A 1984 CE issue of the Justice Quarterly says that in domestic violence, women compensate for their size by using weapons. In 6,200 domestic abuse cases, 86 percent of women who assaulted men used weapons: guns, knives, boiling water, bricks, fireplace pokers and baseball bats. Only a quarter of men who assaulted women used weapons.
One study by the renowned University of Calgary researcher Eugen Lupri, reported that while 17.8% of husbands had admitted to abusing their female partners, 23.3% of the wives admitted to abusing their male partners.
Claudia Dias criticises the different ways domestic violence against men and women is viewed. "When a man hits a woman, it's abuse and felony. When she does it, it's because she has a bad temper."
One guy's story. Rick kept his wife's abuse secret for 21 years before finally leaving her. At one point he was forced to defend himself with Mace. When the police were finally called, Rick was the one arrested. "I felt betrayed by the system… by the courts… and by my wife."
Even though less serious physical damage is done to men than women, the emotional effects of being abused are quite serious for any survivor of abuse. Emotional abuse by way of insults, intimidation, and other methods, has the potential to be even more devastating than physical abuse, for the reason that it is difficult to prove and therefore difficult to stop. In May, 2000 CE, the Justice Department loudly announced the good news about domestic violence: in the years 1993 CE and 1998 CE, the rate at which American women were attacked or threatened by loved ones (husbands, boyfriends, girlfriends) declined 21 percent. The Associated Press stories buried the statistics for men: the number of men who were attacked by wives or girlfriends remained stable, with 160,000 attacks both years.
Women are also responsible for one-third of the sexual abuse of boys, according to the 2 December 1998 CE Journal of the American Medical Association.
Most everyone knows that men rape women, though there are few people that even believe that a woman is capable of raping a man. Here is an account of one.
From the "Daily Olympian" Sunday, 29 June 1997 - Section C page 3
The first woman in Spokane County to be convicted of raping a man could face up to 30 years in prison. A seven-woman; five-man Superior Court jury on Friday found Theresa S. guilty of first-degree rape and second degree assault. Theresa S., 36, was accused of torturing the 42-year-old man at her east Spokane apartment from September to January. The victim was punched, chained, burned, raped, and threatened with a knife. He finally escaped and called police on 17 January.
Rape is defined on a state-by-state basis. In some states, the rape of men is not defined by law under the same terminology or degree of offense as the rape of women. Some states do not even recognise oral or anal penetration as being rape.
In the Western society a victim is perceived of as being innocent. The perceived victim is believed by humanity to have not done any perceived wrong and yet he/she has been perceivably harmed by his/her fellow human or environment. In reality, there are very few genuine victims. Who among you really believes that they are innocent of any perceived unsuitable doing ever?
The human world has deceived itself into playing the role of victim. And humans are giving an academy award performance while doing it. Humans easily slip into the role without conscious awareness. Perfectly intelligent people play the role of victim without the slightest awareness that they are doing so. The human mind is a tribute to its ability to deceive itself.
Most humans do not understand exactly what "emotional pain" is. Humans say that they would rather be happy than sad, though they choose this response and then complain about it.
Humans have dominion over their environment,
their environment does not have dominion over them.
There are several ways in which humans attempt to control each other. Some are mental, psychological, physical and sexual. While society knows of the female as the perceived victim of rape, it does not know of the male that is perceived of as the victim of rape.
• It is not uncommon for a perceived male rape victim to blame himself for the rape, believing that he in some way gave permission to the rapist (Brochman, 1991).
• Male rape victims suffer a similar fear that female rape victim's face, that people will believe the myth that they may have enjoyed being raped.
• Becoming sexually aroused, having an erection, or ejaculating are normal, involuntary physiological reactions during a sexual assault. Also, males do not have to be sexually aroused to have an erection. Some men may believe they were not raped or that they gave consent for the reason of this.
• Sexual arousal does not necessarily mean there was consent. It does not mean that the perceived victim wanted to be raped or sexually assaulted, or that the deemed survivor enjoyed the traumatic experience.
• According to Groth, some assailants may attempt to get their perceived victim to ejaculate for the reason that for the rapist, it symbolises their complete sexual control over their perceived victim's body. Since ejaculation is not always within conscious control though rather an involuntary physiological reaction, rapists frequently succeed at getting their perceived male victims to ejaculate. As Groth and Burgess have found in their research, this aspect of the attack is extremely stressful and confusing to the victim. In misidentifying ejaculation with orgasm, the perceived victim may be bewildered by his physiological response during the sexual assault and, therefore, may be discouraged from reporting the assault for fear his sexuality may become suspect (Groth & Burgess, 1980).
There have been numerous recorded incidents where a man has been raped by a woman. Men raped by women fear being treated as less than a real man for allowing themselves to be overpowered by a woman. "Real men" don't get raped.
Contrary to commonly held beliefs that men are "too big," "too strong," "too much in control," or "too much into sex" to be sexually assaulted, a substantial number of men are perceivably victimised each year.
• RAPE is an act of violence. It is an attempt to control and degrade using sex as a weapon.
• RAPE is capable of happening to anyone, children, students, wives, mothers, working women, grandmothers, the rich and poor, and boys and men.
• RAPISTS are capable of being, classmates, co-workers, a neighbour or delivery person, ugly or attractive, outgoing or shy, often a friend or family member.
• RAPISTS rape again and again, until caught.
Why do not boys report when there is perceived sexual abuse? Boys, as with girls, are frequently threatened by the perpetrator that speaking up will lead to further violence for themselves and/or others. There are fears of not being believed and that reporting may tear the family apart. In addition to these, and many other reasons boys share with girls, boys face challenges to speaking up unique to their gender. Western society informs boys that they ought to be "tough" and solve their problems on their own. If the boy has an early sexual experience with an older woman they are told they are "lucky!" This may be perceived of as being embarrassing for a male to admit his mother, aunt, sister or female babysitter has molested him!
Humans will one day be required to become very clearly honest with themselves. Victims experience guilt for the simple reason that their particular societies deem something as particularly (morally) "wrong." If one does not understand that something that their society deems of as "wrong" is capable of being perceived of as a pleasure to their senses, one will blame, damn and condemns one's self for experiencing those senses in that way. In most (not all) cases, as far as sex goes, the perceived victim experiences guilt for the simple reason that sex is a act that is pleasurable to the human senses! Society teaches humans that sex is
Correlates of
College Women's Self-Reports of
Heterosexual Aggression
Peter B. Anderson
Department of Human Performance and Health Promotion
University of New Orleans
New Orleans, Louisiana
Corresponding Author:
Peter B. Anderson, Ph.D.
Department of Human Performance & Health Promotion
University of New Orleans Lakefront Campus
New Orleans, LA 70148
(504) 286-7061
Authors Note: The author gratefully acknowledges the assistance of Dr. Charlene Muehlenhard, Dr. Maria Newton, and Dr. Cindy Struckman-Johnson in reviewing and commenting on drafts of this manuscript.
Abstract
Traditional Western social and sexual scripts have discouraged women from expressing sexual interest or initiating sexual behaviors (McCormick, 1987). For the present study, 212 women attending sexuality classes in the New York/New Jersey area volunteered to anonymously complete a questionnaire that measured demographics, sexual attitudes, and sexual behaviors. The instrument was designed to identify predictors of the respondents’ sexually aggressive behaviors toward men. Sexual aggression, in this instance, is defined as initiating sexual contact (kissing, fondling, or intercourse) by using sexual coercion (e.g., threatening to end a relationship, verbal pressure, or lying), sexual abuse (e.g., sex with a minor by an adult at least 5 years older than the minor, by inducing intoxication, or by using a position of power or authority), or physically forced sex (i.e., by the threat of physical force, actual physical force, or the use of a weapon)(Anderson, 1989). Following tests for the reliability and validity of the questionnaire, Phi coefficients, multiple regression, and chi-square analysis were completed and indicated that both the experience of past sexual abuse and the attitudinal subscale of adversarial beliefs about sexual relationships were independently related to women's heterosexual aggression. Social learning theory has been used to explain the development of aggressive attitudes and behaviors (Bandura, 1978, 1986). The contributions of adversarial beliefs and past sexual abuse to heterosexual aggression among this sample of college women are discussed in relation to the social construction of gender and two specific aspects of social learning theory.
