making Daughters Safe Again site has a little blurb in the FAQ that I wish more people would grasp. It says:

You should be nicer to your mother. She is your mother after all.

Yes, the woman is her mother, but she is also her abuser. Her mother forfeited her rights to participate in a mutually kind and giving relationship with her daughter when she abused her.

FYI - there is another post for those interested titled Mother-Daughter Sexual Abuse II

I am adding a book list to this post for those that are interested in further reading:

A Mother's Touch: Surviving Mother-Daughter Sexual Abuse

The Last Secret: Daughter Sexually Abused by Mothers

Female Sexual Abuse of Children

Female Sex Offenders: What Therapists, Law Enforcement and Child Protective Services Need to Know

Perspectives on Female Sex Offending: A Culture of Denial

Women Who Sexually Abuse Children

Mother-Daughter Incest: A Guide for Helping Professionals