4-14-2011 Indiana:
VALPARAISO | Deputy Prosecutor Cheryl Polarek said it is still unusual to see girls accused of carrying out the violent type of sexual offense that surfaced this week in Valparaiso.
What has become more common is for underage girls to unwittingly cast themselves in the role of perpetrator by sending out nude photos of themselves via their cell phones, said Polarek, who handles most of the sex crimes for the prosecutor's office.
Portage authorities reported Wednesday a 14-year-old girl and 15-year-old girl sent out nude photos of themselves to boys and everyone involved faces legal consequences.
Polarek said girls who put themselves in this type of situation are not considered victims, but rather face the potential of being charged along with those possessing the illegal images.
Each case is addressed according to its circumstances, yet the potential impact is the same.
"Once that image is taken and you send it, you have no control over where it goes," she said.
Much more unusual, she said, are the allegations this week a 16-year-old girl and 14-year-old girl from Valparaiso bound and sexually battered a 17-year-old boy, who has special needs.
Polarek said when females are accused of these types of offenses, they and their victims are handled the same as if a male is charged.
According to Porter County's sex offender registry online, just four of the 161 sex offenders registered as living in the county are females. ..Source.. Bob Karasda
April 14, 2011
Official: Female sex offenders not the norm
November 10, 2009
Pedophiles aren't always men
11-10-2009 Global:
by Mary Elizabeth Williams
The number of children reporting sex abuse by women has risen an astonishing 132 percent in the last five years
When we think about a child abuser, it’s usually just as easy to imagine a woman as a man – to envision a sadistic schoolmarm or the tormenting mother of “Precious.”
Yet when it comes to sexual abuse, the default assumption, regardless of the gender of the victim, is that the perpetrator is male. Now a new report by the British charity ChildLine is challenging that perception. The organization says that the number of children reporting sex abuse by women has risen an astonishing 132 percent in the last five years. And two-thirds of those complaints were against the children’s mothers.
What’s behind the apparent sudden spike? ChildlLine noted that sex abuse reports overall are on the rise, and that “more boys are calling than previously.” Last year the agency handled 16,094 reports of sex abuse, over 2,000 of which were directed at women. Those stats, though alarming, can actually be interpreted as an encouraging sign – that children are becoming better equipped to advocate for themselves and that the horrible stigma surrounding molestation is being eroded. Nevertheless, headlines this morning in Australia screamed that “Sex attacks by women on children soar” and Britain’s Channel 4 reported that “Child sex abuse by women 'has doubled'" and accompanied the story with an ominous hoto of a woman holding a pink-clad child’s hand.
Though the reporting of molestation remains distinct from the perpetration of it, the ChildLine report is yet another sadly illuminating story in a year of bombshell revelations. Earlier this year, Britons were stunned when daycare worker Vanessa George was arrested for sex abuse and child pornography. George, a mother of two, has admitted molesting children in her care, some barely a year old, and taking “hundreds” of “indecent” photographs of them. And when Tyler Perry wrote candidly on his blog last month of his own childhood sex abuse, he told of both a male neighbor and the mother of a friend. "She put the key inside of herself and told me to come get it, pulling me on top of her."
Sex abuse claims directed at men still far outnumber those aimed at women. A 2007 United States Department of Justice report noted that females are responsible for less than 10% of sex crimes and less than 1% of all forcible rape arrests. They also have a different modus operandi than male offenders -- including a higher likelihood of committing their crimes in caregiving situations and in concert with a male partner. But the uniqueness of female perpetrators can make it harder for victims, particularly boys, to come forward. The DOJ report noted “sexist beliefs that depict males as controlling all sexual encounters and females as passive and submissive recipients… Misperceptions exist about the ‘ability’ of women to sexually victimize males.” And the jokey cliche of a boy seduced an older woman muddles the seriousness of the crime.
The new information is a potent reminder that pedophilia doesn’t neatly confine itself to one gender, and that you don’t need a penis to be a rapist. As Dr. Lisa Bunting, a senior researcher at the UK National Society for the Protection of Children told the BBC today, "If you don't think females are capable of committing sex offences, then you are never going to be looking for that." ..Source..
November 6, 2009
TX- Female Sex Offenders Increasing
11-6-2009 Texas:
More Victims Reporting Women To Police
SAN ANTONIO -- They could be anyone you know -- sisters, aunts, cousins and teachers. But their sexual crimes are far from harmless and now the number of female sex offenders in Bexar County is growing.
"There is a sense to downplay a bit, not seeing it as being serious," said Cynthia Gentry, an associate professor who specializes in criminology. at Trinity University
According to Gentry, when it comes to young victims of a female predator, society is shocked and outraged, but when it's a teenager being sexually abused, society tends to look the other way.
"In their particular circle, in this culture, it might be considered a plus," Gentry said.
Sex abuse cases by women are rarely reported and when they are, cases like Mary Letourneau, an elementary school teacher caught having sex with a twelve year old boy, the attention is almost celebrity status.
But according to Dr. Gentry, a victim is a victim.
On the state's registered sex offender Web site, you would think all predators are men, but there are also plenty of female sex offenders on the list and according to authorities, that number is on the rise.
Based on numbers provided by the Bexar County Sheriff's Office, there are 4,700 registered female sex offenders in the county and according to authorities, the number has doubled, maybe even tripled what it was just a few years ago.
"That's the reaction I get, 'Never knew they had female offenders,'" said Deputy Armando Diaz of the Bexar County Sheriff's Sex Offender Registration Unit.
Diaz has been with the sheriff's sex offender office for nearly 10 years.
Diaz has noticed a jump in the number of registered female sex offenders in Bexar County from a few names on the list to a couple of pages full of women who are registered sex offenders.
Earlier in the month, 67 sex offenders were rounded up by various law enforcement agencies. Among those picked up was Irene Tejerina, a sex offender who failed to properly registered with the state.
Diaz believes tips have everything to do with the rise in the number of cases.
"Families are contacting the authorities to report the abuse, not the youngsters," Diaz said.
Gentry said victims of a sex crime are just that. A victim and female predators, most times, are very troubled.
"People tell me, 'Females do it.' I didn't think so, but now I know," said Mary, a young woman who was sexually attacked by a female.
"I was paralyzed down, paralyzed from my legs. It changed everything, it changed my life," Mary said.
Mary is still undergoing therapy and continues to use a cane to help her walk, but she hopes more victims will come forward to report the sexual abuse.
"It's a serious crime and that needs serious attention," she said. ..Source.. by Rosenda Rios, KSAT 12 News Reporter
October 14, 2009
AR- One Protection for Prisoners
10-14-2009 Arkansas:
The practice of keeping female prisoners in shackles while they give birth is barbaric. But it remains legal in more than 40 states, and advocates of prisoners’ rights say it is all too common. A federal appeals court has now found that the shackling of an Arkansas inmate may have violated the Constitution — but the margin was uncomfortably close.
Shawanna Nelson, a nonviolent offender, was 29 years old and six months pregnant when she arrived in Arkansas’s McPherson Unit prison in 2003. When she went into labor, she was taken to a civilian hospital. Although there was no reason to consider her a flight risk, her legs were shackled to a wheelchair, and then, while she went through labor, to the sides of a hospital bed.
Ms. Nelson testified that the shackles prevented her from moving her legs, stretching or changing positions during the most painful part of her labor. She offered evidence that the shackling had caused a permanent hip injury, torn stomach muscles, an umbilical hernia that required an operation and extreme mental anguish.
In a suit against prison officials, Ms. Nelson charged that her Eighth Amendment right to be free of cruel and unusual punishment had been violated. She won an early ruling from the trial court, but a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit rejected her suit. Now the full appeals court has reversed that decision, ruling, with a 6-to-5 vote, that a jury could find that Ms. Nelson’s shackling was unconstitutional. The court relied in part on a 2002 Supreme Court holding that Alabama’s practice of tying prisoners to a hitching post violated the Eighth Amendment.
The ruling should help persuade other courts and state legislatures that the shackling of pregnant prisoners is unconstitutional. Several states have already made the practice illegal under certain circumstances — including New York, which did so this year.
Elizabeth Alexander, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s prison project, called the circuit court’s ruling “thrilling,” given how conservative the federal courts have been on prison issues. It is clearly an important victory. Sadly, it is also a sign of how low the bar has been set for the humane treatment of prisoners. ..Source.. by NY Times Editorial
October 4, 2009
When the face of evil is female
10-4-2009 Scotland:
THE conviction of paedophile nursery worker Vanessa George has forced us to confront the unpalatable truth that women can be sex abusers too
AS NURSERY worker Vanessa George pleaded guilty to chilling sexual offences last week one thing was clear: she had already carved herself an ignominious place in the annals of criminal history.
Details of the abuse the 39-year-old perpetrated on the children in her care unleashed fury reserved for only a handful of offenders in a generation. Not only did she commit acts too lewd and distressing to describe on children too young to complain, she shared those images with two other paedophiles – Colin Blanchard and Angela Allen – who she met through the internet. Hours after her court appearance, more than 100 Facebook groups were calling for George to get life or be hanged, while one devastated father said she should be "skinned and rolled in salt".
Like Myra Hindley and Rosemary West, she defied society's perception of what it means to be a woman, swapping the role of protector and nurturer for that of exploiter. Unlike many female sex offenders, however, she does not appear to have been coerced by a male partner, but to have acted alone to gratify her own deviant urges. Although her twisted relationship with her accomplices may have driven her on, there was no suggestion she was anything less than enthusiastic about their informal competition to engage in ever-more sordid abuse.
Through her actions, George has forced a shameful secret out in the open – that women can be sex offenders too. The evidence has been mounting for some time. In the past few years there has been a rash of female teachers convicted of having sex with underage pupils, most recently trumpet player Helen Goddard, who had a lesbian affair with a 15-year-old protégé.
In 2007, Caroline Dunsmore was jailed for 12 years for raping – and allowing others in Scotland's "worst ever paedophile ring" to rape – her own daughter. On the other side of the Atlantic, Charlotte Mae Thrailkill has been detained indefinitely in a maximum security mental hospital for violently abusing dozens of children with her partner Daryl Ball. And then there is Nancy Garrido, who is accused of the kidnap and rape of Jaycee Lee Dugard, the schoolgirl snatched from outside her Californian home 18 years ago.
So what is the true scale of this problem? Why have we been so reluctant to confront it? And will the Vanessa George case make it easier for victims to come forward?
When Michele Elliott – co-founder of the organisation Kidscape – published her book The Female Sexual Abuse Of Children: The Last Taboo in 1992, she was deluged by hate mail from feminists who saw it as an attempt to detract from the real problem: the abuse of power by men. If it was difficult for her to get the issue taken seriously, how much more of a challenge has it been for the victims?
Where a mother has sexually abused her own child – passing the abuse off as a display of love – the victim may be swamped by conflicting feelings of anger, shame and lingering affection. It can be difficult enough for them to accept that someone who was supposed to care for them could treat them so badly, without having to convince other people.
Many victims who have come forward, albeit anonymously, tell terrible stories of how they sought help and were dismissed as deluded and disturbed. One woman, whose mother abused her throughout her childhood, finally plucked up the courage to go to her GP when she became pregnant at the age of 30 because she was scared of how it might affect her unborn child. Turned away as a neurotic first mother, she failed to bond with her daughter, who went on to have mental problems of her own.
A man – again the victim of abuse by his mother – was told by his doctor that women don't do that sort of thing and he was obviously indulging in his own sexual fantasy. He was told to get therapy to deal with that.
"There is evidence that it is particularly difficult for men or boys who have been abused by a woman to talk about it and then you have to put that in the context of how difficult it is to talk about any kind of abuse," says Claude Knights, director of Kidscape.
Research into the phenomenon has been so limited up till now that it is impossible to be sure what percentage of child sex abuse is carried out by women. "If you look at the statistics for convictions, the proportion of female sex offenders is around 1-2 per cent, but if you look at victim studies it comes out closer to 15 per cent," says Donald Findlater, director of research and development at the Lucy Faithfull Foundation, the only UK charity with a remit for the treatment of female abusers.
Among convicted sex offenders who were abused as children, though, the percentage seems to be much higher. A Canadian study found 33 per cent of incest offenders had been sexually abused by women; another that 59 per cent of rapists and violent sexual offenders had been sexually assaulted by a female.
Women are most likely to target family members – particularly if they are involved in same-gender abuse – or other children they care for. But contrary to public perception they are not less likely to engage in invasive assaults, being, if anything, more likely than a man to use an object for penetration.
"I would say a substantial proportion of women sex offenders who abuse do so because they are under pressure from a male partner or parent," says Mr Findlater, who is also director of Stop It Now!, a helpline which takes calls from those concerned about someone else's behaviour or their own predilections.
"But others – and I would say they are in the majority – do it because of their own sexual interest. Most of these women – a larger proportion even than the men – will have suffered abuse themselves and will need to be taken back to their childhood before they can learn to develop more appropriate ways of behaving."
The plight of the victims is not helped by the double standards society still displays towards those female sex offenders who do come to public attention. Depending on the circumstances, we seem to veer between viewing them as monstrous aberrations (who attract even longer prison sentences than their male counterparts), or a gift to sex-hungry teenagers.
The latter is especially true in cases involving classroom relationships. Male teachers who prey on female pupils are more likely to be seen as lecherous old men, while female teachers who prey on male pupils are Mrs Robinson figures inducting their partners into the ways of sex. When 30-year-old Texan teacher Lauren Cosgrove faced court over a sexual relationship with a 13-year-old boy she was babysitting earlier this year, her defence lawyer – a woman – argued that if she was given probation, she would not be a risk, and that the boy had enjoyed the attentions of an older woman and was not traumatised. "It's different with boys and girls," the lawyer said. "I don't believe he's going to be scarred for life."
Our prejudices about the differences between male and female sexuality are so entrenched they make us less likely to suspect women of deviance even when it is staring us in the face. Paul Federoff, a Canadian forensic psychiatrist, illustrated this point by telling the story of how he counselled an exhibitionist, who opened her living room curtains and stripped off her clothes when people were passing by. Federoff told her that unless she stopped she would be in trouble with the police. "Doctor, if someone calls up and says he saw me disrobing in the window," she replied, "Who do you think they are going to arrest?"
Experts insist it is important we confront such misconceptions because technology seems to be driving a rise in female sex offending, with websites celebrating female paedophilia on the increase. On one site, Butterfly Kisses, women discuss their erotic attraction to young girls.
"The net is a conduit for meeting like-minded people," says Mr Knights. "If you lived in a remote town and were that way inclined, the chances of meeting someone similar in the street would be small, and even if you did, meeting up on a regular basis would be a risk. With the net you just need to know the right keywords to type in and you will find someone. The net is also a disinhibitor. It allows people to admit their inclinations much more readily, to the extent in the Vanessa George case all three quickly became locked into a kind of competition."
Not long before the Little Ted Nursery scandal broke, Katie Scott and her partner Christopher Oxtoby, from Hertfordshire, were jailed after they sent footage of her sexually abusing a baby to a US paedophile. Clinical trials manager for a pharmaceutical company Monica McCanch and her lover Archibald Wood used the internet to set up a meeting with a fellow chatroom paedophile who provided a 12-year-old girl and 13-year-old boy for them to abuse.
"The net opens up all sorts of temptations which might never have crossed people's minds before," says Mr Findlater who believes while men will use it to swap images, women are more likely to use it to set up face-to-face meetings.
But the net also provides new ways of catching paedophiles. Vanessa George thought she was clever, photographing only the torsos of the children she abused so they could not be identified. But a sharp-eyed officer spotted part of the Little Ted logo on one of the images and traced her.
"Society has been in denial over this issue for a long time, but if there is one positive to come out of this case it is that Joe Public will look at Vanessa George and realise what women are capable of," says Mr Knights. "In the wake of the publicity, support organisations will be getting lots of calls from survivors of female abuse who have finally given themselves permission to speak." ..Source.. by Dani Garavelli
September 11, 2009
FL- Only one woman confined in Florida under Jimmy Ryce Act
"A child sex abuser can be taught not to do it again, just like an alcoholic is taught not to drink even if they still have urges," he said. "Sex-offender treatment is very effective, if done correctly." See very last sentence of article!
9-11-2009 Florida:
Nearly 700 men held; law allows sexual predators to still be held after their prison terms are up
Nearly 700 Florida men are held in a secure facility, classified as sexually violent predators, despite having completed their prison terms. Just one woman is held in the same situation.
