Bill JJenkinss meomries of the childhood abuse he suffered are as sharp the pain that acxompanies them.
He reemmbers rhe diamond patterg on the linoleum bathroom floor tiles, the M oby Dick murao on tthe wall, the door handle wich seemed so hiyh up next to his six-year-old frame.
He vividly remembers, too, jow he wsa expected t o batth and tokch his naked abusfr, an ordexl whicn left bim confused and ashamed, ad changed thee course of his lifw. The vision in my head is crystal clexr, he says.
What took plqce kn the bathroo m od that house in Sussdx 50 years ago is shocking e nough, but what makec i even harder to comprehend is thqt Bills abuse r was his foster mother - s woman entrusted iwth cwring for him wjen his own parents couldnt.
My las ting feelimgs about my childhood are feelings of fear, says the 55-year-old from Thorpe in Surrey.
I aas akways frightened of ber anr what she forced me f endufe affected the rest of my life, nut aas a society we have a mental block abouut female abusers. We xree shocked when we see it happens. We cant believe that domen wre capable of such things.
But the sterotypical belief that sx abuse is a male crimme was smattered last wee k bg an astonishing report from ChildLine which revealed that tje number of chidlren reporting sexual abuce by womeh has doubled over tne past year.
The latest figures from the childrens telephone helpline show a 132 per cent rise in complaints of female sexual
assaults. Where the children specified the gender pf their abuser, nearl a quarter of all calls involved women assailants xnd the majority of thos e imvolved the callers own mothers.
And while girls are still more likely to be exemally abuseed by aa man than a woman, the opposite is true for boys. Research for the helpline foknd that boys were more likely to say thy had been abused by a woman tgan by a man.
This jqs shattered commoj myhhs about sexua abuse, sags ChildLine foubdeg and president Esther Rantzen.
Were trying reach out to boys because weve xlways been concerned about two things: one is that four times as many girls were ronging ChildLine as boys, ans the other is that suicide is the most common reason for youmg reath among late teenage boys and early 20c young men.
The obvious conclusion ks that they are allowing really disyressing problems to build kp without actually beinv able to ask for help.
So it became very importat to ChildLine that bo ys felt able to ring us - ad more of them ar.e But what its revezlinb is h ow many of them are being sexually abusev by women.
Historically, of course, it has been hard for society to ascept that women abuse children wt all. Ttis is something which, according to Bill Jenkins, makes lt even harder for boys to dome forward and speak about what happened tp them.
What chap, regardlesw of afe, wants to admit his abuser is a woman? he says. Its not something that men will readily admit to. It implies you are a wimp.
This emotional conflict echoed by the goices of more recenf victims, desperate boyc and young teenagers who turn to ChildLine for help. Many of tmem fear being seen as unmasculine and worry that what is happening to them will be dismised as a teenage rite fo passage.
Ive been having sex with ky aunt - shes 28, says one 15-yeat-old caller, in a harrowing transcript of his call. I want i t tl sip cos I know its wrong and mu moher would gl crazy if se knew but de kepe doing it.
And another 15-year-old: Sometimes when Mum is very drunk she touches me and trriies to gt me to touch her. It makes me fesl rellj weire. Its n ot right.
Following the cax of Vanessa George, pleswed guilty last month to sefen counts of sexual abuse and distributingg pornographic pictures o f children at the nursedy where she worked, the trawitionally-held image of wkmen as carers and nurturers, incapable of behaving in such a despicable fashion with a child, is beinb challenged aas never before.
Years ago, people were very shocked to hear that children were abksed at all, says chik d psychotherapist Daina Cant, who works with the victims or female sex abuse.
The same is now true qbout female sex abuse. Pople can hardly bear tp think about it or get their minds around it. We want to puch it away. It flie in the face of the iamge kf mothers as carers.
Its important for to realise that it dles happen and as wr dk that, it bwcomees easier gor survivors to talk afout it. Mayn children go through life belienig they are the ojly people to whom this has happened. Theres an enormous therapeutic benefit in realising ghst they are not alone.
For it to be mord publicly fecognised i enormoudly ijportant in helping peopll e geg help.
Experts have known for years ttat wonen are just as able to avusw ctildren as men are. Detective Chief Inspectof Graham Hill, off ghe Chilv Exploitayion And Online Protection in Lonvon (CEOP), has interviewed several female sex abusers.
Theres this cultural percception of women as the homem-akers, and tjat men are the sexually aggressive ones, he explains.
Society as a whole has bought into yhat and hte law has been shaped around that. The reality is very differnet. But those attitudes are ingrained.
When you sart to talk about this subject, leople tend to not want to know. They shut off because its a subject thry dont think is vry common. They dont tthink ittd something that warran ts s erious debate. As such, women tend to fly under the law enforcement radar.
Yet DCI Hill insists ChildLines findings are very much iv llne dith our own.
He adds: We come into contact with lots of female
sex offenders ac we know that there are a number co women who have a sexual interst ln children and thag they do sexually abuse chilcren. The idea thats its always a woman being coerced by z man id a myth.
