“A Social Problem Does Not Exist For A Society Until It Is Recognized By That Society To Exist”
The following is the first of a three-part series beginning with what many regard as the most sensational taboo, “Mother-Son Incest”
Growing up I learned about something called the Oedipus Complex. This complex is defined as “a boy’s unresolved desire for sexual gratification through the parent of the opposite sex, especially the desire of a son for his mother”. When I was in college I saw a classic French film entitled “Murmur of the Heart” which took the Oedipal theme and played it out in a contemporary middle class setting. I viewed it as a clever film about the adored, sensitive son of a beautiful, tempestuous Italian mother who is ushered into manhood by her as he recovers from a heart murmur at a countryside sanitarium. The film had me believe that although mother and son both realized that they had crossed a forbidden line, neither was scarred by the experience, and that in fact the son was now able to go on and become a “real” man. At the time, I never questioned the implications of this theme.
Mothers have been idealized for thousands of years. So the notion that the most trusted figure in our lives – the Madonna - could betray and abuse us sexually is particularly hard to fathom. I would contend that that is the primary reason that this particular form of abuse has not been properly identified and addressed in our culture.
Some statistics set the record straight: A July 2000 Justice Department report found that “woman account for 4 percent of those who sexually abuse children under 18 years of age, and about 12 percent of those who molest children younger than six years of age.” And these types of studies do not even address more subtle but still damaging behaviors such as mothers sleeping with children, bathing and fondling them, dressing and undressing in front of them and making them touch them in inappropriate ways (i.e. fondling, sucking). Furthermore, it is believed that abuse by mothers is so grossly under-reported and under-identified that these statistics only reveal a fraction of the problem.
Why is abuse by mothers so much more underreported than abuse by fathers?
Because of the very nature of the relationship. Mothers are more trusted figures than fathers by professionals and even by the children themselves. Furthermore, a mother’s actions can be more confusing because of her traditional role as the primary physical caretaker and nurturer. And even if there was suspicion of abuse, there is likely not to be any physical evidence. More significantly,“in many cases, the child’s family includes only the mother. She may be the only one available to the child for love and support. What child will risk losing his/her only family?”
Society views sexual abuse as something violent or coercive and aggressive – and something that usually involves intercourse. But whether coercion is used or not, “if a child is introduced to a sexually stimulating behavior- which is inappropriate to his (or her) psychosexual and psychosocial developmental maturity – by a parent, it is incest and it is abusive”.
For male victims the situation becomes even more complicated. Boys are less likely to feel victimized and/or to report sexual abuse, especially mother-son incest, because they either see the abuse as something positive (mother love) or they believe that it is either consensual or they are to blame. While boys are more likely to internalize and not tell - in fact disclosure during childhood was the only sexual abuse variable that differentiated the genders in a study by Roesler & McKenzie (1994) – 31% vs. 61% - the long term symptomological response to childhood abuse among adult male and adult female victims was similar – in other words – abuse has profound negative long term effects for both sexes. This shatters another myth - that boys can handle it and may even welcome it as a right of passage.
The psychological consequences of mother/son incest are significant.
Because boys don’t tell, they experience a greater degree of shame, stigma and self-blame than girls. Especially in our current environment, where girls are encouraged to speak up, boys are left to hide something that cuts to the very core of their male hood. In his study on the Psychological Impact of Male Sexual Abuse, David Lisak says one of the most crucial aspects of the experience of male sexual abuse is “a fundamental loss of control: over one’s physical being, one’s sense of self, one’s sense of agency and self-efficacy, and one’s fate”. And yet, as one boy put it, “the thought of losing her was more frightening than her abuse of me.” Lisak refers to the helplessness, isolation and alienation boys experience as they grow up hiding their secret and “seeding the potential for a lifelong struggle with alienation from other people.”
In order to compensate for the feelings of victimization and helplessness that permeated their childhood, adult males abused as boys deal with their masculinity in one of two ways, they either become hyper-masculine and exhibit a lot of anger, especially in relationships with women, or they become passive caretaker types putting everyone else’s needs before their own and exhibiting little or no male ego. Either way they are fighting deeply ingrained feelings of masculine inadequacy. But possibly the most destructive long-term consequence of the abuse is the victim’s inability to trust and therefore to connect with other people. If you have been betrayed by the first and most important figure in your life, how can you ever trust anyone else?
