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.

I'm not buying this at all. I simply cannot conceive of a girl sexually assaulting her mother. It may have happened once or twice, but generally...just no!

Yes, women with new partners or boyfriends often collude/turn a blind eye with their new partner in the abuse of their own children, but I'd be highly surprised if a woman sexually abused her own child when not in this context.

Its not sexual assault, it is sexual abuse. They count some non-physical acts as abuse as shown by the study.

I think you may be thankfully naive to how sexual abuse takes place.

Unfortunately I agree. From spending time on abuse forums following my own experiences, mothers do abuse their own children sexually.

Still though the numbers are much, much lower than men who use sexual abuse as instant gratification, ritual humiliation, power, control and every kink out there that these men have tried to normalise but are actual mirrors of very sick psychologically damaged individuals.

The real shame is this stuff never really gets fully confronted because it is too uncomfortable to deal with.

One day the Guardian will run an article on kink shaming then the next day they run something like this.

This stuff is 2 sides of the same coin.

There are two reasons to think otherwise.

1. The identity-based statistical groupings they themselves list in this study (non-binary is not a sex, therefore this data is based on identity, therefore we have no way of knowing who identified as what).
2. The extreme unlikelihood that male and female patterns of criminality have suddenly and radically changed in this single area.

I think youre confusing rape with other forms of violence. And you think convictions are a good measure of incidence.

I think you have an agenda.

It would be important to differentiate sex from gender - otherwise the data is meaningless.

They did.

...ok
Says the person denying what the data tells them..

Although it mentions transgender, the sample demographics specifically refer to gender and not sex.

I am not engaging with lexibletheflexible as I do believe they have an agenda. What I do know is that statistics have become meaningless and I believe this is deliberate. Whether the report is classing women/girls as per biological sex or grouping different behaviours into one category for example inappropriate nakedness, masturbation not in a private place ( the scale of "offence" is different). Why would this particular group fall so far from usual male female sex based offender data?

I can well imagine a daughter making nasty comments about her mother's sexual attractiveness/or lack of...or similar such comments, but not actually physical - sexual assault

Very well put.

These things stay hidden because noone believes them. Who knows better than a girl how very hurtful and destroying sexual abuse and even sexual assault are. If they are of a mind to try and intimidate and humiliate their mother what better to chose knowing the impact it will have from first hand experience.

Thank you. These are important points- I knew about the increase in incestuous porn but I hadn't made the connection. That does sound very likely.

I don't think culture addressing it as theme is necessarily wrong : works like 'Tis Pity She's A Whore' or Tolkien's Children of Hurin historically explored it. But I agree GOT & others are using it for titillation and that's wrong. Generally pop culture examples now are siblings though. Sibling sexual abuse is underreported. so I expect this kind of stuff could be fuelling a rise in sibling abuse also.

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/law/article/revealed-the-hidden-crime-of-sibling-sexual-abuse-z05cf0l8r

I think that there are differernces though compared to "general" sexual assault which probably can account for some unusual numbers.

If we are picturing boys with social or emotional issues, isolated, accessing porn and other negative or even violent material in the home, there are girls who fit a similar profile.

And while girls may be less inclined to violence in general and sexual assault in particular, I do think that girls that are accessing that kind of material can be very affected and exhibit very unusual behaviours.

In fact I would say that in cases where we do see young women involved in violence, compared to boys they are often not alone. They are in gangs, or groups, that kind of cheer or bully or love-bomb each other on to these behaviours. One of the worst cases I've seen was local to me, where a small gang of girls harassed another girl relentlessly, then took her to an isolated area and tortured and beat her to death. I think it's very typical that this was some sort of group thing, it wasn't one girl operating alone.

I don't have too much difficulty to imagine socially isolated girls not only watching a lot of pornography (which seems to be rampant) butt also getting involved in toxic online communities. And I can see some of the sexualised behaviour, even assault, of a mother coming out of that.

I don't think it would be as common as boys, and maybe not 33% worth, but I can see it being more common than we might initially imagine.

