Adult to Child Sexuality

Abstract

The interviews conducted with the 20 wives and girlfriends revealed that a total of 34 children had been targets of some form of sexual abuse or victimization. The current chapter introduces some of the specifics of the cases, focusing on demographics of victims, reactions of mothers, and common behaviors exhibited by molesters in their interactions with the children, both sexual and otherwise. In 65 % of the cases, the abuser was the child's biological father, and 40 % of the time, more than one child was targeted. While the mothers uniformly said they had responded to the initial discovery of the abuse with shock and disbelief, we found that the women reported observing many of the same, suspicious, behaviors by the molesters. For example, many of the women reported that the molesters would bath or shower with the children, invade the child's privacy, ask the woman to shave her pubic region, and use pornography (e.g., showing it to the child or viewing it in locations where the child may see it). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved)