Transcript VII - Sexual abuse by women

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

The Sexual Abuse by Women of Children and Teenagers
UK TV Programme - Panorama - BBC1 - 10 pm Monday 6th October 1997

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




Therapy for abused children

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

250,000 children abused by women

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

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


Zoe:

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

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

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

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

Interviewer:
What has he done?

Zoe:
Sexually abused a nine year old boy.

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

Zoe:
Badly

Interviewer:
Why's that?

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

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

Concluding comments

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

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