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
MOTHER LOVE / FEMALE ABUSERS - PART II
The Psychological Impact On Daughters Who Have Been Sexually Abused By Their Mothers
“There is no other closeness in human life like the closeness between a mother and her child. Chronologically, physically and spiritually, they are just a few heartbeats away from being the same person” *
This is the darkest secret of them all. It challenges societal expectations and myths more than any other form of sexual abuse. It infers sex between a mother and a daughter as well as homosexuality. It is the most difficult type of abuse to identify from the outside and the most under-reported. We are a society in denial. It happens much more than anyone would believe. And while it can be very subtle, most of the time it is not subtle at all, it co-occurs with physical abuse. It challenges our notions of how you define sexual abuse. But to the victim, it is very clear that something terribly wrong is occurring and that there is nowhere to turn for help.
In her seminal book, “Mother-Daughter Incest”, Beverly Ogilvie eloquently describes the societal view of the mother-daughter relationship:
“The mother–child bond has been called the essential human connection, one that teaches us how to love and without which we cannot be whole human beings. A mother’s love provides basic security, stability, nurturing admiration, cuddling, holding and kissing, caring, and acceptance. We receive courage, sense of self, the ability to believe we have value as human beings, and the ability to love others as well as ourselves, from the strength of our mother’s love for us when we are infants. As our first mirror of life, mother functions as protector, guide and interpreter.
A unique tie exists between a mother and daughter in our society, which is encouraged and supported through societal values. A young girl’s identification with her mother continues throughout life, thereby maintaining the mother-daughter relationship while establishing her identity. As women, society encourages us to carry our mothers with us in every breath, every decision, every success, and every failure. Our sense of self as a daughter is entwined with a sense of mother. We look to our mothers in terms of how we define ourselves, in terms of what it is to be a woman and what it is to be a daughter. In essence, there is a shared social role, a shared prescription for life, and shared philosophy. The inevitable modeling relationship between mother and daughter forges her image of herself as a woman, with a sense of basic trust that her mother gave her.”
One cannot, therefore, overstress the significance of the mother-daughter bond and how its betrayal decimates the victim.
Mother-daughter incest is the least understood of all types of sexual abuse. The mother-daughter relationship is characterized by boundaries that are less clearly defined than for mothers and sons and certainly than for fathers and daughters and fathers and sons. A mother’s physical and emotional control over her daughter is viewed tolerantly in our society; and displays of physical intimacy and emotional acting out are so acceptable, that it makes the identification of mother-daughter sexual abuse that much harder. But for those girls living through it, the devastation is unequivocal.
Since mothers usually are the primary caretakers and source of nurturance for their children -and especially their daughters - mixing these functions with sexual abuse leaves the survivor sickened, confused, full of self-loathing and with no sense of her own identity. While boys may have a male figure to turn to, these girls become fused with their mothers in a dark secret that turns their world upside down. In these abusive situations the focus of the relationship is the mother’s needs, including her sexual needs, with no consideration for the daughter as anything more than an extension of herself. The sex isn’t necessarily about sex; more often it is a generational handing down of abusive/incestuous relationships. But contrary to common belief that only mentally insane women are predators; just like with men, some of the most “respectable” appearing women (to the outside world) are preying on their children behind closed doors.
And with daughters it goes deeper than with sons. From birth a daughter models herself after her mother, and so she may not be allowed to discover where her mother ends and she begins. To be so enmeshed with ones perpetrator can be annihilating. For the mother daughter incest survivor, her core relational self, her self-structure has been denied because there is no safe, loving other to model. Essentially, the daughter has experienced the most extreme disconnection and violation because she has been physically, emotionally and sexually violated by the one person in her world who was supposed to protect, nurture and guide her. This is representative of a most severe form of psychological trauma, and in many cases it causes disassociation, detachment and freezing of emotions in the survivor.