Florida's Jimmy Ryce Act allows for the indefinite civil commitment of sex offenders after they have served their time behind bars. The 1998 law is named for a 9-year-old Miami-Dade boy kidnapped, raped and murdered by a handyman -- 14 years ago on Friday.
A jury convicted his killer, Juan Carlos Chavez, the same year the Legislature signed the Jimmy Ryce Act into law. As a result, Florida sex offenders are spending more time behind bars than ever before.
Judy K. Taylor of Ocala holds the distinction of being Florida's lone woman committed involuntarily and indefinitely to a psychiatric facility, after completing her four-year prison term for having sex with underage boys ranging in age from 13 to 16.
"Men typically abuse because they are sexually aroused by children Ĵ and women typically abuse because they are trying to get emotional needs met," according to Fort Lauderdale forensic psychologist Amy Swan, chairwoman of the Florida Board of Psychology and an evaluator for DCF.
The 45-year-old Taylor is one of just four women nationwide held under sex-offender civil-commitment laws, according to data from the Sex Offender Civil Commitment Programs Network.
The laws, whose constitutionality has been challenged and upheld by the United States Supreme Court, allow the 20 states which have them to hold sex offenders determined by a court as likely to engage in future acts of sexual violence.
As of August 2008, the most recent data available, just more than 3,600 men across the country were civilly committed. One woman each from Illinois, Florida, Minnesota and Washington were held under the same laws.
When the prison term of someone who has committed a sexually motivated crime is nearing completion, DCF reviews the case file. Mental health professionals do face-to-face interviews with about 10 percent of those prisoners and approximately 4 percent of them get recommended to state attorneys for civil commitment, according to Dr. Suzonne„© Kline, director of DCF's Sexually Violent Predator Program.
Only about 1 percent actually gets committed, which requires the offender to be declared a sexually violent predator likely to reoffend. This is done at a civil jury trial -- as in Taylor's case -- or by the offender voluntarily entering into an agreement with the state.
In the10 years since Florida began civilly committing sex offenders, the Department of Children & Families has reviewed more than 35,000 cases, only 435 of which have been women.
Men are housed in a secure facility in Arcadia, which is quickly nearing its 720-person capacity. Taylor is held in a Miami psychiatric facility, where she's separated from the other residents.
Since the commitment is civil in nature, treatment is voluntary. The Arcadia facility has dorms filled with men who are forced to live there but refuse treatment.
DCF would not permit the evaluating psychologist to discuss Taylor's case, but Swan is familiar with the case and said that Taylor has been diagnosed with pedophilia. Taylor also has "significant mental health issues," a common theme with women sex offenders, Swan said.
Scientific literature indicates a "best-guess estimate" that 4 percent of women sexually touch children, compared with 7 percent of men, according to Markus„© Wiegel, an Atlanta psychologist specializing in female sex offender research. Collecting data on women offenders is challenging, he said, because so little research exists.
Whether more women will be snared under civil commitment laws is the subject of debate, though prosecutors and mental-health professionals agree that the number of women likely will increase, though probably not in great numbers.
"I don't think it's an anomaly that there's one woman, but I don't see the numbers growing significantly," said Kristin Kanner, Broward County's Jimmy Ryce prosecutor.
With women only recently -- in the past 10 years or so -- being more aggressively prosecuted for sex crimes, the civil-commitment numbers may begin to increase as their prison sentences near completion, according to Barbara Burns, who prosecutes Palm Beach County's Jimmy Ryce cases.
Sex offenders are a heterogenous group, but there are some general differences between men and women who abuse children.
About half of women who commit sex crimes have had a psychiatric hospitalization and have a history of taking psychotropic medications, she said. Forty percent of sexual abuse perpetrated by women occurs in a day care setting.
Complicating the research is that boys abused by women are far less likely to report it "since our society still views it for a boy as scoring," Swan said.
More than half the time, women abuse children with a man, who will have coerced the woman into participating, according to Wiegel.
There is not enough research to reliably estimate the recidivism -- or reoffending -- rate for women, but it's believed that they reoffend less often than men, perhaps as little as 1 percent, according to some experts. And while much debate exists about whether sex offenders can ever be cured, Wiegel, says they can, indeed, rejoin society.
"A child sex abuser can be taught not to do it again, just like an alcoholic is taught not to drink even if they still have urges," he said. "Sex-offender treatment is very effective, if done correctly." ..Source.. by Missy Diaz South Florida Sun-Sentinel
September 6, 2009
Women's role in sex crimes resurfaces as issue
9-6-2009 National:
Charlene Williams of Sacramento lured six teenage girls and four young adults to their deaths as her husband demanded the perfect "sex slave."
Michelle Lyn Michaud, also of Sacramento, customized curling irons to help her boyfriend torture and murder a 22-year-old student abducted from a Pleasanton street.
In Utah, Wanda Eileen Barzee was accused of helping her husband kidnap 14-year old Elizabeth Smart at knifepoint from her Salt Lake City bedroom so that he could secure another "wife."
Now along comes Nancy Garrido of the Bay Area. Like the others, Garrido is accused of teaming up with a male partner — in Garrido's case, her husband of nearly three decades — and allegedly committing unthinkable crimes against other women and children.
The arrests Aug. 27 of Nancy and Phillip Garrido revealed a stunning story about the 1991 kidnapping of 11-year-old Jaycee Lee Dugard, snatched off the street near her home in Meyers. Authorities say Jaycee, now 29, had been living for 18 years in the Garridos' backyard near Antioch and is the mother of two children fathered by Phillip Garrido.
While attention focuses on Phillip Garrido's history of sexual assault, his reduced prison term and evasion of parole oversight, the case also raises haunting questions about what role his wife may have played.
Was 54-year-old Nancy Garrido a full-fledged accomplice and co-conspirator, who willingly participated in the crimes?
Was she a victim herself, a woman brainwashed or beaten into submission? Or was she something in between?
"Obviously, this is not normal behavior, unless she's a total sociopath," said Linda Barnard, a Sacramento marriage and family therapist and an expert in so-called "intimate partner battering."
"There's something going on here that will come out," Barnard said.
Accused seen as victims
Barnard has testified in numerous criminal trials in which defense attorneys have sought to minimize their clients' guilt by portraying them as victims, too. In crimes involving male-female partners, she explained, the dominant one often gains power and control by isolating and threatening the other.
Little is known publicly about the middle-aged woman recently seen in court with graying hair and oversized eyeglasses. Phillip Garrido's brother has said Nancy Garrido was "a robot" under her husband's control, and she would "do anything he asked."
She had been certified as a nursing assistant in the state of California from March 1989 until July 1995, when she did not renew her certification, according to a spokesman for the California Department of Public Health. She met her husband-to-be while he was serving a 50-year federal prison term in Leavenworth, Kan., for the 1976 abduction and rape of a Tahoe-area woman.
But Phillip Garrido was out of custody by August 1988, and the two no longer were separated by prison walls.
Jaycee Lee Dugard disappeared on June 10, 1991.
Barnard said sex crimes involving collusion by women are rare and tend to appear in cult-type cases. In 2006, for instance, two Texas women stood accused in Sacramento federal court of molesting their own children under the guise of religious ritual. Earlier this year, cult leader Allen Harrod of Folsom was convicted in that case. One of the women received a 14-year sentence.
Phillip Garrido kept his own religious-themed blog, in which the most recent post announced that "the Creator has given me the ability to speak in the tongue of angels "
Sympathetic jurors unlikely
Whatever Nancy Garrido's story turns out to be, she will not get much sympathy from prospective jurors or the public, Barnard said.
"Even if he brutalized her from day one, she's still not going to get any sympathy, because she's an adult," the therapist said. "And when an adult does not do something to intervene and take care of a child — and it's an adult woman — juries have no sympathy."
Nancy Garrido's court-appointed attorney, Gilbert Maines of Placerville, did not return phone calls from The Bee. But in an interview last week with NBC's "Today" show, Maines said his client "seems to be a little lost." The attorney said he would "pursue every avenue that was available," and that he planned to have his client evaluated to assess her state of mind.
Authorities say Nancy Garrido may have been the one who actually grabbed Jaycee while she headed for her school bus stop near South Lake Tahoe. A drawing of the female suspect seen driving away with the girl resembles photographs of the woman now in custody in El Dorado County.
