Female Abuse
⚡ ALL INFORMATION CLICK HERE 👈🏻👈🏻👈🏻
Female Abuse
Therapists
:
Login
|
Sign Up
United States
Austin, TX
Brooklyn, NY
Chicago, IL
Denver, CO
Houston, TX
Los Angeles, CA
New York, NY
Portland, OR
San Diego, CA
San Francisco, CA
Seattle, WA
Washington, DC
Mental Health
Addiction
Anxiety
ADHD
Asperger's
Autism
Bipolar Disorder
Chronic Pain
Depression
Eating Disorders
Personality
Passive Aggression
Personality
Shyness
Personal Growth
Goal Setting
Happiness
Positive Psychology
Stopping Smoking
Relationships
Low Sexual Desire
Relationships
Sex
Family Life
Child Development
Parenting
Talk to Someone
Find a Therapist
Find a Treatment Center
Find a Psychiatrist
Find a Support Group
Find Teletherapy
Trending Topics
Coronavirus Disease 2019
Narcissism
Dementia
Bias
Affective Forecasting
Neuroscience
Online: Website , Facebook , LinkedIn , Twitter
Are you a Therapist?
Get Listed Today
Get Help
Find a Therapist
Find a Treatment Center
Find a Psychiatrist
Find a Support Group
Find Teletherapy
Members
Login
Sign Up
United States
Austin, TX
Brooklyn, NY
Chicago, IL
Denver, CO
Houston, TX
Los Angeles, CA
New York, NY
Portland, OR
San Diego, CA
San Francisco, CA
Seattle, WA
Washington, DC
Mental Health
Addiction
Anxiety
ADHD
Asperger's
Autism
Bipolar Disorder
Chronic Pain
Depression
Eating Disorders
Personality
Passive Aggression
Personality
Shyness
Personal Growth
Goal Setting
Happiness
Positive Psychology
Stopping Smoking
Relationships
Low Sexual Desire
Relationships
Sex
Family Life
Child Development
Parenting
Talk to Someone
Find a Therapist
Find a Treatment Center
Find a Psychiatrist
Find a Support Group
Find Teletherapy
Trending Topics
Coronavirus Disease 2019
Narcissism
Dementia
Bias
Affective Forecasting
Neuroscience
We all harbor secrets. Some are big and bad; some are small and trivial. Researchers have parsed which truths to tell and which not to.
Posted January 17, 2021
|
Reviewed by Gary Drevitch
Last July, Jeffrey Epstein’s associate Ghislaine Maxwell was arrested and charged with multiple crimes related to the trafficking and sexual abuse of minors. While Maxwell denies her involvement in Epstein’s sex trafficking operation, numerous women have accused her of recruiting and grooming them for the purposes of sexual exploitation while they were minors.
However, the question remains: Can women engage in sexual grooming?
Sexual grooming has been defined as the deceptive process used by sexual abusers to facilitate sexual contact with a minor while simultaneously avoiding detection.
Prior to the commission of the sexual abuse, the would-be abuser may select a victim, gain access to and isolate the minor, develop trust with the minor—and often their guardians, community, and minor-serving institutions—and desensitize the minor to sexual content and physical contact.
Post-abuse, the offender may use maintenance strategies on the victim to facilitate future sexual abuse and/or to prevent disclosure. While it is estimated that about half of all cases of child sexual abuse involve elements of sexual grooming, these estimates are based only upon males convicted of sex crimes.
Recently, a validated model of child sexual grooming was developed. The Sexual Grooming Model (SGM) is comprised of five overarching stages:
What we do know is that cases of sexual abuse perpetrated by women are underreported. While official estimates of female-perpetrated sexual abuse range around 2.2% of cases , victim-reported rates of sexual abuse perpetrated by a woman range around 12%, and 40% of male victims of sexual abuse report that they were abused by a woman.
So why are rates of reporting so low? Reporting rates for sexual abuse are low in general, and it is estimated that only about a third (37%) of individuals who were abused report the perpetrator. In addition to the numerous barriers to reporting already faced by those who experience abuse, those who report that they were abused by a woman may face additional barriers such as negative responses, blame, disbelief, or the trivialization of the incident.
To better understand female-perpetrated sexual abuse, researchers have developed various typologies or categories of women who abuse children based upon their characteristics. Of these typologies, two correspond to women who may engage in sexual grooming – the teacher/lover and the sex trafficker.
The teacher/lover generally abuses teenage males through her position of power. The recent television series A Teacher portrays one such case, but it is almost weekly that a new case of a female adult (generally an educator) abusing a teenage male is reported in the media.
It is estimated that between 5-10% of cases of female-perpetrated sexual abuse involve a female teacher and male student. Examined through the lens of the SGM, females select males who are vulnerable, either because they have difficult situations at home and/or may be troublemakers and not believed, or they target shy and withdrawn students who would be less likely to report.
