What about when MOM is the abuser?

Sadly these stories are becoming more and more common.




OZARK, Mo. -- A woman from Nixa is charged with molesting a 9-year-old boy last year while another woman watched on a Web camera. Amy Vogt, 34, could face a prison sentence of 5 to 15 years if she's convicted of first-degree child molestation.

According to a probable cause statement, the FBI contacted Nixa police about a child pornography investigation. The statement says Vogt admitted to both the FBI and a Nixa detective that she removed the boy's pants while he was sleeping and touched him in a sexual way for the benefit of a woman who was watching over the Internet. Vogt said it only lasted about a minute because the boy started to wake up. Investigators believe the molestation happened between January and June 2008. - Read the entire article here

I wanted to post this story because of some comments I have heard on various shows about the recent Sandra Cantu case. I have yet to see a show or news story that has accurately discussed the numbers when it comes to female offenders and sexual abuse of children. Instead all to often I see something along the lines of it being said that it is rare for a woman to abduct and murder a child. While that may be true but things change if you drop the word "abduct".

Let us look at some statistics briefly:

One in six adult men reported being sexually molested as children, and -- in a surprise finding -- nearly 40 percent of the perpetrators were female, a new study found. (Source Link)

According to the Department of Health and Human Services Administration on Children, Youth and Families, 62.3% of child abuse perpetrators and 62.8% of child homicide perpetrators are women. And the lower the child's age, the more likely it is that his/her abuser/killer is female.

In the documentary When Girls Do It they mentioned that out of 1,000 people who disclosed being sexually abused by a woman only 4 ever officially reported it. That is, unless my math is off, less than 1/2 a percent. And those that do report it are often not believed.

And throughout this blog you can find more references/links/data as well.

Now lets look at this story and consider what would have happened if she had been successful at the suicide pact she had with her abducted victim. And notice the victims words that were read in court:


Cara L. Dickey’s teenage rape victim didn’t appear in court Wednesday, but his pain and anger filled the courtroom as his two-page statement was read to the judge.

On a day when tears were shed on both sides of the courtroom and in the spectator section, State Supreme Court Justice John L. Michalski sentenced Dickey to four years in prison on her guilty plea to two statutory rape charges.

Before the sentencing, prosecutor Kristin A. St. Mary read the letter from the boy, now 15, whom Dickey has admitted raping twice.

“This lady is sick and selfish. She really had me not even caring about anyone but her,” the boy wrote, admitting that he was obsessed with her. “She was preying on me to manipulate my mind, to then have sex with me.”

The boy stated that he has been scarred for life.

“I can see and feel what was taken [from me] and what I will never get back,” he added.

Authorities have said that Dickey, the boy’s former eighth-grade teacher at South Buffalo Charter School, picked him up June 16 in South Buffalo, imprisoned him for about 21 hours and attempted to carry out a suicide pact with him by supplying him with alcohol and over-the-counter drugs.

Then last summer, after being ordered by a judge not to contact the boy, Dickey met with him numerous times, leading to the two second-degree rape charges to which she pleaded guilty in March.

“Referring to the day she and I attempted to take our lives, I’m still in shock and awe,” the boy stated in the letter. “Life has too much to offer, and young people have too much to offer the world today to just take our own lives. Or, in my case, being persuaded that taking my life would be the right thing to do.

“She made me believe that I would be nothing without her, and she was going to kill herself no matter what, because she knew she was going to jail. This is how badly she manipulated my mind.”

I also wanted to comment on something that she said and that is:

“Your honor, I take full responsibility for my actions. They were my own,” she told Michalski. “But my actions throughout that time do not define my character. I am a good person who made a bad mistake, and I’m a good mother, a great mother.” - Read the entire article here

A mistake? When something like this happens it goes way beyond a "mistake". And seeing as she is convicted of doing this AFTER she had been caught, charged and ordered by a judge to stay away from the victim it pretty much shows that this was far from a mistake.

I would think she also got a very light sentence considering everything that was involved here.

Another sad story. Not only did people trust her to babysit their children but apparently she was also a Cub Scout Den Leader:


28-year old Cynthia Kinsey was arrested yesterday after allegedly having internet sex in front of six children.

A 12 and a 13-year-old told police while Kinsey was babysitting them, they saw her having naked sex chats with men over the internet.

The kids told police Kinsey would call them into her room while she was pleasing herself in front of a webcam. A police report says the kids also saw men on the computer screen exposing and pleasing themselves while chatting with Kinsey.

The kids also told police Kinsey would ask them to type on the keyboard with men, while Kinsey was pleasing herself in front of the webcam.

