(CW Child abuse) Why do mothers not protect their children from abusive boyfriends

[OutWithTheMule]

There has been another horrific child abuse death and I have noticed in the majority of these cases the mothers boyfriend has been abusing the child, and the mother is aware and allows it to happen, and usually protects them by trying to cover it up from the police after the fact.

In the awful case that has been in the news today the mother had only been with her boyfriend for 36 days. She allowed the abuse to continue because she didn't want him to leave her. How the fuck can you choose someone you have known 36 days over your own child!?

I just can't understand why these women choose their boyfriends over their children, if anyone laid a finger on my daughter I would flay them!! Even if you wouldn't physically intervene you would take your child and leave surely? If the boyfriend isn't the child's father they have no access to them if you just take them somewhere else. I know women are sometimes scared to leave abusive partners but often in these stories the partner is not abusing the mother, they are only abusing the child and the mother either passively allows it or sometimes joins in.

I understand that the fault lies with the boyfriends obviously, they are monsters and there is no excusing their actions, it's horrific. But it makes sense, violent men abuse children, it's straightforward as disgusting as it is. What I cannot understand for the life of me is why a mother would allow a boyfriend to harm their child or actively choose a boyfriend over their child. It just doesn't make any sense to me. Can anyone shed any light on these women's behaviour?

Yeah the data shows that females are the group abused significantly more than males. Data also shows that males are the group that abuse significantly more than females. So those abused the most are the least likely to abuse (females) and those abused the least are the most likely to (males).

Spot on!

I ask myself this frequently OP. I feel so sick and sad reading the latest news.

I was talking to an acquaintance the other day and she knows of three women who have young children (under 5) and have introduced new men to their children within 1-3 months of splitting with Childrens dads. It just blows my mind.

I’m not a perfect mother, God knows I make mistakes, but I looked at my little boy tonight as he fell asleep, he’s only 3, and I know that no matter what, it will just be me and him, I will never put him at risk.
The strangest thing is when I tell people (who ask) that that’s my stance and most fellow mothers seem incredulous that I’m happy to forgo a “traditional” relationship with a man unrelated to my son as if I’m in some way committing myself to a life less lived. Like they feel sorry for me or they can’t quite believe I’m truly happy with my decision.

I’m sorry but that methodology is staggeringly flawed. I’m not even sure what to start. It tells us nothing about whether people who are abused themselves are more or less likely to go on to abuse somebody else.

I work within safeguarding and there have been many issues with ACEs. First off it was never meant as a framework. The publishers of the study shared their work and someone took it and created a framework from it. People have misused this now to ignore kids who didn't have ACEs (10 specific and equally weighted things) so kids from places such as Syria who have experienced war, displacement, food shortages, homelessness, witnessed murder etc have 0 ACEs as there are only 10 of them. Meaning kids who need support are being ignored because their ACE score isn't high enough to meet the support needed. Also kids who were sexually abused by someone who was their own age or a few years older are not classed as having an ACE as the criteria is someone 5 years older (apparently sexual abuse with someone close in age is not an issue). ACEs also treats kids as being equally weighted. A child who has been through a family divorce that has been done in a sensitive and supportive way within the family is treated on the same scale as a child who was raped for 10 years. They are then used to define that child for the rest of their life. Children being refused uni places based on their scores, adults being refused access to basics such as insurance in life as their score follows them and worst of all....social services treating new mothers like abusers because of something that happened to them 20 years beforehand. It aims to predict human behaviour but it cannot. No one knows how someone will react to trauma. The creators have said it should never be used to score individuals and have warned not to do so as this was never the intended use of this when they completed the study. Robert Anda wrote a piece called Inside the Adverse Childhood Experience Score and there are many pieces about the critical nature and harm this is doing to people who cannot shake off their score despite not needing support as all are treated as being damaged with no hope. A deficit model not a trauma informed model.

Yep. And the mother in the case highlighted by @brummumma had previously been employed as a nursery nurse.

It certainly does! It shows that most who are abused do not go on to abuse others or else the data would show most females are abusers. It doesn't. It is just an excuse rattled out to excuse the behaviour of abusers.

Surely if abused ppl abuse ppl then this would show in females abusing others significantly more than males but yet the data shows the opposite.

There will be some who have been abused who do go on to abuse but that is a choice behaviour as all abuse is. It is also controlled by the abuser as they do not do it to all so it shows that this is not an uncontrollable thing or they would do it to all they come across.

Yes this. The notion that no woman is complete without a man is so damaging.

The trope that men who abuse were themselves abused as children comes from researchers talking to convicted paedophiles.

''Before the polygraph test, 61% of adult offenders claimed to have been sexually abused as children, compared to 30% after the polygraph. This indicates that more sex offenders claim to have been sexually abused as children than actually have a history of abuse.
''https://theconversation.com/child-sex-abuse-doesnt-create-paedophiles-60373

It's the same with men arrested for domestic violence- they love to claim that they are actually the ones being abused.

Because cocaine and weed are addictive and he was her supplier. Because men like this are able to find women susceptible to their control, and they have the ability to feed the addiction.

Because some women simply should not be allowed to be mothers.