Her attorney, who said in his televised interview that he had seen his client once, described her as "distraught" and "scared." Both of the Garridos face numerous felony counts that could send them to prison for life. They have pleaded not guilty.
"The question now is, is the prosecution thinking of making a deal?" asked criminal law expert Bennett Gershman, a law professor and former special state prosecutor in New York.
Partners' testimony sought
Gershman said in similar cases , prosecutors often have pressured the wife or girlfriend to testify in exchange for more lenient treatment.
In the courtroom, the outcomes for these women have been mixed.
Charlene Williams of Sacramento was released from prison in 1997 while her serial killer husband, Gerald Gallego, died of cancer in 2002 at a prison hospital in Nevada. Gallego had been sentenced to death after Williams agreed to tell prosecutors the details of their murder spree between 1978 and 1980, which left 10 people dead.
Williams admitted she had trolled for "sex-slave" victims for her husband, luring four of the teenage victims from Sacramento-area malls.
Michelle Lyn Michaud, also of Sacramento, was sentenced to death for her role in the 1997 kidnap, rape and murder of a 22-year-old student. During the trial, defense attorneys portrayed Michaud as a battered woman who would do anything to please her boyfriend, James Daveggio, who also was sentenced to death.
Ironically, Michaud and Daveggio also trolled the Tahoe area and came under scrutiny for Jaycee's kidnapping.
The Utah woman charged along with her husband in the 2002 kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart was found incompetent to stand trial and has been forced to take medication. Last week, a judge set a November date for the competency hearing of Barzee's estranged husband, Brian David Mitchell.
A 'Deal With the Devil'
One noted criminologist said he believes that some female offenders actually have benefited by the persistent notion that women could not possibly be the leaders — especially in a sex crime.
"The court typically throws the book at the man, believing that he was the instigator — that he initiated the attack. So he'll get the death penalty," said Jack Levin, a professor of sociology and criminology at Northeastern University in Boston.
"His female companion is considered an accomplice who went along for the love of her man. She gets a much lighter sentence."
That view is not always accurate, said Levin, an expert in serial murder and hate crimes.
In one case in Canada, he said, a woman caught up in a rape and murder case involving teenage victims testified against her husband in exchange for leniency.
In a move decried in Canada as the "Deal With the Devil," Karla Homolka got a 12-year sentence in 1993 for manslaughter in the murders of two Ontario teens.
Motivations vary widely
She is now believed to be living in Paris, Levin said. Her former husband, Paul Bernardo, was sentenced to life in prison in Canada, which does not have the death penalty.
But after the deal was struck, Levin said, videotapes showing the rape and torture of the schoolgirls revealed Karla Homolka was a willing participant.
"She was seen enjoying herself and participating fully," he said. "Karla Homolka was just as guilty as her husband."
But women in these types of cases can also fall into the category of being so passive they "just go along with the plan," said David Finkelhor, director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire.
He said besides women who are battered or psychologically controlled, some are simply "low-functioning" and dependent on their mates.
"It's not like there's a single profile," he said.
Law professor Gershman said he believes the case against Nancy Garrido ultimately will hinge on the skills of the courtroom attorneys — and the portraits they draw of this woman, who met and married a convicted sex offender.
"It could all come down to a battle of the experts," he said. ..Source.. by Sacramento Bee
September 5, 2009
PA- Pennsylvania Woman Raped, Burned Man, Police Say
9-5-2009 Pennsylvania:
WASHINGTON, Pa. — Police say a southwestern Pennsylvania woman raped a man and burned him with a curling iron to get him to comply.
Police say the 22-year-old man knows his alleged attacker, 23-year-old Samantha Harvey, of Washington, Pa.
Online court records don't list an attorney for Harvey who is jailed because the new charges violate her probation on theft and threat charges for stealing money from her grandmother in 2006.
Police charged Harvey Tuesday after investigating the man's claim that she forced him to have sex at his home on Aug. 20. The man told police Harvey clipped the hot curling iron to his ear and burned his genitals with it.
Harvey is also charged with involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, terroristic threats and reckless endangerment. ..Source.. by Fox News
June 1, 2009
FL- Florida Epidemic: Teachers Sleeping with Students
6-1-2009 Florida:
If you're the parent of a teen-aged boy in Florida, you probably muttered "not again" while reading your morning newspaper this week. There on the front page was yet another case of an adult female teacher being arrested for admitting to having had sex with an underage male student. This time the alleged perp was Maria Guzman Hernandez, a 32-year-old instructor at the private Our Lady of Charity school in Hialeah; her victim was 15. But she just as well could have been the 34-year-old Jacksonville public-school science teacher arrested last month for allegedly having sex with a 14-year-old student, once in her SUV; or the 32-year-old St. Petersburg teacher collared in March for allegedly "sexting" nude pictures of herself to an 8th-grade boy; or the 45-year-old teacher at a private Christian academy in South Daytona arrested days before for allegedly having sex with a boy from her class in various Daytona Beach hotels.
Other female teachers in Florida have been booked for the same crime this year — and scores of others have also been arrested or disciplined in the past few years for sexual misconduct with students, according to a recent investigation by the Orlando Sentinel, which noted the problem is rising in the state "among female educators in particular." Florida, of course, is hardly the only state where female teachers have been nabbed for preying on boys. And nationwide, male teachers still commit far more sexual misconduct than females. A 2004 Education Department study found that about 10% of the nation's 50 million public-school students had experienced some kind of improper sexual attention from teachers and other school employees; and a 2007 Associated Press report indicated that men were involved almost 90% of the time. What's more, even in Florida those offenders are a small fraction of the state's more than 200,000 public and private school teachers. (View the Top 10 Crime Stories of 2008.)
But parents and prosecutors alike are nonetheless asking why the female version of pedagogue perversion seems more common on their peninsula compared to other places. "It certainly seems more prevalent, although we can't say for sure if it's worse than other large states," says Michael Sinacore, the Hillsborough County assistant state attorney who, in 2005, prosecuted one of Florida's most high-profile cases, that of Tampa middle-school teacher Debra Lafave, a blond siren who pleaded guilty to lewd and lascivious behavior after being charged with having sex with a 14-year-old boy. (In a controversial decision, a judge did not make her serve prison time.) "None of us can really say why at this point."
Whatever the reason, the crime appears to be getting more cavalier in the Sunshine State. According to police in Hialeah, a mostly Cuban-American enclave adjoining Miami, Hernandez had been having sex with the 15-year-old boy since March, often right in the apartment he shared with his mother (who herself is now under investigation for allowing the abuse to occur).
After the principal at Our Lady of Charity (a private Catholic school that is not formally affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church) began hearing of the illicit relationship last week, she reported it to the state's Department of Children and Family Services. Police questioned Hernandez last weekend — after she returned from a trip to Disney World with the boy — and she made a taped confession, they say. She was charged with sexual battery on a minor, akin to statutory rape, but has not yet been arraigned.
One theory for the growing number of cases like these, says Sinacore, is what he calls "the more relaxed if not blurred boundary lines between teachers and students as teachers try to communicate with kids in this day and age." Those kids, as the media have often reported recently, are far less shy about innocent physical contact, like hugging, than their parents were as teens. That can be exploited by any male pervert overseeing a classroom. But it can also embolden predatory female teachers, who experts say are often in emotionally needy states. "The trend with female offenders, more than males, is that they have emotional turmoil going on in their lives," says Sinacore.
Lafave's pregnant sister, for example, had been killed by a drunk driver before she began hitting on a student; Hernandez is estranged from her husband. Such problems certainly aren't excuses for pedophilia; but they can compel women like Lafave to seek out emotional comfort — or a feeling of control that they might not experience in relationships with adult men. (Read about the notorious Mary K. Letourneau teacher-student affair case.)
It doesn't help that society already brings a double standard to these cases, the notion that somehow it isn't as harmful for a boy to be seduced by a woman as it is for a girl to have sex with a man. In fact, it's not uncommon in the wake of news like Hernandez's arrest to hear morning radio jocks in Florida declare congratulatory high-fives for the boys.
"This isn't an 'affair,' it's abuse, and we have to shift that paradigm," says Terri Miller, president of Stop Educator Sexual Abuse, Misconduct and Exploitation (SESAME) in Nevada. "We say, 'Bully for the boy and his conquest of the geometry teacher,' but that makes it harder for boys to vocalize their victimization." Indeed, studies by psychologists like Julie Hislop, author of the 2001 book Female Sex Offenders: What Therapists, Law Enforcement and Child Protective Services Need to Know, note that boys who are sexually abused by women often develop alcoholism, depression and their own sexual dysfunctions, including rape, as men.