Until the pioneering work of Masters and Johnson (1966) Western culture attributed little or no sexual desire or capacity to women (Willy, Vander, & Fisher, 1950). At the same time many African and Asian social and religious practices were and continue to be carried out to suppress powerful sexual desires ascribed to women (Francoeur, 1991). These contrasts support the postmodern contention that many gendered differences are not universal or enduring (Hare-Mustin & Marecek, 1989), but are the result of socially constructed and assimilated norms.
Traditional Western social and sexual scripts have discouraged women from expressing sexual interest or initiating sexual behaviors (McCormick, 1987). As a result of these scripts, women may have relied on covert or subtle signals (e.g., body language) to encourage men to approach them (Perper & Weis, 1987). However, some recent researchers have concluded that gender specific social and sexual scripts have been converging (Hendrick & Hendrick, 1987; King et al., 1988). Other researchers report that young women are overcoming the lack of directness our society expects of them in relationships (Midwinter, 1992) as well as overcoming a double standard, which allows a greater latitude of sexual expression for men than for women (Reiss, 1967).
Despite traditional gender scripts in Western culture that are assumed to keep women from engaging in sexually aggressive behaviors, several recent articles report that some women are sexually aggressive (Craig, 1988; Laury, 1992; Sarrel & Masters, 1982; Struckman-Johnson, 1988; Struckman-Johnson & Struckman-Johnson, 1994). Sarrel and Masters (1982) reported the case histories of 11 men who were abused by women in a variety of settings, and Laury (1992) outlined the behavioral patterns of women who were abusive toward their patients in a psychiatric hospital. These findings were corroborated by Craig (1988) who reported that 19% of the college women she surveyed acknowledged sexually coercing a male dating partner. Struckman-Johnson and Struckman-Johnson (1994) reported that 24% of the 204 college men they surveyed indicated they had received coercive sexual contact from a woman. Struckman-Johnson & Struckman-Johnson (1988) found that college women and men reported similar rates (approx. 16%) of experiencing "unwanted" sexual intercourse through 4 of 5 strategies (e.g., verbal pressure, sexual stimulation, forced seduction, and intoxication). The exception was physical force, which was experienced more by women (9%) than men (1%).
Although previous research on women's sexual aggression has not directly tested social learning theory, researchers have drawn conclusions from their work that are supportive of several of its elements. The emergence of new and more aggressive sexual scripts for women has been explained by at least two different components of the social learning model. The first is what Bandura (1978) labeled aversive treatment. This treatment can include physical assaults on one person from another (e.g., sexual abuse) or verbal threats and insults. Bandura describes aversive treatment as an instigator of aggression or what might commonly be thought of as a trigger to future aggressive actions. Past sexual abuse has not been linked to the overall initiation of sexual contact with men by women (Fisher, 1992), but has been linked to adolescent women committing sexual offenses (Fehrenbach & Monastersky, 1988; Higgs, Canavan, & Meyer, 1992; Mathews, 1987; Wolfe, 1985). Each of the above authors provided information on a limited number of cases of young women who had become sexual offenders. They reported high rates of past sexual victimization among the women they described and concluded that this past victimization was a contributing factor to present sexual offenses.
The second component of social learning theory associated with women's sexual aggression is self-reinforcement (Bandura, 1978). This reinforcement can include displacement of responsibility, misrepresentation of consequences, or moral justification (e.g., adversarial beliefs about relationships). Moral justification is a regulator of aggression that facilitates aggressive behavior under certain circumstances. Adversarial beliefs about sexual relationships (Burt, 1980) have been used as a sort of moral justification by men for sexual aggression (e.g., "A man has got to show a woman who's boss right from the start or he'll end up henpecked."). Previous studies have reported a positive relationship between adversarial beliefs and men giving (Burt, 1980; Malamuth, 1988; Muehlenhard & Cook, 1988) and women receiving sexual aggression (Skelton, 1984).
The purpose of the present study was to explore the ability of these two components of social learning theory to predict self-reported sexual aggression by college women. Three primary hypotheses were tested.
First, it was predicted that college women who had experienced past sexual abuse would be more likely than nonabused college women to exhibit sexual aggression toward men (adolescents or adults over the age of 12 years). Sexual aggression was defined as initiating sexual contact (kissing, fondling, or intercourse) by using sexual coercion (e.g., threatening to end a relationship, verbal pressure, or lying), sexual abuse (e.g., sex with a minor by an adult at least 5 years older than the minor, by inducing intoxication, or by using a position of power or authority), or physically forced sex (i.e., by the threat of physical force, actual physical force, or the use of a weapon)(Anderson, 1989).