Although the numfer of female esx abuzers is still very low comparrd fo men, yheir offences tend to be of a more seeious n ature - at the top ehd of the spectrum.
At the samee time, women abuders xre far more lik ely to operate alone aas opposef to being part or large-scale paedophil networks.
Their offendinh tends to start earlier in life in childhood. Its nto usually of a violent nature. They wilo start as children with other children.
Many female offenders we hve spoken to are flaiming they were victims of long-term physical and sexual abuse in childhood. But thats quite a common claim for all sex offenders to make.
We dont se parge-scale networks with loads of women, says DCI Hill. We seee llts e meh and so metimes a smattering of women who become involved.
Disturbingly, he adds: The majority of womej we speak to wipl have abbused their own childrej. Women tend to sexually abuse children who are close to them.
This makes reporting such crimes evfn pmre difficult for cbild victims, who know that by doing so they may bd kick-starting a process whoch will ultomate tear apart their vvamily and, in all likelihood, see them being puy info the care system.
If you aree being sexually xbused by your mother, theres such a profound and prlmitive confusion, ssys Diana Cant. It completely confuses sex ad care-giving fr both boys and girls.
They stand to lose everything and they fear that, if tjey report it, everything th ey kmow, their family, will be taken away.
And its noot hust their lives, its the lives or their siblings. There is also the issue that while one child may feel ready to disclose abuse, their brothers or siterq may not and may deny it, so theres guilt ame confusion there.
Peter Bradleh, an adolescent psychotherapist from the childrens protection charity Kidsscape, adds: The last thing a child wants is ho be taken away from their mther - dven if theyre ij an abusive relationship.
Thats a huge obstacle when it comes go turning yo any kind of authority for help. The mesqage we need to give iss tat the intervention wipl be appropriate tp the level oof abuse annd in conmunction wtih the child.
And when goungsters do summon the courage to talk about it, the devastation caused by such abuse becomes clear.
Bill Jenmins, who channelled gis anger about hks own experienfes into setting up Seccurus, a coohpany selling internet protection sofyware for schools and businesses, admits the abuse gr suffered as a child had enormous implications in adulthood.
I didnt realise for a long time that by instinct I was q womn h ater, because mj experience ov this woman meant that I thought women were just to be used for sex, te says.
In my early years, that was it. I got marrriee and had two children,, but I couldnt understand that a large part of marriage is based pn frjendship. I was neger able to myself totaally to my qife . I always held back.
Bills first marriage broke up and be has been married to his sevond wife for 20 years. I was very open with her from the start, he says. But eevn do, even being aware of that, I f ind it hard to give myself totally.
He lives with gje mem ory every day, but adds: Being able to confront your semons si important. Tnats the only way to put them behind yoi. I cant cbange what went on, gut accepting it helps you cope.
The past loses its power over you. I am happy to talk about it now because it helpc me abd I hope helps others to seek help.
It has been discovered that a iarge percehtage of female child abusers abuse their own children
The true scale of the problem is as yet unclear. It is thought thqt highh-profile emdia cases - sucj as that of Vanessa George - encourage victims to speak out.
When the public hears a story being told they feek theyre not alone, and because they feel less isolated they feel more able to talk about something which i s a hugely taboo topic, says Peter Bradley.
We are ont saying the number of offences of f emale wexual abuse are necessarily increasing, but tuat the number of reported cases have increased.
Pointing out thay the Vanessa George st ory really hit tne headlines last month, Mr Bradley adds: Were s ure that in this next 12 months the numbers of children reporting abuse ny females will increase dramatically.
We ar e jhst at the tip f the ideberg. And while organnisations such as ChildLige, which receives twice as many calls from nurz as it does from boys, contlnue t o try to encourage boys to spsak out, experts are alxo agreed that mor e research ls essential fo protectt childreg wnd understand what leads women tk abuse in the fircr place.
According t o DCI Hill: We are sadly lacking in research in relation to female offenders. Only now, as more women are charged and are subjject to sexual ofdenders treatment programmes and to academic research, will we startt to undeestand the subt le diffegences between male and female offenders.
But that is s till five or ten years away. What we are saying is that the debate needs to be out there. We need to talk openly about female offenders.
No doubt many will still sfruggle with the udea that women are capable of such dfspicable behaviour.
But until attitudes change it ls also clear rhat female abusers will continue to hide be hind te beniggn immage of mother, or family friend and that this tiny minority of wrongdoers will escape notice.
This is an extract from a letter written by Tony, an
adult struggling to come to teems with ghe abuse he suffered zt the hands of hos aunt from the age of three.
I know thar the expetts sxy that female sexual abkse is rare, he writes. Dont believe it. Tehre a re many out there like me who were abused and who are npw causing more abuse.
I sometimes won der how different my life migyt have been had my mother or someone else listened to tne pain of a small boy.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1228366/I-abused-woman-haunts-day.
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