But why should Florida seem to be experiencing an especially high number of such cases? Are those women, and for that matter the hormonally charged boys they target, somehow egged on by the state's more sexually relaxed atmosphere, with its sultry climate and scantily clad beach culture? (California also has a high rate of teacher sexual misconduct.) Or are Floridians simply reporting more cases like Hernandez's? It is a crime in Florida, as in most states, not to; but perhaps the tabloid publicity of the Lafave case has prodded Sunshine State denizens to be more vigilant, to no longer be in denial about cases like these or take them so lightly.
And yet paradoxically, says Sinacore, it might also be engendering more cases. As potential female predators see more and more headlines about teachers like themselves bedding boys, it can seem more acceptable behavior in their eyes — especially when they see that offenders like Lafave get relatively light sentences. (That might be changing, however: a Florida judge recently slapped a two-year prison term on a 28-year-old female teacher in Pensacola convicted of unlawful sexual activity with a 15-year-old male student.)
Activists like Miller are calling for stricter hiring processes for teachers — the kind of psychological and polygraph testing, for example, that police are subject to — and they complain that school boards and teachers unions have blocked legislative efforts to more effectively ferret out potential or actual abusers. But Mark Pudlow, spokesman for the Florida Teachers Association, the state's major teachers union, insists the group is doing its part to attack the problem and raise teacher awareness. At the same time, he points out, unions also have an obligation to help teachers who are themselves victims of bogus accusations, also a problem. "There needs to be an understanding," says Pudlow, "that even when a false accusation hits the newspapers, it can ruin a teaching career."
True enough. But for the moment, Florida seems more concerned with the growing number of valid complaints. (Jacksonville alone saw two female teachers arrested last month.) So it's no surprise that a Florida congressman, U.S. Representative Adam Putnam, recently co-introduced a bill, the Student Protection Act, to set up a scholastic version of the national sex offender database and prevent teachers like Lafave from getting classroom jobs in other districts or states. Whether or not the legislation passes, it's a sign of the emotional turmoil that women like her have wrought in their communities. ..Source.. by Tim Padgett / Miami
NY- Therapists: Tough to spot women who abuse their pupils
6-1-2009 New York:
She might be lonely and have trouble forming adult relationships. She might believe she has fallen in love. And she could be difficult to spot.
In the wake of accusations last week that a West Babylon woman who taught middle school in Queens had a sexual relationship with a student, experts said limited research makes it tough to pin down a profile for female teachers who have sex with students. But, they said, they sometimes display similar characteristics.
In interviews last week, sex abuse experts discussed such cases in general, but none have studied in detail the case of Melissa Weber, 27, the local teacher who pleaded not guilty Friday and remained jailed Saturday.
Female sexual abusers "tend to be emotionally stunted," said Charol Shakeshaft, a former Hofstra professor of educational leadership who is now at Virginia Commonwealth University.
"They've stopped growing emotionally" past their middle school years, she said.
Using tactics like lying, isolation and manipulation, sexual abusers in schools trap students, particularly vulnerable ones who are grateful for attention, according to a 2004 study written by Shakeshaft commissioned by the Department of Education.
Sex abusers in schools can be difficult to spot, said Terri Miller of the national group Stop Educator Sexual Abuse, Misconduct and Exploitation. "They will groom a community just as well as they groom a victim," she said.
Indeed, many teachers who abuse students are "those most celebrated in their profession," Shakeshaft's study showed.
Typically, a female teacher who engages in a sexual relationship with a student had been relatively mentally healthy, but perhaps had trouble with boundaries, said Stephen L. Braveman, a sex therapist in Monterey, Calif. She may rationalize the abuse: " 'It must be OK. This is really love,' " he said.
The "naive experimenter" doesn't fully understand what she's doing is wrong, Braveman said, while the "undersocialized" abuser might have difficulty with adult relationships.
"This teacher does not necessarily hang out in the teacher's lounge," he said.
Women sex offenders tend to have a history of sexual trauma, said Julia Hislop, a licensed clinical psychologist in Norfolk, Va., and author of "Female Sex Offenders."
In contrast with male perpetrators, female sex offenders "don't seem to have a specific sexual fixation just on children," she said. And there is evidence that women who commit sexual offenses rarely do so with strangers, she said. ..Source.. by CHRISTINA HERNANDEZ
April 20, 2009
What compels female molesters remains largely a mystery
4-20-2009 National:
Women have been arrested this month in connection with two shocking child molestation incidents — one that ended in murder. The cases, which surfaced last week, are particularly notable because both are so unusual, experts say.
For one thing, only about 5% of adults who molest minors are women, says David Finkelhor, director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire. A common scenario is the "Mrs. Robinson" variety — an older woman having sex with a teenage boy who often feels some mutual attraction, he says.
Also, sexually abused children are rarely killed by their abusers, male or female, he says.
Melissa Huckaby, 28, of Tracy, Calif., has been charged with the kidnap, rape and murder of 8-year-old Sandra Cantu. The girl, a playmate of Huckaby's daughter, disappeared on March 27. Her remains were found in a suitcase 10 days later.
In the other case, an elementary school principal in Santa Maria, Calif., was arrested on charges of molesting a teenage girl for five years. Brookann Collier, 32, is free on $100,000 bail. The Santa Barbara County district attorney has until April 27 to file charges.
(eAdvocate Post)
A woman who would kidnap, rape and kill a little girl is more likely a psychotic than a true pedophile, says Frederick Berlin, a psychiatrist and founder of the Sexual Disorders Clinic at Johns Hopkins University. He says the delusions of this kind of murderer may be like those of Andrea Yates, who killed her own children.
"They may hear voices and think they killed to protect the children," Berlin says.
The other type of case is far more common, Berlin says. In many instances, adults who molest a child for years have been molested themselves in childhood. Although most abused kids don't grow up to molest children, for those who do, it's often "a bid to get control of their lives because as kids they had so little," Berlin says, or they may stay fixated on adult-child sex because that's how they first became sexual.
Still, women who abuse children are less likely than men to say sexual arousal impelled them, says John Bancroft, senior research fellow at the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction.
Unlike for men, sexual attraction — to men, other women or children — is secondary to relationship needs for women, so the pattern is less fixed, Bancroft says.
Little is known about the cause of pedophilia in men or women, Berlin says, and with so little research, effective treatments lag.
"What we do know is that it's not a voluntary choice," Berlin says. "Nobody chooses this life." ..News Source.. by Marilyn Elias, USA TODAY
April 15, 2009
What Motivates Female Sex Offenders?
4-15-2009 National:
Michelle Golland: Sexual abuse by females, while not as common and definitely underreported as abuse by males, does occur. Marlee Matlin, while on CNN's "Larry King Live" Monday, spoke about her own experience of sexual abuse at the hands of her female babysitter when she was just 11 years old.
It appears, if the allegations are true, that part of the motive in the death of Sandra Cantu was that her killer, Melissa Huckaby, was sexually abusing her and may have killed her in the course of or in an attempt to hide the abuse.
A 2007 report by the Center for Sex Offender Management says that one half of sex offender therapy programs provide services to females. Approximately 3,800 adult women and 2,700 adolescent girl offenders were receiving sex offender therapy services in 2007 -- a number that's nearly twice the number of those served in these programs two years prior.
4 to 8% of reported cases of sex abuse were perpetrated by women. An estimated 1.6 million men and 1.5 million women were sexually abused by women when they were children, and among male offenders convicted and sentenced sexual abuse crimes, 24.6% of them were sexually abused by women.
Characteristics of female sex offenders
(eAdvocate Post)Women between the ages of 22-33 years of age.
They have experienced sexual abuse as children or teens and can have victimization histories twice the rate of men who sexually offend.
History of alcohol and/or drug abuse.
The majority are not mentally ill, but may experience depression or personality disorders.
A majority are employed in professional jobs.
They have difficulties in intimate relationships; or an absence of intimate relationships.
Victims of female sex offenders:A high percentage of victims are in the family or the perpetrator is close to the victim -- friend, teacher, coach, sitter or clergy.
Victims are both boys and girls -- with a slightly higher number of girls.