Second, it was predicted that women who hold adversarial beliefs about sexual relationships would be more likely to exhibit heterosexual aggression. Adversarial beliefs were defined as "the belief that relationships are fundamentally exploitative, that each party to them is manipulative, sly, cheating, opaque to the other's understanding, and not to be trusted" (Burt, 1980, p. 218).
Third, it was hypothesized that both past abuse and adversarial beliefs would contribute independently to the prediction of college women's heterosexual aggression.
Method
Respondents
Respondents were 212 women enrolled in elective, introductory-level sexuality courses at public institutions in the New York/New Jersey area. They volunteered to complete the questionnaire during class time without receiving extra credit. Participants were reminded of the voluntary nature of participation and that they could discontinue their participation at any time without penalty. Both men and women were given questionnaires to complete so that women would not feel singled out for study. Those who chose to discontinue their participation were instructed to keep their questionnaire until the others had finished and turn in the blank copy with the rest of the group. Nine respondents did not complete their questionnaires adequately and were dropped from analyses. This was an overall response rate of 96%.
The mean age of the respondents was 22.3 years (SD = 5.4 years). The women were predominantly single (78.6%); 9.0% were cohabiting, and 8.1% were married and living with their spouses. The respondents were most often raised in households headed by professionals or executives (53.1%).
Attitudes about sexuality
The respondents also completed the five attitudinal scales used by Burt (1980). Only one attitude scale was analyzed in the present study: the Adversarial Sexual Beliefs (ASB) scale. The scale is comprised of 9 items with answers ranging on a scale from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (7). Examples of questions about adversarial beliefs include: "Men are out for only one thing" and "A lot of men talk big, but when it comes down to it, they can't perform well sexually." Burt (1980) reported item to item correlations ranging from .381 to .580 and an alpha score of .80 for this scale.
Past sexual abuse
Respondents were asked how many times they had experienced sexual contact with a person five or more years older than them while they were a minor and how many times they had been forced, coerced, or tricked into sexual activity at any time in the past. Past sexual abuse (PAB) was dichotomously scored as "1" if they had experienced either type of sexual abuse and as "0" if they had not.
Sexually Aggressive Behaviors Scale.
To assess sexually aggressive behavior, the respondents also completed an adaptation of the 13-item Sexual Experience Survey developed by Koss and Oros (1982). Adaptations included a change in gender specificity (from man as initiator to woman as initiator), from respondent as receiver of initiation to respondent as initiator, the inclusion of behaviors other than sexual intercourse (e.g., kissing and fondling), and additional questions regarding sexual behaviors (e.g., while someone was intoxicated) and motivations (e.g., to retaliate or to hurt someone else). The new instrument contained 26 items and was named the Sexually Aggressive Behaviors Scale (SABS) for the present study. Each question asked respondents how many times they had ever initiated sexual contact for each motive or by engaging in each behavior. These items were dichotomously scored as "1" when a behavior had occurred and "0" when the behavior had not occurred. Behaviors ranged from initiating sexual contact or arousing someone to encouraging intoxication or using physical force (see Table 1). Scores for sexual aggression were calculated by summing the discrete instances of each behavior. Sexual coercion (COE) consisted of items 7, 8, 9, 10, and 25; abuse (ABU) included items 19, 20, 21, and 22; and force (FOR) encompassed item numbers 23, 24, and 26 (see Table 1). These categories were subsequently dichotomously scored as "1" when any of the behaviors had occurred and "0" when none of the behaviors had occurred. Items 1 through 6 and 11 through 18 were related to mutually consenting sexual contact, simple seduction or attempts at arousal, or motives for initiation and were not part of this analysis.
Face validity of the SABS was established during the pre-test and pilot phases of the study. Content validity of the instrument was established through consensual validation by a panel of three experts from different parts of the United States who each conduct research and publish in the area of sexual aggression. Internal consistency reliability of the test instrument was measured by calculating the alpha coefficients for the questionnaire. The Cronbach's alpha was .75 for the SABS indicating acceptable internal consistency.