Due to the nature of the teacher-student relationship, it is easy to gain access to the student and they can spend time together without suspicion. Parents may even encourage spending more time with the teachers, as they are perceived as trustworthy and as helping children with their schoolwork. Teens may relish the positive attention and praise from the teacher, especially if they are not getting it elsewhere.
With texting and social media, communications can easily become flirty and then sexual in nature. There is a strong theme in movies and pop culture about how every teenage boy’s fantasy is to have a sexual relationship with their teacher — and in these cases of teacher-perpetrated abuse, the victim often views the behavior as consensual. It is often not until years later that the victim understands that the relationship was abuse.
Research has found that those who have been sexually abused by women may have the same or even greater negative consequences as individuals abused by males. The abuse is rarely revealed by the victim, as they believe that they are in a relationship with the adult and fear losing it; however, if the woman fears detection, she can threaten academic consequences or the loss of the relationship.
The other type of female who commits sexual abuse that may employ grooming is what we term the sex trafficker. These women are motivated by economic gain or underlying antisocial traits and target young female victims and force them into sex work.
Maxwell could fall into this category. While it is commonly believed that women involved in sex trafficking are coerced, this is not the case for all women. Some women who engage in trafficking do so voluntarily, in the context of a partnership with a male trafficker, and are often responsible for the recruitment of new victims, using grooming behaviors to lure them into the sex trade.
These women will select teens and young women who are vulnerable. Many come from abusive or neglectful homes and have either run away, been thrown out, or been in foster care , and are often struggling to meet basic needs and/or have low self-esteem . Given the lack of parental supervision, these young women are easily accessed by the trafficker through existing connections, social media, or at local malls or homeless shelters.
Female traffickers are perceived as more caring and trustworthy and once approached, young victims go with the trafficker after hearing promises of a better and more stable life, housing, new clothes, food, and money. Acting as a sister/mother figure, the female trafficker befriends the victim and gains her trust, giving her gifts and special attention.
It is at this point that sexual contact is introduced and may be facilitated with the use of drugs or alcohol . The female sex trafficker may then use psychological manipulation or the threat of being arrested or put back on the street to avoid detection from authorities.
While much still remains unknown about the sexual grooming behaviors and tactics used by females, there is enough overlap with the strategies and behaviors used by the teacher/lover and sex traffickers and what we know about tactics used by males to suggest that some female sex offenders do engage in sexual grooming. This has implications for the prevention of sexual abuse:
Facebook image: Dikushin Dmitry/Shutterstock
For more information, see: Jeglic, E.L., & Calkins, C.A. (2018). Protecting Your Child from Sexual Abuse: What you Need to Know to Keep your Kids Safe. New York: Skyhorse Publishing.
Elizabeth Jeglic, Ph.D. , is a clinical psychologist and a professor of psychology at John Jay College who studies sexual violence prevention.
Get the help you need from a therapist near you–a FREE service from Psychology Today.
Psychology Today © 2022 Sussex Publishers, LLC
We all harbor secrets. Some are big and bad; some are small and trivial. Researchers have parsed which truths to tell and which not to.
You are here: Home / Domestic Violence Research / Female Perpetrators of Intimate Abuse
Honest-Ribbon.org, formerly known as WhiteRibbon.org, is owned by Erin Pizzey, hosted by A Voice for Men, and is not affiliated with any other White Ribbon organization.
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.
DONALD G. DUTTON
TONIA L. NICHOLLS
ALICIA SPIDEL
Compared to the extensive literature on male perpetrators of intimate abuse (Dutton, 2002; Hamberger & Hastings, 1991; Holtzworth Munroe, Bates, Smutzler, & Sandin, 1997, inter alia), the literature on female perpetrators is scant. Although it has long been recognized that North American women and men are equally likely to be the perpetrators or the victims of intimate abuse (Steinmetz, 1977; Straus & Gelles, 1992), in large part, this knowledge has been prevented from influencing public policy and informing interventions for couples coping with violence in their relationships. For years, the dominant feminist view in intimate violence research precluded the reporting of female battering (see Straus & Gelles, 1992, pp. 3-16) or dismissed it as merely self-defense (Dobash & Dobash, 1978, 1979; Dobash, Dobash, Wilson, & Daly, 1992). As a result, until very recently, political correctness and concerns that reports of female perpetrated abuse might decrease funding and other sources of support for female (i.e., the only) victims of partner violence have successfully silenced publications of such findings (e.g., see Felson, 2002) and, unwittingly, prevented progress in successfully preventing and treating this widespread public health issue. 1
It likely would not be an overstatement to suggest that an important evolution is occurring in the domestic violence field. First, scholars are increasingly asserting that violence in relationships needs to be considered within the larger context of interpersonal violence and that focusing our attention on correlates and motives known to predict general violence can inform our understanding of violence between intimate partners (Dutton, 1994; Dutton & Nicholls, in press; Felson, 2002). In direct contrast to the traditional radical feminist perspective, the emerging generation of research literature asserts that partner abuse reflects intimacy, interpersonal conflict, psychopathology, and demographic and psychosocial correlates common to other areas of criminology and forensic psychology (e.g., prior antisocial and violent behaviors) (Dutton & Nicholls, in press; Ehrensaft, Moffitt, & Caspi, 2004; Felson, 2002). Second, women’s perpetration of abuse and men’s victimization experiences in intimate relationships are emerging as important considerations in safety planning, preventive and therapeutic interventions, and legal responses to domestic violence. Although the work of Straus and colleagues awakened the field to women’s use of abuse tactics in relationships long ago (Steinmetz, 1977; Straus & Gelles, 1992), it has taken decades for the realities of those innovations to begin to be reflected in public policy and used to inform evidence-based practice. It is against this backdrop that we will examine women’s use of abuse in intimate relationships and begin exploring the treatment needs of women who engage in abuse against their partners.