“Many daughters possess aspects of their mother’s personalities, physical appearance, or interests. Some sexually abused daughters, however, may feel that their mothers have poisoned their potential to become healthy women. They may feel that parts of their mothers now live within them. Just as the daughters may come to loathe and mistrust their mothers, they come to loathe and mistrust anything in themselves that they believe comes from their mothers. These feelings can be profoundly disturbing. A daughter may feel that just as her mother was abusive to her from outside, the mother can now be abusive and destructive from inside her as well.” **
We need to bring this form of abuse out of the shadows. It is long overdue. We have to recognize that a problem exists, give it a face and find an avenue for these young girls to be able to reach out for help. The abuse itself takes many forms - from inappropriate touching or licking to masturbation to sodomy to enemas to pornography and/or making a daughter perform or watch others (i.e. her mother) perform sex with a third party. The list goes on. Dr. David Finkelhor, a noted researcher conceived of the following criteria to define child sexual abuse: it includes traumatic sexualization – premature and inappropriate sexual learning; betrayal – a violation of trust and dependency through activities and events; powerlessness – coerced by force, threats or deceit to submit to boundary violations and stigma – the secrecy causes the child to fear blame for the adult’s actions.
Because this type of abuse has been so minimized and marginalized, there is a dearth of reliable statistical research. But when surveys have been conducted, the results always point in the same direction. In 1996, the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect investigated more than two million reports alleging maltreatment of more than three million children. More than one million of these children were identified as victims of abuse. Of these one million, 12% were sexually abused and of those sexually abused, mothers constituted 25% (approx. 36,000 children) of the perpetrators of the sexually abused victims. Furthermore, this statistic was considered to be underestimated due to the tendency of non-disclosure by victims.
We need to get past our preconceived notions of motherhood and recognize the full spectrum of female sexuality, behavior and emotions. We need to reach out and give the young victims as well as adult survivors of mother/daughter incest a clear voice and a way back to healing.
Roni Weisberg-Ross 2009
www.roniweisbergross.com
*Cheever as quoted by Lanese - “Mothers Are Like Miracles”
**Rosencrans – “The Last Secret”
“There is no other closeness in human life like the closeness between a mother and her child. Chronologically, physically and spiritually, they are just a few heartbeats away from being the same person” *
This is the darkest secret of them all. It challenges societal expectations and myths more than any other form of sexual abuse. It infers sex between a mother and a daughter as well as homosexuality. It is the most difficult type of abuse to identify from the outside and the most under-reported. We are a society in denial. It happens much more than anyone would believe. And while it can be very subtle, most of the time it is not subtle at all, it co-occurs with physical abuse. It challenges our notions of how you define sexual abuse. But to the victim, it is very clear that something terribly wrong is occurring and that there is nowhere to turn for help.
In her seminal book, “Mother-Daughter Incest”, Beverly Ogilvie eloquently describes the societal view of the mother-daughter relationship:
“The mother–child bond has been called the essential human connection, one that teaches us how to love and without which we cannot be whole human beings. A mother’s love provides basic security, stability, nurturing admiration, cuddling, holding and kissing, caring, and acceptance. We receive courage, sense of self, the ability to believe we have value as human beings, and the ability to love others as well as ourselves, from the strength of our mother’s love for us when we are infants. As our first mirror of life, mother functions as protector, guide and interpreter.
A unique tie exists between a mother and daughter in our society, which is encouraged and supported through societal values. A young girl’s identification with her mother continues throughout life, thereby maintaining the mother-daughter relationship while establishing her identity. As women, society encourages us to carry our mothers with us in every breath, every decision, every success, and every failure. Our sense of self as a daughter is entwined with a sense of mother. We look to our mothers in terms of how we define ourselves, in terms of what it is to be a woman and what it is to be a daughter. In essence, there is a shared social role, a shared prescription for life, and shared philosophy. The inevitable modeling relationship between mother and daughter forges her image of herself as a woman, with a sense of basic trust that her mother gave her.”
One cannot, therefore, overstress the significance of the mother-daughter bond and how its betrayal decimates the victim.