I wouldn't say under control of so much as in league with.

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.

You are equating incidents of daughters uttering "hurty words" with sons exposing their genitals to their mothers. That is definitely a categorisation error IMHO.

I cited these examples from the research: note that only one example refers to a daughter, that this involves behaviour that is NOT directed at a parent and IMHO might be a stretch to even classify it as a "sexualised comment"

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’).

You seem to be suggesting that the two examples below are equivalent and you seek to minimise the male behaviour by referring to it as "'only' flashing":

Female: Vocalised sexual behaviour, "Things like picking up a branch and saying it’s her stripper pole"

Male: Physical sexual behaviour, Exposing his genitals to his mother for sexual gratification, ie. "flashing". (your example)

Obviously the sexual gratification could relate to shocking, upsetting or humiliating his mother.

We do not know the ages of either the son or the daughter, only that the age range of the sample is from 5 to 31. To make a fair contrast, we would have to imagine that both children are the same age.

If we imagine that they are both 5 years old then the daughter's behaviour still seems less sexualised and less offensive than the son's.

The contrast becomes clearer and clearer as we gradually increase their age.

(I apologise if this next sentence is upsetting for PP who have disclosed that they have been subjected to sexual abuse by their sons,)

This descent into the abyss ends with us having to imagine a 31 year old man deliberately exposing his genitals to his mother - as the most minimal behaviour you could suggest for a male.

Frankly, I do not buy the efforts you are making to persuade us that all research about male and female sexuality and patterns of sexual offending has got it totally wrong and that girls and women just as likely as men and boys to sexually assault, sexually abuse, sexually degrade and sexually humiliate their mothers.

Anecdotes about women you met in prison do not cut it. Citing under-reporting does not cut it. There is under-reporting across the board and there is such a huge gap between males and females in terms of reported incidents and convictions that posited "under-reporting" on the female side is never going to bridge the gap.

To go back to the original point: the category of behaviours is obviously too broad when we are trying to make sense of a very surprising ratio of male:female perps. When the range is from "hurty words" to rape then we need breakdown of numbers differentiated by sex across the range.

There is a big clue how that would pan out though: all the behaviour that reached the threshold of criminality was perpetrated by sons.

This reflects the fact that in every country for which records are available, males account for 99% of convictions for sexual offences. These range from non-contact offences to men exposing their genitals and voyeurism to rape.

Clare Dimyon has done a lot of work on the stats:

Sex Specific Stats
www.sexsegregation.org.uk/

Women are Human - articles by Clare Dimyon
www.womenarehuman.com/author/clare-dimyon/

@StrugglingTeenager Im really sorry to hear this. And it’s not easy to think about but if he’s close to (or over) 18 then you should apply for a social care assessment and get him moved to supported accommodation. Apart from respite for you he might begin to learn appropriate behaviour in a different setting. Also if something happens to you he’ll be cared for with a planned transition - rather than an unplanned emergency placement which is less likely to be successful.

sorry for the hijack

But how is this defined? Might be self-defined? Many parents refer to their trans child as the opposite sex rather than as trans (especially as many trans teenagers/young adults are very specific about how they should be described, on pain of total estrangement).
unfortunately, I’ve seen too many academic papers with wrong-sexed data to be convinced unless it was specifically covered in the methods section

Thanks@KnottyAuty.
We've not gone down that route yet, but yes, we may need to consider it so thanks for suggesting. Things have improved a lot lately and we are only having ~4% of the police callouts that we were 6 months ago, which is huge progress, and most of the abuse is now verbal rather than physical.

In our case, the awful behaviours are shown most with people with whom he feels really safe. I'm his safe person and preferred parent, as well as the one who does all the boundary-setting and 'disciplining' so I'm the one on the receiving end of the volatile emotions.

My son tells me he says the vile things he does during meltdowns because he is so angry that he feels he has to do anything he can to upset me. I can totally see girls feeling the same and engaging in verbal sexual abuse of parents in the same way.