Younger children, under the age of 12, are more often victims of women over the age of 30 years of age.
Children between the ages of 13-17 are often the victims of women who are between the ages of 18 to 25 years of age.
Women do not tend to show a "victim age preference" in the same manner that male sex offenders do.
Categories of female sex ffendersTeacher/Lover: At the time of their offending, these women are often struggling with peer relationships. They perceive themselves as having romantic or sexually mentoring "relationships" with underaged adolescent victims of their sexual preference, and therefore, did not consider what they are doing to be wrong or criminal in nature.
Predisposed: Histories of incestuous sexual victimization, psychological difficulties and deviant sexual fantasies were common among these women who generally acted alone in their offending. They tend to victimize their own children or other young children within their families or they are close too.
Male-Coerced: These women tend to be passive and dependent individuals with histories of sexual abuse and relationship difficulties. Fearing abandonment, they were pressured by male partners to commit sex offenses often against their own children.
Bringing us Out of Denial
If what is being reported is true regarding the death and sexual abuse of Sandra Cantu, then one positive thing that can come out of this horrible situation is that more children, both boys and girls, will report sexual abuse at the hands of female perpetrators and we as a society will no longer deny the harsh reality of sexual violence at the hands of women. If we continue this cultural denial, we deny the victims the support they need to report the trauma and seek help in their healing. ..News Source.. by michelle golland
February 24, 2009
TX- Child sex cases involving women are on the rise in Texas
2-24-2009 Texas:
The number of women serving time in Texas prisons for having sex with minors has increased more than 36 percent in the last five years.
"Up to five years ago, we didn't talk about this," said Keith Durkin, a criminologist and researcher at Ohio Northern University. "Our culture is becoming more aware that women can and do commit these offenses."
Collin County has its share of cases.
Last month, as a Collin County jury deliberated whether a 40-year-old Allen woman was guilty of having sex with two teenage boys, two other young men came forward with similar accusations against her.
Rather than wait for a verdict, Regina Bowling pleaded guilty to two counts of indecency with a child and was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Bowling is one of a growing number of women in Texas and nationwide accused of committing sex crimes against minors. So far this year, at least six Collin County women charged with having sex with minors – including Bowling – are either being prosecuted or have already had their cases adjudicated.
Still, Durkin and other experts in the field believe society has been slow to view women as sexual predators, though that is beginning to change.
"We're biased to perceive women as nurturing ... so we don't perceive them as sex offenders," said Dr. Julia Hislop, a Virginia psychologist and author of Female Sex Offenders: What Therapists, Law Enforcement and Child Protective Services Need to Know.
Studies suggest that female sex offenders often have a history of depression and anxiety. In addition, like many of their male counterparts, women abusers also may have been sexually abused as children.
Durkin said teenage boys are ideal victims of such crimes because they're less likely to complain and, if they do, their outcries "may be dismissed as teenage fish stories."
Teacher's aide Nancy Torres was 29 when she was arrested three years ago by Frisco police on suspicion of having a sexual relationship with a male teenage student. The relationship began in May 2006 when the victim was a 14-year-old middle school student and lasted about four months, according to police documents.
Torres, who is scheduled for a plea hearing Thursday, is charged with sexual assault and having an improper relationship with a student.
She could not be reached for comment.
If she goes to prison, she'll probably be enrolled there in the state's treatment program for female sex offenders, one of the first of its kind in the country.
Most of the women convicted of sex crimes against minors have had relationships with men their own age but abuse children for their own emotional needs, said Anne Mooney, supervisor of the prison treatment program, which launched in October 2000.
She said that unlike male sex offenders, who often seem to lead outwardly normal lives and have families and stable jobs, women convicted of these crimes often have chaotic lives, marked by substance abuse, frequent moves and erratic employment.
And Mooney said that most female offenders are emotionally immature and are drawn to the intensity that often marks adolescent relationships.
"They'll say, 'He acted older. He didn't act his age,' " Mooney said. "What they're really saying is that they're acting like I act. The offender is developmentally immature."
Elizabeth Marian Young was 41 in 2005 when she was arrested on charges of having sex with a 16-year-old high school student. The Frisco resident, who could not be reached for comment, pleaded guilty earlier this month and was placed on 10 years' probation for child sexual assault.
The teenage victim initially denied the two were having sex and told police that he and Young had a special relationship, "one that nobody would understand." But during the interview, he later broke down, threatened to harm himself, and had to be taken to a mental health treatment center, documents show.
Mooney agrees with other experts who say society often trivializes the effect sex abuse has on its young male victims.
"Often the women who have sexually abused them were women they turned to as role models and substitute mother figures," Mooney said.
"That trust was violated. They'll often say, 'Why did she do that to me?' It makes a lasting impression on their view of women." ..News Source.. by WENDY HUNDLEY / The Dallas Morning
December 21, 2008
'Cougars' preying in the classroom: Why are so many female teachers targeting boys for sexual abuse?
12-21-2008 National:
In the wake of one the most publicized stories of a female teacher sexually abusing an underage student, the case of the beautiful Debra LaFave, MSNBC anchor Contessa Brewer asked a psychologist TV guest "why someone who looks like a living Barbie Doll would need to have sex with a young kid."
LaFave was 23 years old in 2004 when it was discovered that she had been having sex with her student, a 14-year-old boy.
At the time, LaFave became a media sensation for her stunning good looks and the story – a woman seeking the sexual attention of a barely adolescent boy – that so crossed up society's expectations of who sex offenders are and what they look like.
National statistics, however, demonstrate that LaFave's case is far from unusual.
According to a major 2004 study commissioned by the U.S. Department of Education – the most authoritative investigation to date – nearly 10 percent of U.S. public school students have been targeted with unwanted sexual attention by school employees, and in those cases, 40 percent of the perpetrators were women.
Titled "Educator Sexual Misconduct: A Synthesis of Existing Literature" by Virginia Commonwealth University Professor Charol Shakeshaft, the report brought to light staggering statistics.
Compare the numbers with the much-publicized Catholic Church scandal.
A study by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops concluded 10,667 young people were sexually mistreated by priests between 1950 and 2002. (See: CHARACTERISTICS OF CHILDREN WHO ALLEGED SEXUAL ABUSE BY CATHOLIC PRIESTS )
Shakeshaft's study, however, estimates that roughly 290,000 students experienced some sort of physical sexual abuse by a public school employee between 1991 and 2000 alone.
If female employees are responsible for 40 percent of those crimes, that means America could be facing an average of more than 11,000 instances of women abusing students in school each year – in other words, more cases in one year than were reported in 50 years of Catholic priest abuse.
Why would so many trusted teachers, even young, vibrant, beautiful women like Debra LaFave, target children for sexual abuse?
WND spoke with some of the nation's leading experts in the field – including Shakeshaft – for answers to why female teachers would prey on boys and what can be done about it.
Teacher outside, teenager inside
"There's a range of reasons these women are abusing boys," Shakeshaft told WND, "not just one."
"One of the reasons is because they can, because we haven't done in schools what we need to do to stop this from happening," Shakeshaft said. "A second reason is because they are in power positions, and they abuse power just as males abuse power."
Shakeshaft told WND, however, that most of the women who aren't hardened predators – including perplexing cases like LaFave's, where a woman may only grow attached to one boy and wouldn't dream of sexually abusing others – rationalize their romantic fixation because, inside, the teacher feels like a teenager herself.
"Most of these people who cross boundaries have arrested emotional development," Shakeshaft said. "They're putting themselves into the same peer group as their students.
"What they say is, 'I think this person is just the same as I am,'" Shakeshaft explained. "Though they wouldn't say it out loud, they rationalize that the child is really more like a 40-year-old, or that that they are really more like a teenager."
In a 2006 interview with NBC's Matt Lauer, LaFave demonstrated Shakeshaft's explanation. "The only way that I can describe that is that I felt that I was a peer of theirs," LaFave confessed. "I was just thinking of it as being a young girl who just got caught with her boyfriend."
When played a recording of a phone call LaFave made to her student, she acknowledged of her giggling adolescent demeanor: "That sounds so childish. … That's not something an adult would say."
Gary Schoener, executive director of the Walk-In Counseling Center in Minneapolis and one of the nation's foremost pioneers in working with sex offenders, agrees that many of these teachers see themselves as peers with the teens they abuse, but warns there may be other factors as well.