Mother-daughter incest is the least understood of all types of sexual abuse. The mother-daughter relationship is characterized by boundaries that are less clearly defined than for mothers and sons and certainly than for fathers and daughters and fathers and sons. A mother’s physical and emotional control over her daughter is viewed tolerantly in our society; and displays of physical intimacy and emotional acting out are so acceptable, that it makes the identification of mother-daughter sexual abuse that much harder. But for those girls living through it, the devastation is unequivocal.
Since mothers usually are the primary caretakers and source of nurturance for their children -and especially their daughters - mixing these functions with sexual abuse leaves the survivor sickened, confused, full of self-loathing and with no sense of her own identity. While boys may have a male figure to turn to, these girls become fused with their mothers in a dark secret that turns their world upside down. In these abusive situations the focus of the relationship is the mother’s needs, including her sexual needs, with no consideration for the daughter as anything more than an extension of herself. The sex isn’t necessarily about sex; more often it is a generational handing down of abusive/incestuous relationships. But contrary to common belief that only mentally insane women are predators; just like with men, some of the most “respectable” appearing women (to the outside world) are preying on their children behind closed doors.
And with daughters it goes deeper than with sons. From birth a daughter models herself after her mother, and so she may not be allowed to discover where her mother ends and she begins. To be so enmeshed with ones perpetrator can be annihilating. For the mother daughter incest survivor, her core relational self, her self-structure has been denied because there is no safe, loving other to model. Essentially, the daughter has experienced the most extreme disconnection and violation because she has been physically, emotionally and sexually violated by the one person in her world who was supposed to protect, nurture and guide her. This is representative of a most severe form of psychological trauma, and in many cases it causes disassociation, detachment and freezing of emotions in the survivor.
“Many daughters possess aspects of their mother’s personalities, physical appearance, or interests. Some sexually abused daughters, however, may feel that their mothers have poisoned their potential to become healthy women. They may feel that parts of their mothers now live within them. Just as the daughters may come to loathe and mistrust their mothers, they come to loathe and mistrust anything in themselves that they believe comes from their mothers. These feelings can be profoundly disturbing. A daughter may feel that just as her mother was abusive to her from outside, the mother can now be abusive and destructive from inside her as well.” **
We need to bring this form of abuse out of the shadows. It is long overdue. We have to recognize that a problem exists, give it a face and find an avenue for these young girls to be able to reach out for help. The abuse itself takes many forms - from inappropriate touching or licking to masturbation to sodomy to enemas to pornography and/or making a daughter perform or watch others (i.e. her mother) perform sex with a third party. The list goes on. Dr. David Finkelhor, a noted researcher conceived of the following criteria to define child sexual abuse: it includes traumatic sexualization – premature and inappropriate sexual learning; betrayal – a violation of trust and dependency through activities and events; powerlessness – coerced by force, threats or deceit to submit to boundary violations and stigma – the secrecy causes the child to fear blame for the adult’s actions.
Because this type of abuse has been so minimized and marginalized, there is a dearth of reliable statistical research. But when surveys have been conducted, the results always point in the same direction. In 1996, the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect investigated more than two million reports alleging maltreatment of more than three million children. More than one million of these children were identified as victims of abuse. Of these one million, 12% were sexually abused and of those sexually abused, mothers constituted 25% (approx. 36,000 children) of the perpetrators of the sexually abused victims. Furthermore, this statistic was considered to be underestimated due to the tendency of non-disclosure by victims.
We need to get past our preconceived notions of motherhood and recognize the full spectrum of female sexuality, behavior and emotions. We need to reach out and give the young victims as well as adult survivors of mother/daughter incest a clear voice and a way back to healing.