According to the 12 and 13 year old, other children were also in the room while this was going on, including a five-year-old, a seven-year-old, an eight-year-old and a one-year-old.

In the interview after her arrest, Kinsey admitted to everything the children reported. She is charged with sexual indecency with a child. - Read the entire article here

With the Columbine anniversary being today I thought this would be a good time to make a post about school shootings and females. When most people think of school shootings they do not think of girls doing it. But one of the first school shootings to occur in this country was committed by a 16 year old girl.


In January 1979 Brenda Spencer opened fire on children who were arriving at Cleveland Elementary School in San Diego which was across from her home. She began shooting at the students with a .22 rifle. The school principal and a custodian were both killed by her while they were attempting to save the children. Spencer also wounded a police officer and 8 elementary school children before she was stopped.

As bad as that is, her comments at the time of the crime and later at parole hearings give some insight into a female psychopathic mind. At the time of her arrest she reportedly told them that she'd started shooting for the fun of it, because she didn't like Mondays. "Mondays always get me down." She had done it to cheer herself up. (this later became the basis for a song titled "I don't like Monday's") She also allegedly said "It was like shooting ducks in a pond"; "the children looked like a herd of cows standing around, it was really easy pickings."

She was sent to prison for 25 to life and has been up for parole a few times now. Allegedly at her first parole hearing she expressed doubt that any of her victims were shot by her and that they may have been shot by police instead. She also allegedly stated that she was under the influence of alcohol and drugs at the time of the shooting and that the police and prosecutors created fake evidence showing there had been no drugs in her system.

By her third parole hearing she had begun to voice guilt and remorse for her actions and made a claim that she had been sexually abused by her father in the past. I predict she will continue to adapt her story as time goes on in an effort to gain her freedom.

I wanted to post this case article as a change of pace. These type of crimes and criminals can be devastating to people yet are often punished lightly and overlooked:


Woman who faked way into Harvard sentenced to four years in prison

Esther Reed collected $100,000 (£69,000) in student loans
30-year old assumed identities of three other people


Esther Reed, 30, conned her way into Harvard and Columbia universities and earned a spot on the US Secret Service's "eight most wanted" list by adopting the identities of several people after she left Washington state a decade ago. Among the identities that Reed assumed was that of Brooke Henson, a woman who vanished from a house party in Travelers Rest, South Carolina in 1999.

Lisa Henson, Brooke Henson's sister, who spoke at Reed's sentencing on Wednesday in Greenville, South Carolina, asked the judge to impose the harshest sentence possible for dragging their family through the pain of hoping that Brooke had been found.

Henson said Reed smiled and laughed in court on Wednesday, acting as if she had done nothing wrong.

"She sly like a fox. She doesn't want to face anybody who she has done wrong," Henson said.

During her nine years on the run, Reed had claimed to be a European chess champion and dated cadets from the US Military Academy, according to police and court documents. She got a passport, passed a high-school-equivalency test, obtained an Ohio identification card, took an SAT test in California and was accepted to the School of General Studies at Columbia University - all by using Henson's identity, according to grand-jury charging documents.

Reed also had fictitious marriage certificates, a birth certificate in her legal name and a Washington state driver's license. She was arrested and turned over to Secret Service agents. - Read the entire article here

Another sad story. Here a 39 year old mother pled guilty to lesser charges:


HAMILTON — A 39-year-old mother accused of having sex with two teenage boys in the past two years pleaded guilty Tuesday, April 7, to reduced charges.

Tracy Conley, of Trenton-Franklin Road in Madison Twp., entered the plea to two counts of attempted unlawful sexual conduct with a minor, a fifth-degree felony, before Butler County Common Pleas Judge Charles Pater. Her trial was scheduled to begin April 16.

Conley was indicted in January on two counts of unlawful conduct with a minor, a third-degree felony. The charges alleged Conley engaged in a sex act with boys, ages 13 and 14, on Dec. 31, 2007, and between May 15 and May 31, 2008. Trenton police investigated the allegations against Conley and she was arrested Dec. 17.

Assistant Prosecutor Greg Stephens said the pleas were negotiated with Conley’s attorney, Paris Ellis, after consulting with the victims.

“Cases like this are often more difficult with male victims,” he said. “Male victims tend to be more embarrassed in these situations.”

Stephens said there was no indication of force, otherwise Conley would have been charged with a more serious crime. - Read the entire article here

Here is another sad story about a poor young child losing his life. Sadly violence seems to run in the family with the childs mother already in jail for assault:


Angela Barksdale left Kevion Shand's lifeless body sprawled on her couch for more than a day before her live-in boyfriend finally called 911 Saturday evening, the sources said.