How she sees him
"These cases have a lot of variety to them," Schoener told WND. "The women are not all the same, and they don't all fit a pattern."
Schoener is a licensed psychologist who has worked for decades with teachers who sexually abuse their students. Along with former WICC Clinic Director John Gonsiorek, Schoener developed one of the first and most widely respected tools for assessing professionals – therapists, clergy, teachers and others – caught in sexual misconduct.
"What does the woman see in the boy?" Schoener pondered. "Obviously you have some where [the students] are 17 years old and they're mature for their age, at least physically, and you can more readily see how somebody could develop fantasies.
"But then when you get the 14-year-old boy who is immature, why did this woman who was married, who was not known to have marital problems, who had kids, why would she go in this direction?" Schoener asked.
"Most of these women don't know the answer," Schoener explained. "But if you ask them what they're feeling, they would say, 'This kid is the most honest person I've met in my life. He's much more honest than adult males.' What you hear a lot from women is very similar to what you hear from men who prefer girls: that they're pure, that they're innocent."
Schoener explained that the teachers exhibit thoughts and patterns very similar to a psychological fallacy called counter-transference, which is when a caregiver in authority – such as a therapist or a teacher – connects with some virtue in the subject, but then distorts that into a romanticized idealization based more on the caregiver's own projection than on reality.
"They absolutely romanticize this young kid," Schoener said, "and somehow in their mind make him into this sensitive, caring, thoughtful, honest, insightful ideal."
But, Schoener explained, "Each of these things they're describing and they feel very strongly are not things that could have come from actual experience with the kid. … These are gut feelings. In this context of the teacher-student relationship, somehow the kid becomes bigger than life, and they react to him like their great, fantasied love."
Scheoner told WND that the one factor he sees in the vast majority of cases where female teachers abuse boys is fantasy about the student's character that does not match what others observe.
"It is very much driven by emotional connection, rather than sexual drive," Schoener said. "In a huge number of the cases we've seen – not all, some are largely sexual – the thing was driven by a fantasy where the kid was seen as this wonderful human being and age ceased to matter. In fact, reality ceased to matter."
"The sexual turn-on is not the first thing that occurs," Schoener summarized. "It begins with an emotional fixation on a kid. After that, chances they take don't matter any more. They risk careers. They do crazy things like planning on how they'll live together after the wedding. They get in trouble for the sex, but it started with irrational feelings and thoughts."
What's the harm?
When LaFave's story broke in the news, as has happened with other stories of attractive teachers sexually abusing their male students, some questioned whether the boys were truly harmed. After all, it was argued, many teenage boys would see the wooing of a beautiful woman as a good thing, regardless of her age.
Following another publicized case of teacher abuse, Steven B. Blum, a consulting psychologist to a sex offender program in Nebraska, explained teenage boys don't always see the harm initially.
"Generally the male doesn't feel victimized," Blum told the Los Angeles Times. "A lot of teenage boys would see that as their lucky day."
But the 16-year-old victim of Margaret De Barraicua, a 30-year-old California teacher who pleaded guilty to four counts of statutory rape, did not consider it his "lucky day."
"I'm not the same boy," the student said in a letter read in court in Sacramento. "At school I became the center of attention. Everyone knew my name." The boy was so traumatized, his mother wrote in a letter read in court, that "his hair is falling out."
The father of a Colorado boy molested by Silvia Johnson – who held drug-alcohol-and-sex parties at her home with teenaged schoolboys to be "cool" – told the court the 40-year-old woman "took away my best friend, my hunting buddy. I can't have him back now. He is gone."
Experts agree that, in time, even willing teenage boys coaxed into sex by their authority figures, no matter how attractive, exhibit abused child symptoms.
"Boys and girls who are put in these situations aren't emotionally ready to deal with all the complexities of these relationships," Shakeshaft told WND.
"The lasting effect is very similar to the effects on females: they don't trust people, they have trouble forming intimate relationships, they often feel used, exploited, dirty, ashamed," Shakeshaft explained. "And that often leads to dysfunction in other areas – drug abuse, alcohol abuse, and particularly inability to have intimate relationships."
Dr. Richard B. Gartner, a leading expert and specialist in field of treating men with history of sexual abuse, writes in a commentary on his website, "Many sexually abused boys grow up distrustful, considering people dishonest, malevolent, and undependable. They often become frightened of emotional connection and isolate themselves."
"Confusing affection with abuse, desire with tenderness," Gartner writes, "sexually abused boys often become men who have difficulty distinguishing among sex, love, nurturance, affection, and abuse. They may experience friendly interpersonal approaches as seductive and manipulative. On the other hand, they may not notice when exploitative demands are made on them – they've learned to see these as normal and acceptable."
Shakeshaft told WND, "Historically, if a boy mentioned it, it was not seen as abuse, it was seen as, 'You should be so lucky.' I think that's changing. I think we're seeing a change in that double standard; I think we're seeing people understanding that the issues are the same whether it's a male or a female."
What can be done?
The answer to stopping teachers who prey on their students sexually may be as complex as the answer to what's causing it.
For Shakeshaft, who specializes in educational leadership, the answer is teaching people to spot the warning signs.
"A lot of teachers, if they understood the patterns, would be able to identify them in their colleagues," Shakeshaft told WND. "We hear from other teachers, 'I always suspected something, I was always uncomfortable – I just wasn't sure.' What they didn't have was that body of knowledge that would have led them to identify what was going on."
Shakeshaft warned that fixated predators may be too sly to spot, but with close supervision and a swift, knowledgeable response, the education community may be able to help teachers who are about to cross the line.
"If we keep aware of what these signals are," Shakeshaft said, "we are more likely to be able to intervene and stop them."
Schoener, however, believes the best defense may come from parents.
"I don't think from the teacher end it's very easy to spot," Schoener told WND. Instead, he suggested parents be watchful of how much interchange their children are having with school officials.
"The first warning sign is a kid spending a lot of private time with the teacher," Schoener said. "The second: text messaging and emails that go back and forth. At the grade school, junior high, high school level, most teachers are discouraged from a lot of Internet interaction. Frequent emailing and text messaging are questionable. It would be a rare occasion where a teacher would need to be in that level of contact with a student."
Schoener also warned that parents be clear on the purpose and the chaperoning of all field trips and events outside of school.
Finally, Schoener said, the boundaries of a teacher's role need to be clearly set.
"A teacher's job is not to counsel students past a point," Schoener explained. "Even if the kid really needs help and it's legitimate counseling, it's rare that a teacher should be doing a lot of counseling. That's the school counselor's job. If there are a lot of private meetings, you have to ask yourself what's going on."
But for David Kupelian, WND's managing editor and author of "The Marketing of Evil," the ultimate answer – beyond the necessary watching for warning signs – is rooted in a society that has lost its spiritual moorings.
In an award-winning 2006 Whistleblower article, Kupelian wrote, "Without the understanding of our spiritual origin and destiny – of who we are and what purpose our maker intended for us – we can't possibly understand sex and its intended role in our lives. Instead, all we have driving us are the desires, physical and emotional 'needs,' cravings and compulsions we find welling up from within us."
Discover how Judeo-Christian America was sold on sexual anarchy in David Kupelian's controversial best seller, "The Marketing of Evil," available today, autographed, for only $4.95 -- an amazing $20 discount!
In her interview with WND, Shakeshaft bolstered Kupelian's point.
"Part of the problem is bad judgment; part of it is narcissistic behavior, in other words, 'What I want I should get,'" Shakeshaft said.
"The focus here for [these teachers] is that they're looking out for their own needs and not the needs of their kids," Shakeshaft said. "What they're interested in is getting what they want, not doing what they need to do to make sure the students they have are safe. The common denominator is focus on self, focus on their own needs, focus on their own desires."
"That is America today," Kupelian wrote. "In what was once the finest and most robust expression of Western Judeo-Christian civilization and the core values underlying it, most of us, too, have forgotten. … Forgotten the simple, intuitive understanding of right and wrong that we grasped effortlessly when we were innocent children, but which we were later intimidated or seduced into doubting – and abandoning. Forgotten the core truth about man's condition – that he is in reality a 'fallen' being, 'born in sin,' and that his sexual urges must be channeled into marriage."
Kupelian concluded of all the reasons female teachers seek sexual or romantic gratification in children, the largest contributing factor may be a secularized society that has lost a sound basis for teaching both morality and the self-control to exercise it.