Roni Weisberg-Ross 2009
www.roniweisbergross.com
*Cheever as quoted by Lanese - “Mothers Are Like Miracles”
**Rosencrans – “The Last Secret”
Female Sexual Abusers - Who Are They? Part III
There weren’t a lot of statistics, because no one thought it was a problem. But then in 1990, Ramsay–Klawsnick found that adult females were abusers of male adolescents 37% of the time and of female adolescents 19% of the time; and in six studies reviewed by Russell and FInkelhor, female perpetrators accounted for 25% or more of those abused. In 1996, The National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect conducted a widespread investigation on the maltreatment of children. Of the three million children investigated, more than one million were identified as victims of abuse and of the one million, 12% were sexually abused. The sexual abuse of children by women, primarily mothers, once thought to be so rare that it could be ignored, constituted 25% (approximately 36,000 children) of the sexually abused victims. Furthermore, all of these statistics are likely underestimated because victims of this type of abuse rarely disclose. Finally, there is an alarmingly high rate of sexual abuse by females in the backgrounds of rapists, sex offenders and sexually aggressive men – 59% (Petrovich and Templer, 1984), 66% (Groth, 1979) and 80% (Briere and Smiljanich, 1993).
Why haven’t we, as a society, been aware of this problem? Most probably because women have been idealized as mothers and nurturers. They haven’t been viewed as sexual aggressors. And because they are caretakers and are expected to be emotional, warm and physical with children, no one notices or suspects them. Sexual abuse by women is rarely reported because their victims usually are their own children - who are dependent on them. Furthermore, these children either do not understand what is happening to them or do not think anyone will believe them. And for male victims, there is additional embarrassment and denial – they must have wanted it – men (boys) can’t be raped!
But women can be sexual aggressors. And even though the abuse they are capable of doesn’t conjure up violent images of attack and penetration, surveys show that women are capable of a different type of violence toward their victims, sometimes physical and almost always psychological and verbal. This abuse can penetrate the psyches of their victims more deeply because they are the one person who was never supposed to betray them.
What type of woman would betray her own child or another person’s child in such a manner and why? A profile of a female sexual abuser looks something like this: She would probably be a person with low self-esteem who may have had a history of severe emotional and verbal abuse and/or been a victim of childhood sexual abuse herself. In fact, a study by Fowler et al in 1983 maintained that 80% of incest offenders had been sexually or physically abused as children. There would be feelings of alienation and isolation and possibly the loss of a spouse or other adult partner. She might have a history of drug or alcohol abuse and less often a history of indiscriminate or compulsive sexual activity. There might be arrested psychosexual development; there might be a need to have power and control in some aspect of her life. But the common perception that any woman who does this has to be mentally insane is false. Only a minority of female abusers do not pass reality-testing measures. How the abuse takes place and with who may differ, but the personality type can be constructed from the above profile.
David Finkelhor, who has written extensively on this subject, maintains that there is a Four Factor Model, or to put it another way, there are four components that contribute in different degrees to child molestation:
1. Emotional Congruence – a satisfaction of emotional needs through the abuse of a child that is due to either arrested psychosexual development, immaturity or low self-esteem.
2. Sexual Arousal – probably due to familial conditioning through their own childhood abuse or early fantasy reinforced by masturbation.
3. Blockage – Age appropriate sexual opportunities have been cut off by either a traumatic sexual experience with an adult, sexual dysfunction, limited social skills or a marital disturbance such as the loss of a spouse. The latter has been described as a “Theory of Loss” phenomenon precipitating abuse.
4. Disinhibition – due to poor impulse control either because of substance abuse, a chaotic family background or psychotic mental illness.
There are women who are pedophiles and simply pursue children for the sex, but the female abuser usually falls into one of three categories:
1. Predisposed Offender - the abuser was herself abused as a child and she continues the generational pattern by abusing her own children. It is thought that she becomes an offender in an effort to resolve her own childhood sexual trauma.
2. The Teacher/Lover - she generally becomes involved with an adolescent male with whom she relates to as a peer. She may be looking for non-threatening emotional intimacy.
3. The Male- Coerced offender – she is being led by an abusive male who she is extremely dependent upon. But she may eventually initiate sexual abuse on her own.
While the public is periodically shocked into awareness by sensational revelations of the second and third type of female abuser (i.e. Hedda Nussbaum,
Mary-Kay Latourneau), it is the first type that we have to finally give a face to – she is the one that is quietly victimizing thousands of young children who have nowhere to turn for safety. And the children ARE young. Studies have concluded that women abusers victimize younger children than male abusers – probably because of their role as caretakers. If current research is correct and more female than male children are sexually abused, then it is logical to conclude that more girls may grow up to be sexual offenders themselves and there may be a significantly larger number of female sexual abusers than we had previously imagined.