Lack of self esteem and self worth.

My mum loved my dad more than me and my brother.

It's why she allowed his verbal and emotional abuse, its why she didn't protect us from his alcoholism and it's why she ultimately neglected us.

I forgive but I will never forget.

Because they are broken in some way.

Often because of abuse/trauma, maybe sometimes for no real reason, but something in their psychology or humanity is broken.

Other women can go through abuse/trauma and not be broken like that - maybe they had help at the right time, or maybe they are just made differently.

That’s the only way I can make sense of it - something inside them, whatever it is that stops the rest of us doing such unspeakable things, is broken.

Which doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be held accountable.

Yes, because women can do no wrong.

I think women can be just as evil as men. I would never ever automatically believe a woman just because she is one.

The men who commit these crimes are evil, but there's two evil people here- the women who brings these men into their innocent kids lives are far worse to me.

Other reasons can be quite complex, such as mental health illness, trauma, being neurodivergent, the complexity of domestic violence, vulnerability, etc. Some men are very good at finding women like this for the sole purpose of abusing children..

You could use every one of those excuses for a man too! He could be all of those and then whose top trumps?

Because they have been groomed

Years ago when I was a young teenager, I read Bastard Out of Carolina, which I found quite shocking at the time. In it the mother marries a new man who is a bad provider, a poor father, an all round pathetic excuse for a man, and eventually sexually abused one of the girls. The mother in the end leaves the girl with an aunt and goes off with the man, and the aunt observes something to the effect that it is never a good thing for a woman to have to choose between her man and her child - with the implication that she will often choose the man and if she chooses the child she may well be resentful.

I thought that was very cynical and not true most of the time, but as a middle aged woman I have found it to be the case far more often than I would have thought.

No because they can't think for themselves and make choices

I read that book v recently. It really wrenched at me in a way few books have. Dorothy Allison passed recently, & reading articles, I learnt that in real life, her mother didn't send her to the aunt, & the abuse continued until she was 15.
My own mother would never have put my abusive father before me, but she wasn't besotted my him the way the mum is in the book- she left at the first sign of violence. From threads on here, I v much doubt many mothers would stay w a man who they knew was SAing their daughter- in the book, the mother literally walks in & denies it. But I have read awful threads where emotional & mental abuse of the children are outweighed by the mother's attachment to the man. I still think most mothers would do the right thing, but maybe I'm too hopeful..Cases like Constance Martens are an extreme example of this, but I wonder how common lower level ones are..

Culturally, though, men tend to feel more entitlement over women and children and their aggression tends to be based on that, whereas women tend to be socialised to victim roles.

As someone whose mother repeatedly moved in "boyfriends" she'd known a matter of days, some of whom were horrifically abusive. She made me apologize to them for shouting at them when they were assaulting my little sister. She ultimately chose to turn a blind eye to the one who sexually abused me. When that delight left her for another crap mother, she took to stalking him, begging him to come back.

I look at my own child and there is no fucking way on Earth I would do the above. So no, being abused yourself does not make you an abuser. Having low self-esteem does not make you an abuser.. That's just bullshit people tell the judge, hoping for a lighter sentence.

Being a selfish arsehole, choosing to put your own need to feel young and still attractive, to not feel tied down by the responsibility of parenthood, allowing your "need" for a boyfriend to trump any empathy or understanding of how vulnerable children are...that's why women allow men to abuse their children.

Are you under the impression that when women's boyfriends beat their children black and blue and break their bones the simply don't notice?

It is well known that when men are reported to the police for domestic violence their partners often say it's not true to get them released.

Almost all the child abuse cases that make the news are perpetrated by the mothers boyfriend which means she moved him into the childrens home, then allowed it happen. If women didn't cover up their boyfriends child abuse there would be a lot more men in prison and a lot fewer abused children.

You can act as shocked as you like that women can also be bad people but you only have to look at the news and the responses on this thread to see that women know their children are being abused, and for some sick reason, allow it to continue. On a very regular basis. And yes, it is a societal issue because women put their boyfriends before their children a lot.

Can you link to the evidence that in the majority of cases of child abuse the abuse is carried out by the mothers partner with her full knowledge and that she then goes on to lie to the police to protect him? That's what you said and I'm interested in the research that you've based that on. I'm not 'acting shocked' that women can be bad people. I'm shocked that this is the situation in 'the majority' of cases, and thought you may have some evidence to support that.

In some cases (not all) the mothers are groomed first. By the time the children are being harmed they are unable to keep them safe.
While I was on my training contract I represented many Mum’s who stayed with their partners despite what was happening to the children. It’s often a very complicated situation.
Not saying it’s acceptable, just what I’ve experienced. Incredibly sad.

As far as I am aware data is not collected on this.

This is what happens in the majority of cases where mothers partners who are not biological parents of the children, as seen by several family members who work in social services and the police. If you want to tell people that what they see happening on a daily basis doesn't happen because you can't find a study on it because my guest.

This study shows that children with step parents are 40 times more likely to be abused than children living with both their parents and unless you want to claim that their mothers simply don't notice it is happening, then the mothers allow their partners to abuse their children. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0162309585900123