Results
Overall, 35.1% of the sample reported experiencing sexual abuse that did not include intercourse and 22.7% of the sample reported sexual abuse including intercourse. A total of 43.3% of the sample had experienced past sexual abuse.
Table 1 presents the percent of the respondents answering "yes" to each of the questions on the SABS. The full wording of each item began with "How many times have you initiated sexual contact with a man...". Table 1 presents abbreviated versions of each question designed to provide their essential meaning in a shortened form.
Table 1 indicates that of the women respondents, 28.5% reported engaging in sexual coercion, 21.1% reported abuse, and 7.1% reported using physical force. Overall, 42.6% of the respondents reported initiating sexual contact by using sexually aggressive strategies.
Hypothesis one postulates that past sexual abuse is positively related to sexual aggression. Chi-square tests of significance were calculated between past sexual abuse and the three subscales of sexual aggression: coercion, abuse, and force. Table 2 indicates that the respondents who had experienced past sexual abuse differed significantly from the rest of the sample in their initiation of each form of sexually aggressive behavior (p<.001).
Hypothesis two postulates that adversarial beliefs are positively related to sexual aggression. Phi coefficients were calculated between adversarial sexual beliefs and sexual coercion, abuse, and force to test hypotheses two. Table 3 indicates a significant positive relationship between ASB and the coercion and force measures of sexual aggression (p<.01), but not for abuse.
Hypothesis three postulates that past experience of sexual abuse and adversarial sexual beliefs contribute independently to a prediction of variance in initiation of heterosexually aggressive behavior among college women. The multiple correlation of ASB and PAB with measures of sexual aggression was significant (F(2,207)=10.71, p<.001). The two predictors (ASB and PAB) accounted for 9.4% of the variance in sexually aggressive behaviors. Further, Table 4 indicates that each predictor made a significant and unique contribution to the prediction of variance in behavior and the standardized regression weights (Betas) are nearly equal for the two predictors. However, the amount of variance accounted for by each predictor (4.5% and 4.9%) was small.
Discussion
These data show a significant, but weak, relationship between a woman's past experience of sexual abuse and her likelihood of initiating sexually aggressive behavior (explaining only 4.5% of the variance). Among the respondents, 43.3% had experienced past sexual abuse. Of those who were abused, a total of 48.4% engaged in heterosexually aggressive behaviors compared to 37.2% of those not sexually abused. Bandura's (1978) theory outlining the social learning of aggression specifically involved physical abuse leading to physical aggression. This is the first study citing past sexual abuse as one possible antecedent to the heterosexually aggressive behaviors of college women. Indeed, given the appallingly high rates of sexual aggression reported toward women, it is possibly surprising that so few women return the aggression. The severity, duration, and age at occurrence of past sexual abuse might also be factors that influence sexual aggression among college women and are appropriate concerns for further research.
These data suggest a significant, but weak, relationship between a woman's adversarial beliefs about sexual relationships and her likelihood of initiating sexually aggressive behavior. Specifically, the use of coercion and force toward adolescent or adult men were related to adversarial beliefs. Unfortunately, only 4.9% of the variance in the measures of sexual aggression is explained by this variable. Previous studies have linked college women's adversarial beliefs with receiving sexual aggression, but not with behaving aggressively (Muehlenhard & Cook, 1988; Muehlenhard & Linton, 1987; Skelton, 1984). This may indicate a need to reconstruct a scale that can measure adversarial beliefs in a more gender neutral format. For college women holding adversarial beliefs, the giving and/or receiving of sexual aggression may occur within a particular relationship that involves reciprocal aggression, unidirectional aggression, or as an independent pattern of behavior toward men in general. Again in this instance, Bandura's (1978) theory outlining the social learning of aggression does not speak directly about women or sexual aggression. Further research concerning this and other regulators of aggression may be particularly fruitful new approaches to understanding women's sexual aggression. Other areas of future research interest may include genetic, familial, peer, socio-economic, and socio-cultural associations; social and cognitive skill levels; and delinquency, and personality factors.
The sample must be acknowledged as a limitation of the present study. Single college women in their early 20's who were raised in middle class homes cannot be seen as representative of women in general. Also, the respondents were perhaps atypical of college women by their academic interest in sexual issues, their presence in elective sexuality courses, and their willingness to participate in the study.
