In 2005 the article titled "Female Perpetration of Child Sexual Abuse: An Overview of the Problem" by Lisa Lipshires was written. Here are some excerpts from that article:
Betsy K. and Marcia Turner are part of a small, growing number of people confronting the issue of female-perpetrated child sexual abuse. Many feel they are fighting an uphill battle against societal denial and cultural stereotypes of women and men.
In her 1993 doctoral dissertation, "Female Sex Offenders: Societal Avoidance of Comprehending the Phenomenon of Women Who Sexually Abuse Children" (University Microfilms, Ann Arbor, MI), Boston psychologist Laurie Goldman analyzed the ways society minimizes the scope and impact of sexual abuse by women.
Goldman initially planned to conduct in-depth research of female perpetrators. To that end, she distributed 315 letters to therapists and clinics, took out an advertisement in a major newspaper, and contacted several clinicians who treated sex offenders. She also placed 10 poster advertisements in highly visible locations. Her eight-month search yielded only one woman who was willing to discuss what she had done. Goldman knew from reliable sources that female offenders were being treated, but clinic administrators insisted that no such women were under their care.
In addition, within 48 hours of having been hung, all of her posters had been removed. Unable to obtain subjects for her study, Goldman decided to focus on the societal denial that makes female perpetrators such an elusive population.
These next pieces speak to just how much denial is at work still in society about this issue:
Goldman discovered that denial of female perpetration is woven into the very systems meant to protect children. She learned that one of her new female clients had previously disclosed that she had sexually abused a nephew, but the Massachusetts child protection agency had not referred the case to the Attorney General's office. In fact, Goldman's client subsequently admitted that she had abused two other children since her first disclosure.
This treatment of the problem by the State of Massachusetts is not unique. In the State of Washington, for example, one human services professional reported that when an accused female offender was brought before a judge, the judge declared, "women don't do things like this," and dismissed the case. In another case, a New England prison warden told Goldman that she had only one woman in her system who had been convicted of child sexual abuse because "public sentiment did not allow for such charges to be brought to trial in her conservative state."
Iowa State University sociologist Craig Allen, who conducted a study Of 75 men and 65 women who had been convicted of sexually abusing a child, refers to this process as a form of societal "gate keeping." By the time female offenders could be referred to a therapist for treatment, he writes in Women and Men Who Sexually Abuse Children: A Comparative Analysis (Brandon, VT: Safer Society Press, 1991), "only those women would be left whose behaviors were so deviant" that their abusiveness could not be denied "at any of the preceding 'gates' in the system." Allen's gate keeping hypothesis could account for why female perpetrators appear so rarely in therapists' case studies and why, when they do, they are generally described as psychotic or otherwise severely disturbed.
Ruth Matthews, a St. Paul psychologist who has worked with 50 adolescent and 70 adult female sex offenders, says another major reason why adult female perpetrators are rarely seen in treatment is that many are mothers. In such cases, she says, dependent children are generally reluctant to turn in their mothers.
If children -- whose disclosures still provide the primary means of reporting offenders -- are being abused by mothers who are single parents or who carry out the abuse with male partners, disclosure would cause them to be removed from their homes and placed in foster care. By contrast, when there is an offending father and a non-offending mother, a child's disclosure would not mean "as much of a loss," says Matthews. "They still will have their home, they still will have a parent, and their family will stay intact."
There is much more in the article. Even though the article is starting to be a bit old it is still a good read about the subject.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
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3 comments:
are they implying that most mothers who molest are single and therefore children will be dependent on them? What about mothers who are in intact families and who molest? Will they disclose then? What if there was a single father who molested, will they also be reluctant to disclose because they will be dependent on him?
No I think they are saying children are dependent on their parents and this makes it harder for children to disclose. It appears that it is harder for them to disclose when the abuser is a woman compared to a man.
"No I think they are saying children are dependent on their parents and this makes it harder for children to disclose."
--that's not what they said specifically. This is what was said:
["If children -- whose disclosures still provide the primary means of reporting offenders -- are being abused by mothers who are single parents or who carry out the abuse with male partners, disclosure would cause them to be removed from their homes and placed in foster care. By contrast, when there is an offending father and a non-offending mother, a child's disclosure would not mean "as much of a loss," says Matthews. "They still will have their home, they still will have a parent, and their family will stay intact."]
--my question was in relation to this.
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