Kevion, who was wearing only sweatpants when paramedics arrived, died of blows to the head that caused a brain hemorrhage, the medical examiner said.

Barksdale, 45, the boy's maternal grandmother, had gotten custody of Kevion after his mother was jailed on assault charges. Barksdale was charged with second-degree murder, officials said.

"March 4 would have been his fifth birthday," said Shand, whose son Jamal is the dead boy's dad. "I don't know why the mother gave him to the grandmother. ... She was a really brutal person."

Investigators believe Barksdale battered Kevion either Thursday or Friday and ignored his whimpers for help, the sources said.

Though she first seemed to mourn the child, Barksdale changed parts of her story and then refused to cooperate, the sources said.

Barksdale, who neighbors said battled a cocaine addiction, had been arrested three times, the sources said. She was nabbed for assault in 2000, robbery in 2001 and trespassing last year. - Read the entire article here


The idealization of women and the cultural myths we have about women are shattered when we see cases like this.

I have not been keeping up with the teachers series I had started doing previously. Here is a list of just some of the female teachers for March 2009. These are only those cases which have already been ruled on in Court, not cases in which they are charged:


DODGE CITY, KANSAS. - Tabatha Adams, 36, a former second-grade teacher at Sacred Heart Cathedral School in Dodge City, Kansas was sentenced to 30-years in federal prison for producing and manufacturing child pornography.

Adams pleaded guilty to manufacturing and producing digital pictures of a minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct. She had been previously convicted in the Ford County District Court, Dodge City, Kan. of aggravated indecent liberties with a child under 14-years-old and sentenced to a life term of imprisonment. The federal sentence is to run concurrently to the state sentence. - Read the entire article here


NORMAN, OK. - Vicky Lynn Lewallen, 44, a biology teacher and former girl’s basketball coach at Norman North High School, in Norman, Oklahoma was sentenced to two years in prison for a sex crime involving a 16-year-old female student. - Read the entire article here


MONROE, MICH. - A former Monroe High School teacher accused of having sex with a student answered to a lesser charge in court Wednesday. Kelly Abdo, 27 was sentenced to two years probation and that she give up her teaching license - Read entire article here


GOODYEAR, AZ - Susan Jayne Anderson, 28, a basketball and volleyball coach at Desert Edge High School and a fitness teacher at Centerra Mirage Elementary School both in Goodyear, Arizona will be sentenced April 3 after pleading guilty to having a sexual relationship with a student.

She pleaded guilty to one count of sexual conduct with a minor, a Class 6 felony, on Feb. 27, according to Maricopa County Superior Court records. Anderson told police she "chose and targeted" the female student because the teen had low self-esteem, according to court documents. - Read the entire article here


BELVIDERE, ILL - Loren L. Leoni, 24, an English teacher and freshman girls volleyball coach at Belvidere High School in Belvidere, Illinois accused of having a sexual relationship with a then 15-year-old student plead guilty to aggravated criminal sexual abuse and now faces a maximum of seven years in prison or a minimum of four years probation. In either case, Leoni would have to register as a sex offender for the rest of her life. She'll be sentenced in May. - Read the entire article here


ST. CLAIR SHORES, MICH. - Melissa Lavender, 33, a culinary arts teacher at South Lake High School in St Clair Shores, Michigan accused of engaging in sex acts with two students on a boat last summer pleaded guilty today to two counts of attempted aggravated stalking as part of a plea agreement. - Read the entire article here


NEW YORK, NY. - Heather Kennedy, 25, a math teacher at Wataugh High School, Long Island, New York who continued to have sex with her former student even after she was arrested for it was sentenced Friday to 6 months in jail and will lose her teacher's license. Kennedy, told Judge Joseph Calabrese that she is sorry for what she did and has learned her lesson.

A Long Island teacher's obsession with her former student has gotten her busted for a third time. Heather Kennedy, 26, was sentenced on Friday to six months time served for bedding the 16-year-old boy last year - once having sex in his car in the parking lot at Wantagh High School, where she was his math teacher.

Early Saturday cops swooped in and rearrested Kennedy at her Massapequa home, accusing her of writing the teen from jail, a violation of an order of protection taken out against her. - Read the entire article here and here.


