Mothers Sexually Abusing Children
Fraud in Australia’s plan to reduce violence against women
The 2009 Australian project a ‘Time for Action: The National Council’s Plan for Australia to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children, 2009-2021′, was approved for implementation by the Council of Australian Governments (COAG). The Plan, which is split into several parts, puts forth recommendations for new legislation, changes to judicial processes, requests for funding and ideas for domestic programs targeted at reducing domestic and sexual violence against women. The advisory council has some powers to implement programs through the Office of Women among other agencies, but much of what the government funded program calls for requires approval by Parliament.
The entire premise of the National Plan was underpinned by the belief in this statement:“While a small proportion of men are victims of domestic violence and sexual assault, the majority of people who experience this kind of violence are women in a home, at the hands of men they know.”[27-pg1] But a quick examination of the statistics and data shows a much different picture to the rather sweeping indictment of Australian men the National Council paints.
Child Abuse by Mothers in Australia – A case study
Nobody believed ‘Frank’ when he tried to protect his son from bureaucratic bungling. John Stapleton reports that, nearly 20 years on, Frank has been proved right, even though he lost in court.
The boy was eight weeks old when his father called welfare authorities and pleaded with them to take his son into foster case. He alleged that the mother was being violent towards the child, throwing him against walls and trying to smother him. The authorities ignored him, as they did for years to come, but the father persevered.
Twenty years, 550 days in court and tens of millions of dollars of public funds later, the matter which has just run across the civil, criminal and family law jurisdictions, reached its final chapter this week.
Womens groups push to support new bill (to protect children): Yeah right!
Editor: Before accepting much of the article below at face value, you may want to review the litany of anti-male articles written by this particular journalist.
You would in fact be forgiven for thinking that this was the work of a malicious divorced mother with an axe to grind against her ex-husband, rather than an objective journalist wishing to simply portray the facts on family law reform. Perhaps the above description hits closer to home than Adele Horin is willing to admit, (;-), but this obsessive shrill against shared parenting, which Adele would make you believe equates to sexual abuse of children, is nothing more than a disgraceful attempt to ensure that women maintain sole custody rights of their children, and as a result ‘control’ of their ex-husband, regardless of the genuine needs of children.
Do not be fooled into thinking that this is about protecting children from child abuse. Given that almost 80% of all child abuse happens in single mother households, and the overwhelming perpetrators of child abuse being mothers themselves, then removing the transparency of shared parenting is hardly a solution now, is it?
Whether the likes of Adele Horin will admit it or not, this battle is not about children, it is about women’s rights, above and beyond the equal rights of men, or the best interests of children.
If we were to be fair-dinkum about protecting children, then we would take head of figures from the Institute of Criminology which lists sole custody of the highest risk factor for child abuse in Australia.
===============
Changes to child custody laws will be put under the spotlight today, writes Adele Horin.
A WOMAN whose ex-husband was jailed for sexually abusing her daughter is resisting Family Court orders to allow him contact visits with their son.
The man was sentenced to three years’ jail and served 18 months for the aggravated indecent assault of a minor – his then 13-year-old stepdaughter. He was freed on a good behaviour bond and has been granted supervised access visits with the younger child. The visits, which were supposed to start last October, were intended to lead to unsupervised access after seven weeks.
Now the mother is fearful she might end up in jail because she is in contravention of court orders. ”The day he molested my daughter he lost his rights as a parent,” she said. ”My son says he’s scared of him and I won’t make him go.”
The executive officer of the NSW Women’s Refuge Movement, Cat Gander, says the case highlights the bind women are in under the Family Law Act.
”State child protection authorities insist women protect their children from danger but Family Court orders insist women facilitate access.”
A rally today outside Federal Parliament will be the first step in a campaign to ensure passage of a new family law bill that seeks to give greater protection to children in access and custody disputes. More than 170 agencies, including Lifeline, the YWCA, the Benevolent Society and Headspace, the youth mental health agency, have formed an unprecedented alliance to push for even stronger protections for children in the proposed legislation.
After several government-commissioned studies into family violence that showed children were insufficiently protected under the 2006 Family Law Act, the federal government proposed a new family violence bill. A public inquiry starts on June 9 in Canberra.
Some men’s groups claim the government’s proposed changes to family law may weaken shared parental responsibility provisions. However, Kylie Temple, project co-ordinator for a mid-north coast domestic violence service, said the 2006 law, in emphasising children’s rights to a relationship with both parents, had compromised children’s safety: ”If this mother complies with the federal court order and leaves her child with a convicted sex offender, under state law I am mandated to report the child to the child welfare department for being at significant risk.”
The new alliance wants the committee to take up the recommendations of the former family court judge Richard Chisholm to drop the presumption of equal shared parenting responsibility and the obligation to consider equal time in favour of treating all cases that come before the court on their merits.
The government has proposed more modest changes that will give greater weight to the protection of children above the benefit of children having a meaningful relationship with both parents where family violence was a concern. As well, it proposes to delete the ”friendly” parent provision which obliged judges to have regard to whether a parent encouraged the child’s relationship with the other parent.
Ms Gander said that at this stage it was unclear whether the proposed changes would have a smooth passage through Parliament.
Adele Horin
Mother-Son Incest: Hidden in Shame and Rising
Sons Don’t Report It, ‘Cunning’ Mothers Rarely Reveal It and Society Finds Topic Too ‘Ugly’.
Gregg Milligan sexually abused by his own mother.
The molestation began as gentle fondling when Gregg Milligan was 4 years old, but it soon escalated to aggressive touching and eventually beatings that would render him unconscious.
For seven years, until Michigan child welfare workers intervened when he was 11, Milligan was too ashamed to reveal that his tormentor was his own mother.
“She was very brutal,” said Milligan. “Through her difficulty reaching climax, she would become frustrated and violent, hitting and punching and slapping not only my genitals, but my face and body.”
“It was terribly confusing, and it wasn’t just the violation,” said Milligan, now 46, and director of infrastructure for a major health care provider in Michigan.
As bad as the incest was, things got worse. Milligan’s father had left when he was 2, but by the time he was 8, his mother, an alcoholic and a prostitute, invited strange men home who would sexually abuse him.
“Back then I would never tell anyone, not even a sibling,” said Milligan, the most “compliant and sensitive” of three children living at home. “I was just too afraid. It was so horrendous for me to believe she actually would do this to me.”
One of the unspeakable secrets in the world of child sexual abuse is that mothers can be molesters. Often, they prey on daughters, but more frequently their sons — who report increased feelings of isolation and sexual confusion along with thoughts of suicide.
Both of Milligan’s parents are now dead, but his past still haunts him.
“Around 10 years old, I started to get this unbelievable feeling of dread that if I don’t get out I am going to die from the decadence, the debauchery, the forced molestations and the beatings that became more severe,” he said. “For three months I suffered from hysterical paralysis.”
An estimated one in four girls and one in seven boys will be sexually assaulted or abused before the age of 18, according to the Alabama-based National Children’s Advocacy Center . In 27 percent of these cases, the abuse is perpetrated by the child’s parents.
Previous studies of day care workers published in 2000 in the Journal of Sex Research, found that women — without male accomplices — accounted for only about 6 percent of the abuse of females and 14 percent of males.
But more recent national surveys indicate about 12 percent of all child sexual abuse cases are committed by women — “a 100 percent increase compared with previous data,” according to Chris Newlin, NCAC’s executive director.
“We view females as care givers and protectors of children,” he told ABCNews.com. “Now we are beginning to understand females are sexually abusing children, and it is occurring much more.”
Professionals are stymied by public perception that incest is “an ugly subject,” and that women can’t commit such crimes.
“If it’s a 35-year-old female and a 14-year-old boy, we’d say the boy is getting lucky,” said Newlin. “And if it was a 35 year-old male and a 14-year-old girl, we’d call that a pervert.”
“We have this overarching thing that goes back to the Salem witch trials of children making up stories,” said Newlin. “You can’t trust kids.”
Survivors like Milligan say that these crimes often go unnoticed, not just because society can’t imagine women as aggressors, but because boys feel riddled with shame.
“There is this terrible stigma that boys crave sex,” said Milligan. “We are just as impressionable and naive and just as afraid. How can anything be consensual at 4 or 11 years old?”
He was finally able to tell all in the self-published memoir he took a decade to write — initially titled “God Must Be Sleeping,” he changed the title to reflect a more upbeat chronicle of his survival, “A Beautiful World.”
But Milligan has much to be positive about. Though his childhood was ravaged, he has managed to raise a son, now 23, who “has never known violence or abuse.”
Today, Milligan is a spokesman for the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network, sharing his experiences as a survivor.
About 10 percent of all crisis calls to the RAINN hotline are from males, according to program director Jennifer Wilson, who said they get about 100,000 calls a year.
“This crime is hard to track because people just don’t share it with law enforcement,” she told ABCNews.com.
In September, when child star MacKenzie Phillips went on the “Oprah Winfrey Show” to disclose her father had raped her at the age of 19, calls to RAINN’s hotline from incest victims “spiked.”
Mothers who sexually abuse tend to have higher rates of mental illness and are often the victims of abuse themselves. They also have easier access to children.
“It’s easy for women to go unnoticed,” said Wilson. “And at the legal stage, they get lighter sentences.”
Because incest is considered taboo, few boys come forward and social service providers are not often trained in detecting signs in women abusers.
One victim, Dominic Carter, a TV news reporter in New York, wrote about his own abuse at the hands of his mother in his 2007 memoir, “No Momma’s Boy.” Earlier this month, Carter was convicted of attempted assault after a 2008 fight with his wife, and could face up to three months in jail.
As a child, Milligan turned his anguish inward.
“My brother and sister could leave the house and naturally play with friends,” he said. “I was petrified to leave mother. The clear sense was that if I did, the punishment would be worse.”
His mother also threatened to kill herself and Milligan said he more than once was hit by cars while chasing his mother into the street.
His father was equally volatile, returning once to beat his mother “so bad he left her with an eye hanging out of the socket.”
Teachers were also unaware of the abuse. “In their defense, I was kept out of school,” he said about his frequent injuries. “My mother was very cunning.”
The family was on welfare, but when social service workers paid their visits, the children were “always pushed out of the house and not allowed to come home,” Milligan said.
Dr. Carole Jenny, a pediatrician and director of the Child Protection Program at Hasbrow Children’s Hospital in Providence, R.I., said sexual abuse by mothers is “really hard to diagnose — most of the time it’s not witnessed.”
“Most kids have normal exams, and most parents give a credible history,” she said. “Most prepubescent boys and girls don’t have any lasting physical findings. Abrasions and redness disappear within 24 hours of the event.”
For young children, like Milligan, who eventually called an older married sister to intervene, getting help is difficult.
“I was sneaking money and stealing coins and running down to the pay phone and begging, ‘Please come and save us,’” he said. “She eventually did but was reluctant because she was afraid.”
After a court battle — his mother unsuccessfully sought custody — Milligan lived for a time with his sister, immersing himself in books and trying to catch up.
He had missed so much school that he could only read at a third-grade level.
“I could tell time and tie my shoes, but I struggled through my first book, Dr. Seuss’ ‘Green Eggs and Ham,’” he said. “I read the whole summer and pored though every book I checked out of the library. By seventh grade I barely passed, but I never quit. I kept trying and trying.”
Panic Attacks and Intimacy Issues
But the abuse took its toll. Until he was 16, Milligan had panic attacks and wet his bed, seeing countless child psychologists and therapists.
But by the time he was asked to leave his sister’s at 16, he was an A student and involved in athletics.
Though he drifted out of foster homes and shelter with friends and priests, Milligan eventually went on to college and later graduate school.
“To this day the one question people ask is why I survived,” he said. “I don’t know, maybe there was something bigger and better than all of us and I tapped in to it. But I remind people it doesn’t come without its problems.”
As an adult, Milligan now needs medication to sleep and still has chronic nightmares, as well as anxiety attacks. “I find myself carrying around a paper bag, but I’ve managed to avoid the pitfalls of any addictions,” he said.
Some men who are abused by their mothers become hypersexual or addicted to pornography, others avoid contact altogether.
Milligan, too, struggles with intimacy in relationships. His first marriage ended in divorce, but he has since remarried. “She is a wonderful woman and working with me in therapy.”
Milligan’s “happy ending” was watching his son from the first marriage — “the sweetest, most gentle young man” — recently graduate summa cum laude from college.
“If there is any indication of success, it’s not me or the fact that I graduated from college or writing a professional position,” he said. “It’s my son — he has never known violence, only love.”
But his own attitude has also fueled Milligan’s recovery. “I wanted to focus on the possibility of change and perseverance,” he said. “I honestly don’t know why I chose to read instead of doing drugs.”
With good treatment, many male victims like Milligan do survive, according to Nancy Cotterman, director of the Broward County Sexual Abuse Treatment Center in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
“I don’t think they ever forget, but there are many who become empowered adolescents and adults.”
What’s lacking, say experts, is public awareness of mother-son abuse.
“We have the laws we need, the professionals in every profession and a tremendous network of highly trained and capable individuals in the U.S. to respond to sexual abuse,” said NCAC’s Newlin. “The greatest challenge is that it is such an ugly subject that most people have a hard time wanting to pay attention to it”
By SUSAN DONALDSON JAMES
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/mother-son-incest-rise-report-sex-abuse-agencies/story?id=9209454