Conclusions
Postmodern theorists from Foucault (1978) and Kohut (1978) to Simon and Gagnon (1986) and Hare-Mustin and Marecek (1989) have argued that the construction of gender in Western thought and scripted behavior is changing. The challenge they set forth is to examine the current nature of sexual desires and behaviors.
Most important, these results support the notion that what we think we know about sexuality is exactly that, what we think we know. In fact, "we must begin to address the questions of the changing nature of sexual desires, the changing nature of their uses; very much in the spirit of Foucault, we must begin to see it as an evolving phenomenon whose meanings and truths are a part of the continuing production of social reality, of the continuing production of our current versions of the human" (Simon, 1994, p. 18).
Research about women's sexual aggression is in its infancy. Much more research needs to be done to answer some of the questions raised by this and other work and to explore other aspects of the social learning and other theoretical models that will help us understand this phenomenon.
References
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Table 1
Percentage of Sample Responding "Yes" to Sexually
Aggressive Behavior Scale
Question %Yes
1. Mutually consenting contact 97.5
2. You initiated contact 92.6
3. You overestimated partners desire 60.9
4. You were too aroused to stop 72.2
5. You were pressured by friends or family 25.0
6. You attempted to arouse partner 79.2
7. You threatened to end relationship 8.5a
8. You said things you did not mean 24.5a
9. You pressured with verbal arguments 11.3a
10. You questioned partners’ sexuality 10.4a
11. To make someone else jealous 28.0
12. To hurt someone else 31.4
13. To end another relationship 25.0
14. To gain something from person in power 6.6
15. To express your anger at your partner 15.2
16. To retaliate against your partner 11.0
17. To gain power or control of partner 33.0
18. While your partner was intoxicated 52.4
19. By getting your partner intoxicated 14.7b
20. While your partner was a minor, you were not,
and you were at least 5 years older 3.8b
21. By using your position of power/authority 0.5b
22. By taking advantage of compromising position 7.5b
23. By threatening to use physical force 3.8c
24. By using physical force 5.7c
25. By threatening self-harm 1.4a
26. By threatening him with a weapon 0.9c
Note. N = 212.
asexual coercion (total discrete reports = 28.5%).
bsexual abuse (total discrete reports = 21.2%).
cphysical force (total discrete reports = 7.1%).
Table 2
Percentages of Respondents Who Reported Engaging in Coercive,
Abusive, and Physically Forced Sexual Behavior
as a Function of Past Sexual Abuse
Experience of % of Respondents who Reported Engaging
Past Sexual Abuse in each type of Sexual Aggression
Coerciona Abuseb Forcec
Abused 34.1% 26.4% 9.9%
Not Abused 24.4% 16.9% 5.0%
aX = 10.11, df = 1, p< .001. bX = 24.32, df = 1, p< .001.
cX = 63.92, df = 1, p< .001.
Note. N = 212
Table 3
Correlation Coefficients
ASB COE ABU FOR
ASB ---
COE .288** ---
ABU .143 .183* ---
FOR .254* .240** .163* ---
* p<.01. ** p<.001.
Note. N = 212
Table 4
Results of Multiple Regression Analyses for Two
Predictor Variables in Relation to
Sexually Aggressive Behavior
Variable B Beta % Var. t p
PAB .057 .211 4.45 3.19 .002
ASB ..032 .221 4.87 3.34 .001
CONSTANT .159
Multiple R=.306, R2=.094, F(2,207)=10.71, p<.001
Note. N = 212
Child sexual abuse by women
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.
Narrator:
The sexual abuse of children by women was once thought to be so rare it could be ignored. Today the victims tell a different story.
Woman:
You knew when my mum was being really nice, you knew something was going to happen - you were going to get raped.
Man:
Imagine your worst nightmare come true. It probably doesn't even come close to it.
Narrator:
Tonight Panorama reveals how the scale and nature of this sexual taboo has been severely underestimated.
Boy:
We used to play football together, go for walks, we were just friends
Cheryl:
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:
Sexual abuse by anyone is appalling, but when the perpetrator is a woman the crime seems so unnatural it offends against all instincts. It's thought that 10% of the population are abused as children; it is hard to accept that some of their tormentors are women
Jacqui Saradjiam: (clinical psychologist)
I think people find it so difficult to see that women sexually abuse children because the whole view of women is of nurturers, carers, protectors - people who do anything to look after children - and they see the women as victims rather than enemies or perpetrators of any abuse.