ABUSE PERPETRATED BY WOMEN
AGAINST MALE INTIMATE PARTNERS
There is no shortage of discussion in the literature regarding the controversial issues of who hits first, who hits more often, and who presents a real threat of harm to their partners, men or women? Recent empirical and theoretical reviews (Archer, 2000, 2002; Dutton, 1994; Dutton & Nicholls, in press; Felson, 2002; Fiebert, 2004; George, 1999, 2003; Nicholls & Dutton, 2001; Straus, 1999) provide compelling evidence that the rates of victimization and perpetration are similar among men and women in intimaterelationships and the severity of violence and resulting harm is most often minor (Dutton, 1998; Ehrensaft et al., 2004; Johnson, 1995; Makepeace, 1986). Furthermore, evidence is amassing that contradicts the notion that women’s aggression is primarily in self-defense against abusive male partners.
Similar Rates of Victimization and Perpetration Among Men and Women
Over the past few decades, a growing number of studies have been released that support the contention that females perpetrate violence at rates equal, or similar, to males (for reviews, see Dutton & Nicholls, in press; Fiebert, 2004; Straus, 1999). Findings are relatively consistent across dating, cohabitating, and marital relationships in community samples; though, there is some evidence to suggest young respondents (under 30 years) in dating relationships evidence higher rates of aggression, particularly by women (Follingstad, Wright, Lloyd, & Sebastian, 1991; Sommer, Barnes, & Murray, 1992; Sorenson, Upschurch, & Shen, 1996).
More than two decades ago, Bernard and Bernard (1983) surveyed 168 males and 293 females enrolled in introductory psychology courses, 30% of the students reported having abused a partner or having been abused by a partner. Fifteen percent of the men reported they had victimized a partner, of those male abusers 77% reported they also had been abused. Of the women, 21% reported they had perpetrated abuse and, of those, 82% also had been victimized. Around the same time, Henton, Cate, Koval, Lloyd, and Christopher (1983) sampled male and female high school students and demonstrated that 78 (29 males and 49 females) of the original sample of 644 reported having been the aggressor or the target of physical violence in a dating relationship. Henton and colleagues concluded that the abuse could most commonly be characterized as reciprocal; 71.4% of respondents reported that they had been both the victim and the aggressor at some point during the relationships.
A few years later, O’Keefe, Brockopp, and Chew (1986) surveyed 135 female and 121 male high school students. The results indicated that the prevalence of violence did not differ significantly by sex: 11.1% of females and 10.7% of males reported being victimized, without having perpetrated violence. Burke, Stets, and Pirog-Good (1988) sampled 505 (298 females; 207 males) upper-class students from a large midwestern university. The results indicated no significant differences in men’s and women’s reported perpetration and victimization rates; 14% of men and 18% of women in their sample engaged in physical violence against a date; 10% of men and 14% of women reported having been physically assaulted by a date. Thompson (1991) provided data from a sample of 336 undergraduates, which further indicated that physical aggression in dating relationships is not gender specific. The use of any form of aggression in the context of a dating relationship in the two years prior to the study was reported by 24.6% of the men and 28.4% of the women (Thompson, 1991).
More recently, Magdol et al. (1997; also see Moffitt, Robins, & Caspi, 2001) conducted one of the few prospective studies to examine the prevalence of violence in intimate relationships. These investigators followed a birth cohort of 1,037 subjects in Dunedin, New Zealand. At age 21, 425 women and 436 men who were in intimate relationships from the Magdol et al. cohort answered Conflict Tactics Scale (Straus, 1990) questions about their own and their partners’ use of violence. Both minor and severe physi
Gibson Les Paul Classic Ebony
Bukkake Glory Hole
Bdsm Wallpaper