Unbelievable article - increase in mothers being sexually abused by their own sons

[Jane379]

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/jul/14/taboo-parents-sexually-abused-by-their-children

What is causing this?? The article mentions some possibilities. Increase in matricide by sons also very disturbing.

But these are numbers relating to overall abuse, not sexual abuse?? So not relevant to what I was talking about. I don't at all doubt that overall abuse is going to feature a lot of female children.
EDIT: I'm also not sure what the relevance of referring to the trans/nb identity of a tiny number of the children concerned is meant to be?? I didn't say anything at all about that

The age range is 5-31, I think that should probably be broken down to more meaningful categories. I think also some of it is a bit fuzzy, so they mention ND but thats a wide range of children who have little control over their actions and children who do have the ability to control their actions. I do also think that whilst sexualised abusive language is abuse it’s a different category to physical sexual assault.

Either way it’s horrendous and people shouldn’t feel shame in looking for help.

@MyThreeWords i think @Lexibletheflexible was responding to the post upthread that said we couldn’t rely on the statistics referring to sex, as opposed to gender. In fact, those stats are available and the trans cohort is 1% ie minimal, and does not at all affect the sex breakdown.

Ah, thanks, @PermanentTemporary . And apologies, @Lexibletheflexible

Yes I am referring to that but now I am unsure those numbers (the 1%) do correlate with the research the article is speaking about. What I posted was a related survey by the same people where they do differentiate between trans and non-trans kids. So hopefully, if it is not the right survey, the later one that is related to the article will also break it down this way.

Ah, yes, I see now that the link is to a 2021 survey.

A man in his twenties drugged and sexually assaulted a middle-aged woman, and was given a community order? Is this normal?

Thank you for sharing your experience. I think you’re absolutely right that we need to face the depravities women commit. I want the truth from news sources, expressed in plain English. The fact we have been misled by journalists portraying men as women, could increase complacency about women’s crimes, as many of us read it disbelievingly, because the papers have form for lying about the sex of perpetrators. This obviously does nothing to protect children.

This horrific case shocked me, but I assumed it was very rare. Now I’m wondering how prevalent the sexual abuse of a parent is? We only heard about this one because it ended in murder.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-33253728

I am surprised that so many girls are apparently represented. I'd have expected a negligible number but it's not negligible at all.

TLDR

The Guardian:

• has cherry-picked and amplified the most extreme examples of children (including adult men) abusing their parents (usually their mothers) and as a result
• has given the misleading impression that 33% of cases of Child Parent Abuse (CPA) involve young girls sexually assaulting their mothers.

++++++++++

I was surprised too . . . and also rather suspicious that in this very specific type of sexual abuse that so many girls are (allegedly) perps when this is not the case generally.

I wondered if very different types of behaviour were being bundled together - and it turns out that they are. As usual, the Devil is in the detail.

The Guardian summarises the relevant research in a way that gives the impression that 33% of sexual assaults on their parents, usually their mothers, are committed by girls. That is not true.

The definition of "Child Parent Abuse" used by the research includes children between the ages of 5 and 31 saying or doing things within sight or earshot of their parents that:

• are NOT directed at their parents and
• do NOT refer to their parents and
• were NOT intended to be seen or overheard by their parents and
• MIGHT (with a stretch) be interpreted as "sexualised" language or behaviour.

The behaviours reported include "voyeurism" and "exhibitionism" . With an age range that starts at five, I hope that these definitions do not include curious five year olds sneaking a peek at mummy or daddy when their parents are perhaps even only partially undressed or "flashing" as a form of innocent naughtiness rather than sexualised exhibitionism.

All the behaviours are those which can be classified as "harmful". This refers NOT to harm to the parents but rather harmful to the child in terms of normal child development, social acceptance, upset caused to others, etc.

Onward to the texts . . .

The Guardian article, "‘It’s so unthinkable’: the parents sexually abused by their children" says:

"As well as interviewing mothers and practitioners, she analysed data from 2,000 parents who sought help from a UK-based support service for CPA in 2023, and found that 13% had experienced harmful sexual behaviour from their child.

Of these, 96% were mothers and 4% were fathers. The children, aged five to 31, were 66% male and 33% female.

Parents reported their children making sexual noises and simulating sex acts, making sexual threats, being physically violent including touching, grabbing and thrusting, and also carrying out non-contact behaviour such as voyeurism and exposure."

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/jul/14/taboo-parents-sexually-abused-by-their-children

That refers to this study:

"How Do you Even Speak About it?": Understanding Harmful Sexual Behavior Towards Parents
11 June 2026, Amanda Holt, Journal of Family Violence

Extracts

"Sexualized behaviors operate on a spectrum between harmless and harmful, and a range of contextual factors determine where behaviors fall on this spectrum. These factors include the age-appropriateness of the behavior, its social acceptability, its consensualness, the reciprocity of the behavior, the presence of victimizing intent, and the use of coercion or force (Hackett, 2010).