It is up to us to put aside deep-rooted myths about females, and more specifically mothers, in order to deal with the widespread problem of child abuse and more accurately expose all types of child sexual abusers.
Roni Weisberg-Ross 2010
http://www.roniweisbergross.com
Why haven’t we, as a society, been aware of this problem? Most probably because women have been idealized as mothers and nurturers. They haven’t been viewed as sexual aggressors. And because they are caretakers and are expected to be emotional, warm and physical with children, no one notices or suspects them. Sexual abuse by women is rarely reported because their victims usually are their own children - who are dependent on them. Furthermore, these children either do not understand what is happening to them or do not think anyone will believe them. And for male victims, there is additional embarrassment and denial – they must have wanted it – men (boys) can’t be raped!
But women can be sexual aggressors. And even though the abuse they are capable of doesn’t conjure up violent images of attack and penetration, surveys show that women are capable of a different type of violence toward their victims, sometimes physical and almost always psychological and verbal. This abuse can penetrate the psyches of their victims more deeply because they are the one person who was never supposed to betray them.
What type of woman would betray her own child or another person’s child in such a manner and why? A profile of a female sexual abuser looks something like this: She would probably be a person with low self-esteem who may have had a history of severe emotional and verbal abuse and/or been a victim of childhood sexual abuse herself. In fact, a study by Fowler et al in 1983 maintained that 80% of incest offenders had been sexually or physically abused as children. There would be feelings of alienation and isolation and possibly the loss of a spouse or other adult partner. She might have a history of drug or alcohol abuse and less often a history of indiscriminate or compulsive sexual activity. There might be arrested psychosexual development; there might be a need to have power and control in some aspect of her life. But the common perception that any woman who does this has to be mentally insane is false. Only a minority of female abusers do not pass reality-testing measures. How the abuse takes place and with who may differ, but the personality type can be constructed from the above profile.
David Finkelhor, who has written extensively on this subject, maintains that there is a Four Factor Model, or to put it another way, there are four components that contribute in different degrees to child molestation:
1. Emotional Congruence – a satisfaction of emotional needs through the abuse of a child that is due to either arrested psychosexual development, immaturity or low self-esteem.
2. Sexual Arousal – probably due to familial conditioning through their own childhood abuse or early fantasy reinforced by masturbation.
3. Blockage – Age appropriate sexual opportunities have been cut off by either a traumatic sexual experience with an adult, sexual dysfunction, limited social skills or a marital disturbance such as the loss of a spouse. The latter has been described as a “Theory of Loss” phenomenon precipitating abuse.
4. Disinhibition – due to poor impulse control either because of substance abuse, a chaotic family background or psychotic mental illness.
There are women who are pedophiles and simply pursue children for the sex, but the female abuser usually falls into one of three categories:
1. Predisposed Offender - the abuser was herself abused as a child and she continues the generational pattern by abusing her own children. It is thought that she becomes an offender in an effort to resolve her own childhood sexual trauma.
2. The Teacher/Lover - she generally becomes involved with an adolescent male with whom she relates to as a peer. She may be looking for non-threatening emotional intimacy.
3. The Male- Coerced offender – she is being led by an abusive male who she is extremely dependent upon. But she may eventually initiate sexual abuse on her own.
While the public is periodically shocked into awareness by sensational revelations of the second and third type of female abuser (i.e. Hedda Nussbaum,
Mary-Kay Latourneau), it is the first type that we have to finally give a face to – she is the one that is quietly victimizing thousands of young children who have nowhere to turn for safety. And the children ARE young. Studies have concluded that women abusers victimize younger children than male abusers – probably because of their role as caretakers. If current research is correct and more female than male children are sexually abused, then it is logical to conclude that more girls may grow up to be sexual offenders themselves and there may be a significantly larger number of female sexual abusers than we had previously imagined.
It is up to us to put aside deep-rooted myths about females, and more specifically mothers, in order to deal with the widespread problem of child abuse and more accurately expose all types of child sexual abusers.
Roni Weisberg-Ross 2010
http://www.roniweisbergross.com
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