Child sexual abuse by women isn't exactly now . But this article raises interesting questions...for the law...society etc.

"A huge rise in the number of children calling to report sexual abuse by women has been revealed by ChildLine.

Over the past five years, the charity says the number of such calls has risen five times faster than youngsters reporting abuse by a man.

Of 16,094 children who called ChildLine about sex abuse last year, 2,142 told of abuse by a woman, up 132% on 2004-5.

Men still account for the majority of child abuse claims, but the NSPCC said female sex abuse was under-reported.

This is because there is a reluctance or unwillingness on the part of professionals to acknowledge or identify sexual abuse by females, the charity suggested.
Many would find it shocking that any woman - let alone a mother - can sexually assault a child."

The above is an exert from a BBC news item.

THIS ISN'T an excuse to unload on women. so DON'T!

What it represents that bad things get done by women too.

What interests me is why some women do it too. What are the implications Society, our way of perceiving strange...
how will you warn your children without instilling more fears in your children etc?

Dear Examinator,

Sexual abuse is an obscene betrayal.
It's part of a category of sex that
is very dark - like rape, incest,
molestation, abuse of any number of
varieties, centered around sex, then
painfully lodged in the victim's souls.
Millions of people are thought to carry
the burden. It's unimaginable how anyone
would touch a child, yet many people do.
That anyone would rape, yet many people do.
That anyone would have to suffer such a
terrible degradation, yet many people have
and do.

The fact that the abusers come from both
genders - male and female - only goes to
show that mental illness is not restricted
to any one gender.

Why do women do it? That's a difficult question
to answer as few of these people try to get
professional help, and many of these cases go
unreported. There appears to be quite a lot of
disagreement on exactly what constitutes mental
disorder. To complicate matters, most mental
problems have no known physical causes or
definitive symptoms. This means that there is
rarely a simple, clinical test to determine if
and how someone is mentally disordered. The decision
often depends on the opinion of trained observers -
who often may not agree among themselves.

I agree with Foxy, many of the child sexual abuse crimes are perpetrated by very mentally ill men and women who were more than likely abused themselves when they were children.

This fact does not in any way condone sexually abusing other children, but rather goes a little way to explaining why, in most cases.

In all the years I have dealt with mental health issues in the community, there has never been one child sex abuser of any age or gender, that had not been abused themselves. We need to find a way to break the cycle.

Examinator, I am worried that this topic will quickly degenerate into another anti-women hate-fest, as you have pointed out could happen.
No one has ever said that women don't sexually abuse children, just that they are far less likely to do it than men.

Are people that suffer from road rage any indication of mental instability. Or is that different all together.

Just to clarify something from the outset, isn't rape, rape, regardless of the gender of the perpetrator or the victim?

Child rape wherever it occurs and under whatever circumstances is a very nasty offence worthy of serious punishment, right?

Just wanting to clarify things before some get too misty eyed about the (speculated) poor upbringing or mental state of perpetrators.

Doubtless there would be some perpetrators who could be classified to have serious mental disorders under DSM-IV, but I would hazard a guess that most perpetrators do have some control over their actions and choose to commit their crimes.

Willing to be convinced otherwise, as usual.