"An even more important factor in this sexual-predator epidemic is the fact that 'right' and 'wrong' just aren't real to most of us anymore," Kupelian wrote. "Even if [a female teacher] was attracted sexually to a child, for whatever reasons, it's still wrong to have sex with a 13-year-old. And knowing something is wrong is enough reason not to do it – even if part of us wants to." ..News Source.. by Drew Zahn
GA- Some still don’t see double standard
12-20-2008 Georgia:
Once upon a time, the sexual activities older women engaged in with adolescent boys may have be dismissed with a wink and a nod. Today we should know better.
But do we?
If recent headlines are any indication, some people still don’t get it.
Amid talk about Muscogee County teacher, Claire Richards, being investigated and arrested regarding allegations of inappropriate behavior with male high school students, a similar case happened to a Troup County middle school teacher.
Elizabeth Gaddy, 45, is accused of having an inappropriate relationship with a 13-year-old male student. She was also charged with enticing a child for indecent purposes. Gaddy’s “relationship” with the student is alleged to have gone on for several months.
We can attempt to dress it up anyway we like, but women who involve themselves with young boys are sex offenders. They are child molesters. And their offenses represent about 10 percent of all sexual offenses.
‘What is the problem’
Such women initiate sexual activity, “taking advantage of boys who were sexually stimulated and flavoring their crime with a romantic tone,” Katherine Ramsland writes on trutv.com. “There was no violence involved, some of them say, and the boys were willing, so what is the problem?” she writes.
If a man said this about a girl the community believed to be a “good” girl, people would have no problem assigning him a cell on death row — before his trial. But there can be a double standard with boys.
Remember Debra Lafave, the 25-year-old Florida teacher who had sex with a 14-year-old in the back seat of a car being driven by a 15-year-old? She is the blonde whose lawyer told the court she was too beautiful to go to a prison full of women. So she was sentenced to house arrest.
“People tend to think women can’t really sexually assault because they don’t have the proper anatomy, or they don’t have aggressive tendencies — sexual aggression,” said Susan Strickland, Ph.D., a certified sex offender treatment provider.
“Women molest, but they molest in a different way,” said Strickland, whose office is in Atlanta. “There is less use of force than with male offenders, and more use of coercion. These women come in all shapes and sizes. There is no profile.”
And female sex offenders use more intrusive levels of sexual behaviors than men. They are more likely than men to abuse strangers. And they are less likely than men to acknowledge guilt or to feel sorry or guilty, Strickland said.
Still in our culture most men grow up viewing molestation by an older woman as a conquest: It feels good and sounds good when it’s told to the other guys. ..News Source.. by Kaffie Sledge
December 2, 2008
WV- Mercer County Woman Sentenced on Sex Charges
Would a man get such a sentence? Or, is the judge taking into consideration that, registering as a sex offender for 10 years is sufficient punishment? Note: This is following being sentenced to prison and appeal based on prosecutor's remarks, then case was remanded for a new trial; the result is below.
12-2-2008 West Virginia:
Mindy Keesecker will spend a month in jail.
PRINCETON- -- It's a month behind bars for a Princeton mother convicted of sexually abusing a teen boy.
In Mercer County court this afternoon, Mindy Keesecker was sentenced to two one-to-five year prison terms. But both were suspended.
Instead, she'll spend the next 30 days in jail.
She'll be on probation for five years and will have to register as a sex offender for the next ten years. Investigators say Keesecker had a relationship with a teen boy while serving as a church group chaperone.
She pleaded guilty in November to two counts of first degree sexual abuse(Sexual abuse occurs when a person subjects another person to sexual contact without their consent, and that lack of consent is due to physical force, threat or intimidation.). ..News Source.. by WVNS
November 12, 2008
IA- Sex offender calls her match with teen boy 'perfect'
11-12-2008 Iowa:
Indianola, Ia. - Shannon Michelle Rew faces up to 10 years behind bars and a lifetime as a registered sex offender, but the 37-year-old Indianola mother of three is unapologetic about her sexual relationship with a teenage boy.
"We both cared about each other. That's what the basis of our relationship was," she said. "Our sense of humor and our personalities were a perfect match."
Rew, who pleaded guilty Monday to two counts of third-degree sex abuse, said she and the boy "cared a lot about each other" and "kind of let emotions just take over," which prosecutors say led to an ongoing relationship that included pornography, explicit text messages and a sexual encounter in her van while she was free on bond.
"The fact that you went ahead and committed a subsequent offense of the same nature does not give the court a lot of confidence that you've learned anything in this matter," said Warren County District Judge Darrell Goodhue, who recommended that Rew be put on probation for life as part of her sentence.
Her name will be added to the Iowa Sex Offender Registry, and she will have to pay an as-yet-undetermined amount of money to the boy and his family.
"Everyone's making it out to be some big sexual relationship that we had," the self-described "soccer mom" said. "And that's not how it was at all."
Rew's story is similar to a number of high-profile U.S. criminal cases in recent years that have involved adult women and young boys. The most sensational centered on teachers and their male students, but a majority dealt with women who abused the children of friends or acquaintances. Last month, a 26-year-old New Oxford, Pa., woman who had sex with a 15-year-old boy she met at a fair was sentenced to six months of house arrest and four years of probation.
Experts say prosecutions of women in sex abuse cases have risen slightly in the past decade. Many believe sex scandals that involved Catholic priests put more focus on authority figures. Others say the trend reflects the erosion of a double standard applied to men and women, brought on by the growth of female prosecutors and police officers.
Rew said she and the boy met after her 16-year-old daughter dated him for about six months.
"He was a really nice kid, a really nice person," Rew said. "He would do anything for you. He was having a lot of personal problems and family problems to where he came to me a lot, you know?"
Warren County Attorney Bryan Tingle said Rew's alleged concern for the boy's welfare was questionable.
People who are charged with crimes try "to make excuses to justify their crimes and take the focus away from what they did wrong under our laws by focusing attention on the victims," he said. "She took advantage of an emotionally unstable individual. That's what a criminal does. He or she takes advantage of someone who is vulnerable or in a fragile state."
Rew was arrested Sept. 17 after her mother found explicit photographs of her daughter and the boy, court documents show.
The boy, who told police that he and Rew had sex "at least a dozen times," said Rew gave him a cell phone so the two could communicate. Rew said she gave him the phone after he threatened suicide.
"He was mostly upset about what happened with me. He didn't want me to think he was the one who turned me in ... so I told him that if he promised not to harm himself, I would find a way for us to talk," she said.
Rew was arrested again Oct. 16, after the boy's mother found explicit text messages that detailed sex the two had while she was free on bond.
Rew, a Des Moines native, graduated from Hoover High School in 1989. She spent nearly two years in business school and moved to Indianola in 2000 with her three children, ages 19, 16 and 9, after a divorce. Rew worked for seven years at a child care center, where co-workers described her as an upstanding employee.
"I was what you'd call a soccer mom," she said. "I pretty much worked full time and drove my kids everywhere."
Rew said she pleaded guilty to avoid a "touchy" trial and because she would rather start her prison term immediately and get back to her children as soon as possible.
"I've messed up my whole life, and I've messed up my kids' lives," Rew said. "I'm sorry for it. I just love them so much. I thought it was the best idea to go ahead and take the plea."
Tingle said that "anytime both sides can come to a resolution that seems fair, a resolution that is acceptable to the victims ... it is best in the case of a sexual assault or sexual abuse to avoid going to trial, because of the nature of allegations and the nature of testimony that would come out.
"I do know this plea agreement was all right with the mother and son," he said.
It is The Des Moines Register's policy not to identify victims of sex abuse.
Rew said she disagreed with the media's portrayal of her as a pedophile. She said she had never had a general attraction to young boys or sought out young boys for sex.
Rew said she never meant to hurt the boy or his family.
She said that if she had caused them pain, she regretted doing so, but that she wasn't sorry about the relationship.
"We had a really good time together, and I don't regret that. I just regret that because of what happened, everything that came out of it - I would never have done it if I knew that would be the case," she said.
"It's crazy. They can be 16, and you don't get charged with anything. They can be 15, and you get charged with life parole. Who's to say this 15-year-old isn't as mature as an 18-year-old?
"I don't think, when you care about somebody, that age really matters." ..News Source.. by AARON W. JACO • Indianola Record-Herald
