Experts Doubt Reported Hike in Female Sexual Abuse

(Nov. 16) -- Are there more "female sex beasts preying on children," as the British tabloid Daily Star put it recently?

The question arose earlier this month after ChildLine, the telephone counseling service of a U.K. child welfare organization, reported that the number of British children calling a helpline to report sexual abuse perpetrated by women has more than doubled over the past five years. And in cases where the perpetrator's gender was specified, mothers were the alleged abusers in almost a third of the cases reported by boys in their early teens.

The report followed a raft of high-profile media cases on both sides of the Atlantic involving women accused of sexually abusing children or teenagers. Child care worker Vanessa George, now awaiting sentencing after her conviction last month in Britain on pedophilia offenses along with another woman and a man, has been a particular focus of press attention there. In California, prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for Melissa Huckaby, charged with kidnapping, raping and murdering 8-year-old Sandra Cantu. And there have been a number of prominent cases in recent years of female teachers having sexual relations with teenage boys.

But none of that is solid evidence of a growing problem. Several U.S. medical professionals and child welfare advocates suggest that increased awareness that this behavior is wrong may be encouraging more teenage boys to call the helpline.

"Media attention may be generating more reports, and putting boys in a situation where they're more likely and less ashamed to come forward," said Linda Spears of the Child Welfare League of America, or CWLA, headquartered in Arlington, Va. But she said that as far as the United States goes, there's "no indication that the number of reported female abusers is on the rise."

Another skeptical voice is Dr. Karin Meiselman, a Pasadena, Calif., psychologist who has published extensively on child sexual abuse and incest. "This is a self-selected group of people reporting," she said, "and there's also quite a high probability that many of these calls are prank calls."

The latest available U.S. government figures for child abuse show that in 2007, the last year for which figures are available, 794,000 children suffered some form of abuse -- not necessarily of a sexual nature. The data indicates that mothers were implicated in 39 percent of those cases, fathers in 19 percent and both in 17 percent.

U.S. government figures show that the same year, 60,000 children are known to have suffered sexual abuse. But these figures don't differentiate between male and female sexual abuse victims, and cases in which mothers sexually abuse their sons still constitute a relatively small percentage overall.

"It's a very serious thing when it does happen," said Meiselman, "but it doesn't happen very often."

Nevertheless, many psychologists say the abuse of boys is an understudied problem and that there can be serious effects on those male children who do experience sexual abuse from a female relative, particularly a mother. "It's one of the most shameful forms of sexual abuse," said Maryland psychologist Emily Samuelson, director of the Soaring Project, an oral history and photography project that highlights success stories among former abuse victims.

All forms of sexual abuse can cause low self-esteem, depression, anxiety, panic disorders, poor relationships, suicidal tendencies and eating disorders, Samuelson said. But she said other, possibly more complex issues arise in boys who are abused by adult women.

"If the culture tells you that you're meant to feel like you got lucky, but you actually feel disgusted and ashamed, then you've got this whole cultural problem to deal with, which complicates the healing even more," Samuelson said. "So for a boy to be assaulted or sexually abused by a woman is doubly confusing." And in the family context it can be disastrous, she explained, if, for example, a boy tries to tell his father that his mother is sexually abusing him.

Samuelson described the case of one adult man she interviewed who had been secually abused by his mother as a child. "His father beat the crap out of him. He became a terrible alcoholic, a Skid Row bum, he went to jail all the time for drunk and disorderly conduct," she said. And as an adult this man was very promiscuous, "but to love someone and to have sex with them at the same time was a really difficult experience." The man has recovered from his abuse, according to Samuelson, and founded an organization that helps other male survivors of sexual abuse confront their past in order to heal.

Thanks to victim organizations and increased media attention, the culture may be changing, CWLA's Spears said. "In the past boys who had sex at 14 were just sowing their oats," she said. "They may have seen it as a badge of honor rather than a crime. I think society is clearer that these boys are still children and should not be having sex with adults."

Female perpetrators are comparatively rare among adult abusers but also tend to respond better to therapy, said Dr. David Finkelhor, director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire. "Women are vastly more amenable and successful in treatment, because talking and therapy suits women much better than it suits men," he said.

Finkelhor has studied sexual abusers' behavioral patterns for more than 30 years, and his major complaint is the lack of research about child sexual abuse in general. "It's one of the big public health failures in the United States," he said. "It's a topic that's of considerable policy concern to parents and politicians, but hasn't merited very good epidemiology. We don't really have the kind of statistics we should have, though it's better in the U.S. than in the U.K."