In relation to children and harmful sexual behaviors, those that are distressing and/or interfere with the child’s development may be considered sexually problematic. Towards the other end of the spectrum, behaviors that involve an overt element of victimization or coercion may be considered sexually abusive, while behaviors that involve physical force may be considered sexually violent (Hackett, 2014). Many types of behavior are included on this spectrum of harm, and some may constitute a criminal offence, either in the form of a ‘contact offence’ (e.g., sexual assault) or a ‘non-contact offence’ (e.g., exposure, voyeurism)."

"the most serious cases that involve the criminal justice system, CPA involves sons"

Referral Data from Parents Seeking Help

Of the parents and carers who sought support for CPA, 11% of parents (n=236) had experienced harmful sexual behaviors (HSB) towards them from their child. Of these, 39% (n = 91) experienced it monthly, 33% (n = 77) experienced it weekly and 19% (n = 45) experienced it daily. Of these parents/carers, 96% were mothers and 4% were fathers. Of the children involved, 66% were male and 33% were female, with their age ranging from 5 to 31 years (the age range within the entire referral data was 2–41 years).

Parents and carers were asked to give examples in the free-form text of the sexualized behaviors they experiencedFootnote5. The examples given were diverse and many parents provided more than one example type, suggesting that an individual child may demonstrate a number of forms of HSB towards their parent. The examples were organized into the following behavioral categories:

Vocalized sexual behaviors – these could be sub-divided into:

1. Sexualized noises (e.g. ‘He will do sexualized sounds and phrases daily and do the actions of oral sex towards me’).
2. Non-directed sexualized comments (e.g. ‘Things like picking up a branch and saying it’s her stripper pole’).
3. Directed sexualized comments (e.g. ‘He tells me to go back to f**king my partner’).
4. Sexual threats (e.g. ‘If I’m arguing with him, he’s said things like “l’ll lick your pu*sy”’).

Physical sexual behaviors – these could be sub-divided into:

1. Contact sexual behaviors including touching, grabbing, thrusting (e.g. ‘Tries to touch or grab my boobs, kiss me on the lips, slap my bum, blows in my face, pulls out my hair tie, and this week he bit me hard on my boob’).
2. Non-contact sexual behaviors including voyeurism, exposure and open masturbation, (e.g. ‘Has exposed himself to [his Mum] and masturbated in front of her’).

Nudity in the home (e.g. ‘Will come out of the bathroom with nothing on apart from crop top and start drying her lower body and call for her Dad to come up before she has got clothes on’).

"The findings presented in this article suggest that HSB towards parents escalates over time and this raises some pertinent questions – for example, do the cases of HSB towards parents presented in this article, and the cases presented in the elder abuse literature (e.g., Ramsey-Klawsnik, 1991, 2003) represent two distinct populations? Does HSB towards parents just stop when the child reaches adulthood, or is there an unspoken history that spans right back to childhood in those ‘elder abuse’ statistics we read about? These are important questions that require urgent attention, particularly considering the emerging evidence (e.g., Close et al., 2024; Cuervo & Palanques, 2022) that suggests that adult-instigated CPA often starts in childhood."

Strengths and Limitations of the Research
A strength of this study is its purposive focus on parents who have experienced HSB from their children, and in its provision of rich insights into personal experiences that are rarely made public. This is supplemented by insights from practitioners to illuminate professional strategies and challenges when working with this problem, and an analysis of a major new dataset that details its wider contours.

However, the findings are limited by the small interview sample that focuses on mothers (and their sons) which may not reflect the experiences of other gender dyads, or with broader service populations outside of CPA.

Similarly, the referral data is from a single national organization which likely attracts families dealing with the most chronic cases of CPA.

Conversely, families whose offspring are experiencing significant psychiatric problems may already have other routes for support and may therefore be under-represented in the referral dataFootnote14.

For these reasons, the recommendations (and the findings on which they are based) should be viewed as preliminary and as a starting point for further research.

Future research should incorporate the voices of young people themselves, examine gender-specific experiences, and explore the perspectives of practitioners working across diverse service contexts such as mental health and education.

It should also tease out any significant differences that might be concealed within the broad category of ‘HSB’ – as highlighted in this study, HSB comprises a relatively heterogeneous set of behaviors, and the relationship between them needs to be carefully unpicked.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10896-026-01113-1

So 33% of the children who "sexually abused" their parents are female but none of them did anything that was so serious that the criminal justice system was involved and the examples include a girl who picked up a branch saying it’s her "stripper pole".