Michelle Elliott (Director - children's charity Kidscape)
I think the issue strikes at the core of what we perceive ourselves as women to be. I think that it's easier to think that it's men - men the enemy, somehow - but it can't be women - it's one thing women can't do. Women can be equal, we can be free, we can be in charge of companies, but we can't sexually abuse children - That's a load of rubbish.
Tina
Narrator:
Reaction to 28 year old Tina Purser's relationship with another 12 year old boy demonstrates society's reluctance to even associate women with sexual abuse. Purser, a trained nurse and mother of four secretly abused the 12 year old for two years.
Interviewer:
When did she make her first sexual approach? How did she do it?
Mother:
Apparently not long after he was 12. Her own children she'd sent round to the local park to play. Our son was in the house and she was just doing her housework and apparently while she was cleaning the bathroom she just turned around to our son and said how would you like this and actually abused him - she masturbated him on that first occasion, with him apparently leaning against the door. Afterwards he just cleaned himself up and she said "You'd better pop off and play with the children now and I'll finish the housework and see you later".
Interviewer:
Do you think she targeted him?
Mother:
Definitely. She went for that blonde gorgeous little boy. She used her son to get him. She used her son to get him over to play. She used her son to do the things that our son liked doing. If our son liked certain videos, she'd get her son to like them too.
Interviewer:
On any level do you understand what she was getting out of a relationship with a 12 year old boy?
Mother:
None whatsoever. If he'd have been a Chippendale, yes, but a 12 year old boy, no. I can only presume that she was getting from it sex, and didn't have the problems of a grown up man and demands of a grown up man and a full blown relationship. This was just easy sex.
Narrator:
It took secret tape recordings by a private detective to convince the authorities that Tina Purser was abusing the boy, albeit he appeared to consent. The family were distressed the media reported the relationship as an affair.
Interviewer:
Would you say what they were having was an affair?
Mother:
No. She raped him. She raped him hundreds of times and robbed him of six years of his childhood. I had a gorgeous little boy and now I've got a very aggressive moody teenager.
Narrator:
Tina Purser was found guilty of two indecent assault charges, but the sentence was just two years probation and the judge said he didn't see Purser as a future risk to children.
Society excuses female abusers
Michelle Elliott:
What tends to happen is that the female sexual abuser is excused in a way. "She must have been misguided" or it was a "chronicled affair". For example an affair with a 34 year old woman and a ten year old boy. I mean we wouldn't have said that about a man. And what happens is that the sentences are more lenient. The judges might even think "Well a woman really couldn't have done this - it must have been a mistake". And they usually get probation or they walk free. A man doing that would be locked up.
Narrator:
That's because men have long been seen as both capable of sexual abusing children and as being the main perpetrators. That still holds true; they are, but there is increasing evidence that far more women sexually abuse children than previously thought.
Michelle Elliott:
In the past the statistics have indicated that perhaps 2-5% of abusers are female. I think, based on the people who've contacted me, that that is probably much higher, maybe as high as 25%.
Chris
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.
Lucy
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.
Disbelief the biggest trauma
Narrator:
The biggest trauma for some victims though is disbelief. A survey of 127 survivors by the children's charity Kidscape showed 86% were not believed at first when they named a woman as their abuser.
Jacqui Saradjiam:
The fact that we are not expecting women in our society to do this - not expecting that women our society do this actually has profound effects on the victims, often making the experience go on much longer than it would have done in other cases, but also making them feel more stigmatised, more different, more betrayed, more powerless.
Sandra & Lesley
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.
Louise
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
South Wales
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 paedophiles, 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.
Jacqui Saradjiam:
In my research I've come across women of any age from young teenagers to grandmothers, from any class - from women who barely had a house to live in during their life to women with very large houses. And from any level of education - women who can barely read and write to women who've got degrees. We can't make assumptions about the type of woman who will sexually abuse a child.
Children's home
Narrator:
More than 40 people are now alleging abuse including sexual abuse at this former children's home in Aberdeen. The orphanage was run by the Poor Sisters of Nazareth. The complaints the police are now investigating were until recently dismissed as impossible. They range over a period of 30 years in which individual nuns are alleged to have abused.
