The Winnipeg Sun, SUN MEDIA, by DEAN PRITCHARD, May 29, 2008
A 21-year-old woman convicted for the second time of exposing herself in
front of schoolchildren begged to be released from jail yesterday,
claiming she has learned her lesson.
"I promise I won't do it again, I mean it this time," said the woman,
who suffers from Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD).
Police arrested the woman May 12 after she exposed her breasts to a
passing truck at the intersection of St. John's Avenue and Charles
Street, in plain view of a nine-year-old boy a short distance away.
"I didn't mean to do that in front of the kid, I didn't see him," the
woman said.
Court heard the woman "frequently acts impulsively" and lives on her own
with the support of around-the-clock social workers.
At the time of her arrest, the woman was bound by a strict probation
order in connection with a similar incident two months earlier.
The woman was standing across the street from an elementary school at
8:30 a.m. when she exposed her breasts to three passing school buses and
dozens of children walking on the sidewalk, community prosecutor Susan
Helenchilde told court.
"The Crown has serious concerns about what kind of impact that will have
on the children in the future," said Helenchilde, who recommended the
woman be sentenced to a further 90 days in jail for her most recent
offence.
"It is not my desire to see this lady confined to a jail cell, but in
the interest of public safety I really don't see any other solution."
Defence lawyer Don Henderson said one year in jail was "far too
excessive" and urged Judge Ted Lismer to sentence his client to 16 days
time served.
Henderson argued the woman did not have adequate time to adjust to the
terms of her probation order before she re-offended.
"With the FASD, she can't be treated as a normal person," Henderson
said. "She functions Read More .. an adolescent child level."
Lismer agreed and sentenced the woman to an additional one week in
custody.
"I'm giving you the benefit of what you are saying and that you are
sincere in what you say," Lismer told the woman.
VANCOUVER - Canada's largest study into the sexual exploitation of street
kids and runaways has shattered some myths about who the abusers might be
- with the most surprising finding being that many are women seeking sex
with young males.
"Some youth in each gender were exploited by women with more than three
out of four (79 per cent) sexually exploited males reporting exchanging
sex for money or goods with a female," said Elizabeth Saewyc, associate
professor of nursing at the University of British Columbia and principal
investigator for the study conducted by Vancouver's McCreary Centre Society.
"I must admit it wasn't something we were expecting."
After Plymouth case shocked the nation, police say number of women abusing children
The Guardian UK and The Observer
4 October 2009
Researchers from the Lucy Faithfull Foundation (LFF), a
child protection charity that deals with British female sex
offenders, said its studies confirmed that a "fair proportion" of
child abusers were women. Donald Findlater, director of research and
development, said results indicated that up to 20% of a conservative
estimate of 320,000 suspected UK paedophiles were women.
MORRISTOWN, N.J. — A 35-year-old seventh-grade teacher was charged with having sex with one of her students at least 20 times at the teacher's home.
Jodi Thorp, 35, surrendered to authorities Monday on charges of aggravated sexual assault, aggravated sexual contact and endangering the welfare of a child. Prosecutors claim she had sex with the boy at her Mendham home between June 2001 and September 2002. The boy is now 15.
A surprising 86% of survivors of sexual
abuse were not believed when they said the abuser was a woman.
Many myths were exposed, such as the one that women only sexually abused
when coerced by men - they in fact played the lead part. Also the myth that
women are incapable of cruelty - what was shown was beyond belief.
Women commit 25% of all child sexual abuse
250,000 children in UK have been sexually abused by women
Women in our society have been portrayed as victims, but somewhere within
their victimisation they have learned that to abuse children gave them a
sense of power, control, agency, and therefore they use the abuse of children
to gain those things.
Jacqui Saradjiam: (clinical psychologist)
I think people find it so difficult to see that women sexually abuse children
because the whole view of women is of nurturers, carers, protectors - people
who do anything to look after children - and they see the women as victims
rather than enemies or perpetrators of any abuse.
Michelle Elliott: (Director - children's charity Kidscape)
I think the issue strikes at the core of what we perceive ourselves as women
to be. I think that it's easier to think that it's men - men the enemy,
somehow - but it can't be women - it's one thing women can't do. Women can
be equal, we can be free, we can be in charge of companies, but we can't
sexually abuse children - That's a load of rubbish.
For six decades, women who have killed their babies have typically benefited
from reduced sentences under our infanticide law because of the belief their
minds were disturbed from giving birth.
University of Alberta law professor Sanjeev Anand wonders why only mothers
who kill their infants get a break.
Fathers and adoptive parents should have a shot at judicial compassion
as well, he argues in a provocative article in the Alberta Law Review.
There is little evidence of a direct connection between the physical
effects of childbirth or lactation and the onset of mental disturbances
in women, he declares.
Rather, poverty, isolation and other social stresses are more likely
causes of the mental illness some women experience after childbirth, Anand
argues.
And if mothers are vulnerable to mental breakdowns because of the socio-economic
burden of child-rearing, surely fathers and adoptive parents risk the same
stress and should also be able to use the defence of infanticide, he says.
"Once the law recognizes biological mothers who kill their children may
commit these acts because of the effects of mental disorders caused by social
stresses, the law must also acknowledge all parents are susceptible to such
influences," Anand writes.
Read More ..
A married primary schoolteacher was jailed for 15 months yesterday after admitting having sex with an underage
teenage boy.
Hannah Grice, 32, pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to two counts of indecent assault on the boy, who was aged
14 and 15 at the time of the offences.
Sentencing her at Stafford crown court, Judge John Shand told Grice, from Cannock, Staffordshire, she had abused
her position of trust.
"Cases such as this are, of course, made worse by the fact that you were a member of the teaching profession," he
told her. "You should have been very sensitive indeed to child welfare issues." Grice was also ordered to register
as a sex offender for 10 years. Read More ..
"... the existence of a double standard in the care and
treatment of male victims, and the invisibility and normalization of
violence and abuse toward boys and young men in our society.
Despite the fact that over 300 books and articles on male
victims have been published in the last 25 to 30 years, boys and teen males
remain on the periphery of the discourse on child abuse.
Few workshops about males can be found at most child abuse
conferences and there are no specialized training programs for clinicians.
Male-centred assessment is all but non-existent and treatment programs are
rare. If we are talking about adult males, the problem is even
greater. A sad example of this was witnessed recently in Toronto. After a
broadcast of The Boys of St. Vincent, a film about the abuse of boys
in a church-run orphanage, the Kids' Help Phone received over 1,000
calls from distraught adult male survivors of childhood sexual abuse. It is
tragic in a way no words can capture that these men had no place to turn to
other than a children's crisis line."