CROOKSTON, Minn. - Kellie Ann Cormican, 39, a substitute teacher at Crookston High School in Crookston, Minnesota has been sentenced to more than 6 years in prison after pleading guilty to charges that she had sex with a 14-year-old boy. Cormican worked for the Crookston school district for two years starting in 2004 as a special education paraprofessional. - Read the entire article here


BUFFALO, NY. - Cara L. Dickey, 30, a married mother of three and former teacher at South Buffalo Charter School, in Buffalo, New York today pleaded guilty to raping one of her 14-year-old students at the South Buffalo Charter School two times last summer. - Read the entire article here

I wanted to post some excerpts from a recent study that looked at female same-sex intimate partner violence. This is another one of those topics that is often not talked about or overlooked by many in the domestic violence sector. The study is:







Much if not all of what is said in the following excerpts apply not to just female same-sex but to female - male offenses as well:


The belief that women are innately nonviolent influenced women’s experiences in two important ways. First, it made it difficult for them to recognize IPV in their own intimate relationships with women, and second, it made it difficult for them to find domestic violence services in their communities that met their needs.

Naming the problem. Traditional gender role stereotyping of women as being nonviolent influenced participants’ perceptions of their experiences in relationships. One participant noted,

I think a lot of people are so convinced that girls don’t hit other girls. Basically that women are supposed to be nurturing, and caring, and emotional. And you know, have the whole maternal instinct. And you know, not everybody has that.

Although women were aware that they were having “relationships problems,” the strongly held belief that girls don’t hit other girls interfered with their ability to recognize that their relationships were abusive. The following exemplar from a social worker shows the strong influence that gender role stereotyping had on women’s perceptions:

Participant: Well, I mean, I’ve worked in domestic violence. I worked in a domestic violence shelter for two summers, when I was in college. And so—and I’m a social worker now, so I know that I know intellectually and everything what I’m supposed to know. But at the time I don’t think it would have made a difference. It just didn’t seem like—girls didn’t have domestic violence issues with each other.

Interviewer: You had seen and heard a lot about it, but because you were in a same-sex relationship, it didn’t fit?

Participant: It wasn’t domestic violence to me.


Similar to what occurs in some heterosexual abusive relationships, some women blamed themselves for their relationship problems. The tendency toward self-blame may have contributed to women’s difficulty in viewing their partners as abusive:

When I was with her, I didn’t think of her—I didn’t think it was domestic violence, even when she hit me. I thought it was my fault, and I know that that’s how . . . it is very similar in heterosexual couples where you feel like it is your fault. But I just didn’t think that girls committed domestic violence against each other.

As the above exemplar demonstrates, difficulty identifying FSSIPV occurred even in instances where physical violence occurred. The following exemplar illustrates how gender role stereotyping also influenced women’s perceptions of sexual abuse:

Interviewer: So your boundaries, sexually, were really pushed, with what you were comfortable with?
Participant: Yeah.
Interviewer: Did you ever try to have that conversation with her?
Participant: No—I thought, well, I just thought that it was fine because we were girls, like, and girls don’t hurt each other like that. So I just thought that it was the way it was supposed to be.


FSSIPV challenges dominant gender-based discourses of IPV.

Consistent with findings reported in other studies of FSSIPV, our findings revealed that the hegemony of gender-based analysis of IPV was a barrier to help seeking for many women in our study. One woman noted,

Even the domestic violence community . . . I’ve been through lots of training through work, and it’s always that “Well, it is usually men, it’s usually men” and I even went to one where . . . a domestic violence provider who taught the class said, “Women are not violent.” . . . And so there is the whole domestic violence community saying, “We need to change the men,” . . . and then we pop in and say, “but women are abusing us,” and it’s like, well, that is messing up everything. It’s almost like they don’t want to hear it; they might have to deal with it.


According to this view, two women cannot really hurt one another (Elliot, 1999; Merrill, 1999), in part because violence goes against the grain of women’s nature and in part because women are not big or strong enough to inflict serious harm (McLaughlin & Rozee, 2001). The term cat fight, which surfaced in our interviews more than once, seems to capture the view that women’s violence is somehow less serious than men’s and that women by their very nature are not dangerous:

I think I did start out thinking, “This is a woman, this is like a cat fight, this isn’t abuse” . . . that this couldn’t be two women fighting, couldn’t be scary. . . . In the back of my mind I’m thinking, “A couple of women, how bad could it be?”

Women also reported that when friends witnessed the violence, in some instances they did not take it seriously:

The last time that it happened we were at a bar and it was in public. So people kind of saw what happened and walked by. And that is when I kind of decided that I’d had it. But, um, [her friends] thought it was funny. They were like, “That’s not a big deal, you were just fighting.” . . . They didn’t think it was serious.

In addition to contributing to individual and societal failures to take FSSIPV seriously, the notion of a cat fight appeared to reveal other gender-stereotyped meanings:

Interviewer: Do you think that violence between women is taken seriously?
Participant: Uh, I think that they see it as two women fighting and no big deal. It’s like that real stereotypical “look at those two lesbians going at it, they’re hysterical, can’t control themselves, it’s a cat fight.”