Boy:
I was about 7 or 8 at the time and she was in charge of our group, and just one day out of the blue she came along and asked me would I like to learn the time. And I just said yes, I'd like to learn the time. She told me that her watch was inside her breasts underneath her cassock which they used to wear. So I put my hand in - obviously I was fondling her breasts to look for the watch and I found it and while I was doing that- pulling the watch out - she would put her hand next to my penis and she would just gently squeeze it and that would get me excited. I could tell she was getting excited cause her face was pure red and her speech was pretty excited speech.
Narrator:
This sort of incident happened on several occasions but the boy felt powerless.
Boy:
I knew it was wrong to do it, but I just did it because I had to do it or I got punished.
Female abusers acquire positions of trust
Narrator:
Some children aren't just at risk from the people they live with; they are vulnerable targets when they leave their homes. Out in the community female sexual abusers can manoeuvre with even more ease than men into positions of trust with authority over lost of children.
Dawn Read and Christopher Lilley
Narrator:
Dawn Read and Christopher Lilley worked together as qualified teachers at a nursery in Newcastle. About 120 two to four year olds passed through their classes. Their mothers suspected nothing.
Mother:
I really liked her. She just came across really as a nice person, always laughing, smiling and wanting to talk to you, and just made us feel at ease.
Narrator:
It took two years for trusting parents to find out that their children were being repeatedly sexually abused at the nursery. Lilley and Read were never tried in court, making the parents determined to stand up in public and draw attention to the abuse.
Mother:
My daughter was sitting at the lunch table and said she didn't want her lunch, so Dawn got a knife and fork and took my daughter to the toilet which was in the classroom and sat her on the floor and inserted the knife and fork into her vagina. Chris was there and they were both laughing.
Narrator:
What did your daughter tell you about that, about how she felt?
Mother:
Well she said it hurt and there was blood and that they had to get a towel when she got washed, and the towel had blood on. But they seem to have done it a few times.
Narrator:
This child was one of more than 20 others who went on to tell their mothers what Dawn Read had done to them. At first they couldn't grasp what they were hearing.
Mother:
I'm angry with her. I can't understand where she was coming from when she was doing this to the children. I can't believe, as a mother I trusted her and I can't believe that a woman would let people trust her and then go out and misuse that trust.
Narrator:
Dawn Read and Christopher Lilley persistently misused parents trust at the nursery and at other addresses in Newcastle.
Interviewer:
What were they asking you to do?
Girl:
Pull my pants down. If I had a dress, lift my dress up.
Interviewer:
Did anyone take any photographs of you?
Girl:
Yeah, there was a camera man there.
Interviewer:
Tell me about that
Girl:
He was just like taking pictures when they were being nasty to her and everything. I was like crying and just a lot of upset like. Screaming and saying I wanted to go back to the nursery and me mam and everything. And they wouldn't take any notice and they'd be laughing at me.
Interviewer:
When you had to join in with them, what did you have to do?
Girl:
I can remember when Chris put his privates into mine.
Interviewer:
And what was Dawn doing while Chris was doing this?
Girl:
Looking at the other children, being rude to the other children.
Interviewer:
She was being rude to the other children? What was she doing to the other children?
Girl:
Making them lift their dresses and take their clothes off
Mother:
Medically there was tearing of the tissues, bleeding trauma, extensive damage to the hymen. She has since underwent STD tests for sexually transmitted diseases. She has also had an HIV test.
Narrator:
Dawn Reed and Christopher Lilley were never brought to justice because the judge thought the child witnesses too young to be heard in court. There was an outcry on behalf of the children. The parents formed a protest group to support each other and publicise fully Reed and Lilley's abuse. Some children are still showing signs of trauma.
Mother:
She was always trying to make play with herself and I used to think that's just what children do. I did ask the health visitor a couple of times and she said "She's just exploring her own body and a lot of children do this". But as she started to get older it didn't just settle with her. I've had a lot of counselling about it because I've got a fear of her growing up to being an abuser herself. What the therapist said was that a child who comes from a loving home who is being abused doesn't necessarily go on to be an abuser. But that's not to say it can't happen.
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:
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:
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.
Monday, September 25, 2006
Saturday, September 23, 2006
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