Whereas 66% of of the children who "sexually abused" their parents are male, including adult men who sexually assaulted or threatened to rape their mothers.

It is a very complicated piece of research that takes a lot of unpicking and I have not spent a lot of time on it.

For example, there are two sets of parents involved who were involved in two very different methodologies:

1. Referral Data from Parents Seeking Help
2. all parents and carers (n = 2083) who sought support from a UK-based support service for CPA during a one-year period (i.e. 2023).
3. 11% (n=236) had experienced harmful sexual behaviors (HSB) towards them from their child.
4. Interview Data Collection and Analysis
5. eight participants: three mothers and five practitioners from across England.

There are two cohorts studied within the Referral Data set:

• Harmful Sexual Behaviour (HSB) present
• Harmful Sexual Behaviour (HSB) absent

"analysis of the referral data revealed that – compared with the ‘HSB absent’ cohort – the ‘HSB present’ cohort was significantly over-represented by adoptive parents, child-aged offspring, children who have been exposed to domestic abuse and children who have experienced physical or emotional trauma. It also found that the ‘HSB present’ cohort was significantly over-represented by the co-presentation of physical abuse, property damage, coercive control and financial abuse."

Suffice to say, the Guardian has:

• cherry-picked and amplified the most extreme examples of of children (including adult men) abusing their parents (usually their mothers) and
• has given the misleading impression that 33% of cases of Child Parent Abuse (CPA) involve young girls sexually assaulting their mothers.

Thank you, @POWNewcastleEastWallsend . I'd stupidly missed the fact that the 33% statistic comes from the Amanda Holt research, not the PEGS survey. And the details you provide from this research do indeed confirm the suspicion that the guardian had, in effect, elided such a wide range of behaviours as to give the impression that girls were committing very serous sexual assaults at around 50% of the rate as which boys were - which is clearly highly unlikely, and not at all substantiated by the research.
A very poor quality summary from the guardian.

I think youve misunderstood.

1/3 of the mostly mothers who specifically reported sexual abuse from a child were referring to a daughter as the perpetrator.

The categorisation of sexual abuse was the same regardless of the sex of the child. Therefore, if you think it is too broad to be of use, then you should also dismiss the data referring to boys who sexually abuse a parent. They could have "only" flashed their mum, or whatever

Only 2 to 4% if sexual assaults are committed by female offenders. I would expect that to reflect in this scenario too. The fact that it doesn't makes me question the data/and or the motives. I suspect it more like 96% committed by those born male.

Isn’t there usually a man involved though? You rarely see reports of women abusing children on their own - they’re often under the control of an abusive male.

Do they give a breakfown by ethnicity? We have seen recently that some ‘cultures’ tolerated in the UK have appalling misogynistic views. G

I'm sceptical too about the numbers of girls. The report says that 96% of the victims are female (ie mothers). That seems credible. But it makes no sense that a full third of the sexual abusers are female.

We know that about 98% of sex offenders are male.

Are we really seeing a spate of girls sexually assaulting their mothers? Really? It stretches credulity.

I think if you ask the abused kids, they will often say their mum was abusive on her own and sought out men who share or complement her "interests".

I think people see sexual abuse as something people do to get sexual gratification and that is why they seem incredulous that a girl could do that. Sexual abuse is also to control and humiliate. When you see the criteria they set for sexual abuse, girls may do much of that just to emotionally torture their mothers.

I'm not surprised to hear high numbers of parents abused by children. I am surprised that it's sexual abuse.

What we know is that 2-4% of people convicted of sexual violations are female. It doesnt speak of how many women commit these crimes, how many are arrested, how many never make it past the police interview room, reception or CPS.

You got to think a lot of 14 year old boys are not aware that adult women who would have sex with them are paedophiles. Many more 14 year old girls understand that about adult men.

But we'll never know if they are female females or 'male females'.

It's still perfectly standard to call men 'she' as evidenced by reports as recently as this week (Heather Herbert). Even (or should I say especially) in journalism, crime stats, government and academia, all of which used to care about accuracy, this is still considered perfectly fine – and it was even more the case in 2021.

Every other statistic on sexual violence and sexual abuse at any point in time will point to a very heavy male skew, and an even higher tendency in trans identified males (male born people who identify as female).

Other studies by this organisation have separated transgender identity from male and female so there is no reason to think otherwise.

Agree. A five year old hitting a parent is not in the same universe as a 30 year old man assaulting his mother.

Yes, but not generally sexually abusive.

@Lexibletheflexible that doesn’t surprise me. I think of Eleanor Donaldson and her absolutely disgusting behaviour and the fact that it is so common that women do know children are being abused and are so emotionally and psychologically dependent that they do nothing, as well as the ones who would participate.

I do think though that sexual abuse is predominantly a male problem because the number of female prisoners is such a small percentage overall.