This exemplar illustrates that not only may women’s violence be viewed as being less serious and less deadly than that perpetrated by men but also that traditional stereotypical views of women as being emotional and hysterical are part of the nuanced meanings associated with FSSIPV. The view that FFSIPV is a reflection of women’s hysteria and lack of emotional control no doubt contributes to the tendency to minimize the seriousness of women’s use of violence. Thus, discourses about women fighting women, as captured in the word cat fight, are laced with gender stereotyped conceptions of women’s use of violence as being harmless and, in some cases, funny and entertaining.


What we found in this study is that perpetrators of FSSIPV are aware of the potential for confusion and in many instances, use this to their advantage by playing victim.

The tendency to play victim was particularly pronounced in instances where law enforcement had been called to the scene. Playing victim was an extremely effective technique used by perpetrators to avoid arrest. Knowing the system and knowing “how to play” law enforcement officers were tools that perpetrators used when playing victim:

She knew the system, and you know, the first time I called the police, it was the cast-iron-skillet thing. And I tried at least three times, and she broke three different phones—two of them on me and one she just broke. And when the police got there, she’d been smoking pot and taking something else . . . and she comes back and goes, “Your little friends are here.” But as soon as she heard them say that there was a pot pipe out there, she started freaking out, saying, “Get out of my house, she tried to kill me.” And it’s like her whole tone—she was sobbing and she was saying, “You are going to give my dad a heart attack he just got out of the hospital,” and they are all telling her to calm down. And it is like she worked them. And I said, “You guys have been played.” I figured it out on my way to jail.

In this exemplar, the perpetrator used gender role stereotypes of women as being hysterical and emotional to manipulate the police and avoid arrest. The next exemplar shows how self-defense, an act that is inconsistent with the traditional gender stereotyped view of women as passive recipients of violence, influenced the decision making of law enforcement officials:

Interviewer: This is the woman that stabbed you?
Participant: Yeah, if I didn’t have a comforter on me, I’d have had a million holes in my back, you know, the only place where the cops could put me was in jail.
Interviewer: So she stabbed you, but you got arrested?
Participant: Yeah, well, see, the cops—they got to the scene and they see her; it is her residence, and she has just trashed the place. She has taken my bicycle you know . . . and just banged on the damn tires until it bent, you know? And so she told the cops what she told the cops, and they came over to me and they go, they says, “I don’t know what happened here, but you are under arrest.” And you could see there was blood, you know. And she’s not bleeding, I’m the one that’s fucking bleeding. And uh, they goes, “You need medical.” And all I did to defend myself was, I found an aerosol can of Windex, and I sprayed her in the face. And [crying] she played the role of the fucking victim. Just like that. She was just fucking playing ’em.

In addition to looking for gender role–stereotyped behavior such as hysteria and passivity, law enforcement relied on noticeable differences in size between partners as a means of identifying perpetrators.

As the following exemplars illustrate, when the perpetrator was smaller than the victim, manipulating law enforcement by playing victim became even easier:

[Law enforcement] won’t take it that this is serious stuff; a lesbian is being beat up—especially a lesbian as big and handsome as me [stands up]. I mean, I look like the perpetrator. My girlfriend is really good at—she’s sharp at putting it all back on me by the time the police show up.

I’m a big woman and she’s little, but she can knock me clear across the room. When it came down to it in terms of the legal system, . . . she said, “They are going to take one look at you and they are going to haul your fat ass in the back of that police car.” I didn’t believe her at the time, but she was right.

Another story of a female offender who is out on bond but ignores the Court order to stay away from the victim (note the use of the term "relationship" in the news article):


A Navarre woman accused of having a sexual relationship with a 15-year-old boy was jailed Friday night after she and the teen allegedly were found together in a vehicle near the boy's home.

According to the Santa Rosa County Sheriff's Office, Sheila Langman, 38, was charged in October with lewd or lascivious battery on a juvenile after investigators determined that she was involved in a sexual relationship with the teen.

Two days after her October arrest, she was fitted with a Global Positioning System monitoring device and released on bond with orders to not to go near the victim's Navarre residence.

But about 7:30 p.m. Friday, the Santa Rosa Sheriff's Office received an alert that Langman had entered an exclusionary zone near the teen's residence. Deputies used the signal from the GPS device to track Langman's movements. Deputies stopped Langman and found the boy in the vehicle, the Sheriff's Office said in a news release.

Langman was arrested and charged with violating the conditions of her release, interference with child custody and contributing to the delinquency of a minor. She was being held without bond Saturday in Santa Rosa County Jail. - Read the entire article here