ABSTRACT
My interest in this area of work - the parameters of female sexuality, and female child sexual abuse - developed primarily through my own clinical work. I have worked psychotherapeutically with some fifty patients over the past four years and of this number some six patients, or 12% of caseload, have disclosed material involving female sexual abuse of children. The point will be made in the text, that female abuse often involves a “masculine” dominant, sadistic tendency and this is deeply reflected in some of the case histories which follow. The evidence here and elsewhere in the text would suggest that the social notion of the feminine as the gentle sex, is primarily a social construct, formed to mask and defend against much darker and less acceptable psychical realities. The discussion of case histories which follow are very similar to other survivors accounts of abuse by females, to be considered later.
