Maternal Sexual
Abuse of Males
This article presents one aspect of the findings of a qualitative
research study which explored the impact of childhood sexual abuse
on the lives of a non-clinical sample of 25 adult males who responded
to advertisements for adult male survivors of childhood sexual abuse.
The author conducted in-depth interviews with the men to discover
how their experiences of childhood sexual abuse had in¯uenced their
psychosocial development. Thirteen of the 25 men were abused by
females. This article focuses on seven men who were abused by their
mothers and describes how de®nition, prevalence and outcomes of
maternal sexual abuse are aected by male socialization, creating
additional diculties for these men. The author describes some of the
psychological defence mechanisms used by this sample of men,
explores some of the reasons for maternal abuse and issues to be
considered by practitioners. *
c1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Child Abuse Review 6: 107±117, 1997
No. of Figures: 0 No. of Tables: 3 No. of References: 29
KEY WORDS:sexualabuse;mother±sonabuse
S
ocietal attitudes are slowly changing as the recognition
of male childhood sexual abuse makes its impact on
our knowledge and practice. Case studies reporting instances
of female perpetrators began to appear during the sixties and
seventies (Wahl, 1960; Lukianowicz, 1972), and in the
eighties researchers began to move towards systematic
descriptions of types of female perpetrators (Faller, 1987;
Knopp and Lackey, 1987; Matthews, Matthews and Spetz,
1990). Following from the recognition of females as abusers
came the emergence of literature concerning cases of
maternal abuse (Yates, 1982; Chasno, Burns, Schnoll,
Burns, Chisnum and Kylespore, 1986).
Beliefs about rigid gender and sex roles have held us back
while we were unable to connect the word `victim' with
`male' or `female' with `perpetrator' (Watkins and Bentovim,
1992). The word `victim' has been an anathema to the male
self-concept, which is usually more comfortably linked with
power and domination (Allen, 1990; Bolton, Morris and
CCC 0952± 9136/97/020107± 11$17.50 Accepted 31 October 1996
*
c1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Child Abuse Review Vol. 6: 107±117 (1997)
`Beliefs about
rigid gender and
sex roles have
held us back'
Kim Etherington
University of Bristol
Department for Continuing Education
Bristol
Address for correspondence: Dr K. Etherington, University of Bristol, Dept for
Continuing Education, 8± 10 Berkeley Square, Clifton, Bristol BS8 1HH U.K.